Make a Good Home Movie

If you’ve got an smart phone chances are it’s got a video camera it. Same with most pocket point-and-shoot cameras. Not only do they have them, some of them are good enough to turn out some really good stuff (check out examples below).

But let’s be honest, most home movies suck. Not because the person shooting them didn’t want or intend it to be good, they just didn’t know how to make their movie good. So here’s a few tips from “Popular Mechanics”.

“Sure, a $400 video-editing suite gives you advanced features like special effects, but inexpensive software such as Adobe’s Premiere Elements or preinstalled programs such as Apple’s iMovie serve just fine for most amateur moviemakers. No amount of editing, though, overcomes shoddy camera work. Here are simple ways to make your home movies look great.

Avoid a common rookie mistake by taking establishing shots. Typically, they are filmed at the beginning of a scene to give context. One example: an exterior of a house, followed by interior shots.

Another tip: Start the camera a few seconds earlier than you need to and run it a few seconds to gain better control over pacing and lots of room to edit. Reshooting the same action from different perspectives allows multiangle cuts of exciting moments. For great transitions, shoot the people, places and scenery that surround the action. Try to shoot ahead of the action so it appears to be entering the frame, not leaving it.”

These movies were shot completely with an iPhone 4