I don't mean to be snarky, but as a serious hobbyist who has made family films for many years, I would start thinking pronto about a finished video that is no longer than 1 h long. No audience, even dear Aunt Ethel in BF, Iowa will want to be impaled onto many hours of footage. Heck, I can barely stand to watch my first family films of this length!

One idea is to make the main presentation your video. Then add a photo montage as a DVD extra. Also, a family being what it is, you no doubt have footage of embarrassing moments, blunders, etc., so make a blooper reel as another extra. (For example, in Vegas, I specifically keep a media bin called Bloopers!!) This way, you can stuff a lot into your DVD without making your audience 'suffer' through hours of the kids walking here and there, and they'll love the extras to watch at their leisure.

I've made a number of photo montages. I hate them. I used to pan and zoom every picture manually. That's why I hate them. Now I use JetDV's Excalibur scripting plugin to make a montage in a split second and adjust any weird pans or zooms manually. It is far, far, far less painful this way. Still hate 'em.

Finally, vacation videos lend themselves to editing them in chronological fashion, since that often is how you and family remember the vacation. That also makes the video easy to break up into convenient DVD chapters, e.g., Day 1 adventures, Day 2, etc. Sunrise and sunset shots help a LOT to convey to the viewer this passage of time.

In your case, it sounds like chronology is NOT the focus, but SUBJECT MATTER is. Carve up your video into Parade 1, Parade 2, then Show 1, Show 2. Add in family member reactions to each, walking to this show, laughing at that act, etc.

Hope this helps. Family videos can be extremely tedious and boring to watch, but they don't have to be if you are absolutely ruthless in the editing bay (really, are you going to seriously care 5 years from now about some forgotten actress singing that lullaby to a lovable animal in the princess costume . . . all 10 minutes of it??! Cut it down. Way down. Like, 30 seconds.)

$0.02,
Steve

p.s. OK, John Dennis had the same idea, only more severe.

Have everyone write a trip report. (And you thought that "what I did his summer" was a lame english class assignment). Then you will know what was important to them. Next, write a script and find the clips to support it. Then get the family to read their script in a voiceover.

I think you will be surprised at the result.

I don't want to appear severe.

i thought your advice spot on john!

i much prefer a snappy 8>12min presentation (of anything) rather than some drawn out production.

of course if it's family in it you have an attentive audience, but still, you don't want to bore them....

I don't think you did - sound advice, from someone who has made the errors of excessively long family video and also had to suffer through others.

Duncan

I’ve done dozens – hell – hundreds of home vidoes … It’s what I do. Here’s my 2 cents! My rules.

I’d agree with most of the remarks above .. the most helpful advice is to edit in chronological order. It’s easiest. Just take it as it comes. Make the story out of the footage you have -- not what you wish you had. Go in order. Tell the story as it happened and as you shot it -- naturally there are exceptions.
Use only the best parts of the best footage. By this I mean as steady and solid as you have!
Vary the pace. Go for some emotion. Change gears.
Use live sound (if it’s good) .. Be creative moving sound around. Sound is important.
Speed up and slow down footage as needed. Don’t forget you can do this.
Don’t forget you can freeze the frame too. Don’t forget, in HiDef footage, you can crop into the frame (within limits) for better framing.
Use narration and wild sound. Find ways to minimize the bad sound or replace it. I repeat, sound is important.
Use stills – but don’t over work that. This is a video – not a slide show.
Don’t use long titles to read.
Don’t over work fancy transitions. Or freeze frames .. or other effects.
Shooting ratio should be about 7 or 8 to one. Meaning an hour of video should cut down to about 7 min or less. Less is more in the long run .. When you’ve got it down to a reasonable time – consider that a rough cut. Let it rest a few days and come back to it with fresh eyes. Now tighten it.

But most important is to have fun doing the edit – so ignore all the rules above and do it the way that pleases YOU. No one else will ever appreciate it as you do – so make yourself happy. This is a lot of work and you are doing the WORK. Never forget that YOU are HEAD of the STUDIO! You’re in show business now! Your job is to entertain. Start with yourself. Know your audience. Make sure YOU like it. Don't leave anything in that bothers you. It's your baby! If you run completely out of ideas --- go back and read my rules.

Here’s one of my home videos .. I like the edit on this one. I started with about an hour of footage...
Cabo San Lucas

how I would approach it is simple.

1.Sort the clips out , take out the best stuff and dump into a project Bin. hit the lightning bolt get rid of unnecessary stuff hanging time and power.
In the project bin create 3 new bins close-ups , extreme close, establish shots or wide angles.

2.Select a good piece of music or two that fits the event. Arrange and cut clips to suit the music.
you open with a wide angle establishment shot to set the scene and cut to close ups and other shots and angles to get some type of story line going on. that’s it.
In other words the emotional content is more important than the actual time and sequence of events. It’ s not a historical account but a fun event.

When you are happy with the cuts record and the voice over to bind the scenes.

I visualize a Miami Mice color grade look and feel.

I'm working on a vacation video right now, and the main presentation will be about 45 minutes of tightly edited action (it was a long vacation).

Similar to an idea proposed by S. Mann above, I'm going to lay down a "Director's Commentary" track as an option for viewing the final DVD. My wife and I will view the rendered video and record our thoughts, jokes, background info, etc. on the various scenes using a separate audio recorder (only because I have one), pretty much like the commercial DVDs with directors talking about metaphors, artsy stuff, and so on.

Steve

@John Dennis: perhaps "severe" was a poor choice of adjective. Feel better if I said "advocated much higher shooting ratio"? I only meant that "many hours" of the OP's original footage would be cut to your 18 minutes versus something longer. Same idea, just different degree. ;)

Just my two cents, remember to tell a story, not just document an event. Have a beginning, middle and end and then maybe a music video with other stuff to wrap it up. Storylines work better than just a series of shots and stills.

Dave T2

>>I'm working on a vacation video right now, and the main presentation will be about 45 minutes of tightly edited action (it was a long vacation).

I'm curious .. how long was the vacation? How many hours of footage? ..

I do like the "director's commentary" approach .. Good idea .. you'll be glad you did it years from now when your memory of the trip is not as accurate as the video -- but this is not so easy to do on "tightly edited" footage.

@xberk: vacation was 15 days in three main locales in a third world country. Much of it was adventure hiking, ziplining, surfing, flying, 4-wheeling, kayaking, etc.,punctuated by more quiet family times. I've styled the whole theme after the Indiana Jones movies, complete with old-world style map animations (I did these in AE) to further convey the sense of adventure and moving around the country.

Total raw footage was a bit over 3 hours. Still photography added a chunk as one of my DVD extras. Subtracting stills, animations, titles, end credits, etc., my shoot ratio was about 4-5.

The director's commentary will be a first for me. I really have no idea how well I can pull it off. Obviously, fast action sequences may not accommodate any VO. I'll have to see.

Steve

p.s. I liked your example above. The jabbering biddy on the cruise ship and clock face wipes made me laugh. Also, your wife is a great sport.

I like the other approaches I've read, great ideas! I'm gonna throw this idea out there just to be different. The essence of the idea is to convey the emotion rather than tell the story in chronological order. Think music video...

Choose music that reflects the mood; if appropriate use different pieces of music to vary the tone and tempo of the different parts of your vacation.

I love stills because they freeze moments in time and, with the right music and a little motion (pan/zoom) can convey emotion better than video. So use lots of stills and add video clips as seasoning and, as someone mentioned, don't be afraid to speed up/slow down the clips.

In terms of overall length, shorter is (almost) always better. If viewers want to watch it again right away, then it's short enough. If they're texting or otherwise distracted while "watching" the video then it's too long.

As a final thought, you may want to use this as a 3 - 4 minute highlight video to complement a longer production, something to share with extended family and friends on YouTube.

>> If they're texting or otherwise distracted while "watching" the video then it's too long.

Agreed. Of course. Shorter is generally speaking better! .. Leave em laughing.

But this raises another point about showing your "Trip VIdeo" to a "live" audience. If that's most important, then it should have an impact on how you cut it. By this I mean you need to leave room in the pacing for the audience TO TALK. Yep. A live family audience will TALK over your video. Count on it. Leave some room for it. This argues to play things a bit longer than really needed to allow for audience comments. Learning to do this is not easy .. certainly a fine point .. it's like editing a comedy -- you leave room for the laugh -- but if there is no laugh -- there's the rub .. . Of course, if you are controlling the showing, you can just hit the "pause" button while the audience jabbers .. that's part of their fun, isn't it? . It's also hard to surprise an audience who has been there with you -- they will burst out the punch line ahead of the joke ... But being touchy about showing your masterpiece in silence is a drag .. .

This is all part of the game. A cut for YouTube might be slightly different than for a live family audience. The family might want some room to express themselves. At least, that's my experience.

This reminds me of an early family vid that involved my kids and their friends. It was a great piece, but what I didn't expect is that the MOST important thing to the kids was seeing themselves on screen. They laughed when I didn't expect it, commented and jabbered all along. How dare they not pay attention to my careful edits, choice of music, color grading, and a dozen of other careful touches. :)

Agreed. That's why I basically please myself. I can't predict how everyone else will see the piece or react .. no more than Lucas could predict the reaction to Star Wars .. So I please myself .. years later I still appreciate the little touches.. i generally get what I was up to and say "hey. that's nice.." .. . and I hate those things I meant to fix but never did get right ...or that I left in to try to please someone else ..

I can't tell you how excited I was to come home from work and see 17 responses to this thread. Thank you ALL so much! No need for apologied of being too direct (or "snarky"!) -- I asked for your input.

I've seen some suggestions on things I had been thinking and a lot of new ideas for me to contemplate.

I think that the total package will be three movies: 1) A quick hitting youtube movie that I can share with family and friends; 2) A longer highlight real that would be more meaningful to us (I love the thought of getting their memories recorded, too); and 3) a more 'historical' set of chapters that utilize more of the video that was shot -- there were different things that were special for each person. This may get adjusted based upon how good the video is.

This is also a practice for me. Both of my kids have weddings this year. I'm wanting to put a video together for each wedding that will be special to the kids and our friends and families.

And -- xberk....thanks for sharing the link to your video. Gives me some ideas as well as refreshes some memories of a cruise my wife and I went on a few years ago.

Hey wbtczn, I (and maybe others) would love to see your "quick hitting" Youtube video of House of Mouse. A fast-paced action soundtrack should really spruce up Mickey & Da Crew. ;)

I love live music and got some nice feed back people who liked using live music as the background, cutting to the musicians thruought the video.

I may have posted some of these before but here are some demos I've done for friends and family. The Guam/Saipan video was one of the first ones I did w/ local music and the Japan videos are mixed w/ local musicians and recorded music.



Lot of people liked this one for some reason.






I've started to try and keep my video segments shorter <7 minutes. IMHO it's better having the audience wanting more than bored w/ too much.

Hope you got some good ideas. If possible post some samples of the finished video!


Btw, xberk, nice video, especially the scenery at 2:55 (:
Also, I can see myself sitting at some of those bars enjoying a Cuban cigar and a nice drink... hmmm I wonder if they are actually "Cuban" or rewrapped Dominicans. (;

Coming from video journalism, I'm all about DaveT2's approach. Tell a story.

Here we are arriving (establishing shot, we parked in Dopey, the tram ride to the gate, handing over tickets, kids freaking out with excitement).

You've already shot the video, but being Canadian I'll use a hockey analogy: the best players know what to do when they DON'T have the puck. The best videos are ones with shots NOT of the family etc. Establishing shots - the gate, main street, rides, signs, stores, crowds, pan up and pan down of sights. Wide, medium, and close of everything.

It makes it more entertaining for people who watch the video, and for those who were there, they didn't spend their time staring at each other. Rarely do you hear people say in the moment..."Ooh, look, there's Mom in front of Cinderella's Castle!" You hear "Ooh, look, there's Cinderella's Castle."

People love my vacation photos mostly because I'm not in them. I love them because I take pictures of what I want to remember about the trip.

From a more philosophical bent: video can FORCE memories on people, rather than evoke them. Storytelling is the best way to form a narrative of the family's adventure, but let everyone's subjective memories still work WITH the video to remember what a good time it was.

And don't forget the obligatory tantrum sequence. EVERY video needs a few seconds of someone (Mom, Dad, kids, whoever) having a meltdown. :-)

Thanks for sharing the videos, Byron. Gives me some more ideas with the picture in picture type things you did. So now I have to ask -- how did you do those? Is it a specific effect?

vtxrocketeer - I'll definitely share it!