Dan Shinder editing video with Premiere Elements aboard Eureka II while Sailing the Whitsundays in AU

Greetings! It’s Me, Dan again, writing the blog myself – I decided to give Admi and Poindexter the rest of the week off due to the Thanksgiving Holiday in America. Speaking of Thanksgiving, I would like to personally THANK everyone who are our valued clients, our staff and everyone who takes the time to stop by the blog, as well as poke around the rest of the site. (You do poke around the rest of the site, right?)

And speaking of “Holidays,” I thought it would be great to share some do-it-yourself video tips to make perfect Holiday Videos. Now, this applied at both home and business. Rule number one is “Spontaneity.” Don’t over think your holiday videos. Sure there are some technical issues to consider, but we will get into those later. Whether you are shooting with a professional camera, a consumer camcorder or even a videophone, your video will really only be as good as your content. Videophones, by the way, are GREAT for catching spontaneity. They are easy to have on the ready to whip out and catch those special moments such as Grandma spiking the punch bowl and swigging off the bottle of rum, little Billy sneaking under the Christmas tree and pealing back enough wrapping paper to peek at a gift or little Leslie hitting off the Manischewitz wine on Chanukah to the point where she is poking finger holes into the freshly baked Challa Bread. (Sorry sis!)

This is a video I made with my iPhone the first week in October when Nja and I were in Sydney, Australia and discovered a Mexican Restaurant! I was so excited that some of the footage is quite shaky – so let that be a lesson to you too! I put these clips together in a consumer editing program, which we will talk about more in a bit, but I intentionally did not add any effects, to the video, other than a text overlay and one cross-fade transition at the end. This is not a Holiday video, but I believe as a basic first lesson of spontaneity and using a camera phone to catch what is available to you, you will get the idea – notice the use of camera “angles” and perspective: 


The vertical shape of the video is due to how an iPhone records video, due to its physical orientation. I placed my logos there to cover up black, whereas someone could choose any other image or background graphic – or even the date, time and location of where the video was made. Another key to great do-it-yourself holiday videos is lighting. If you are recording indoors during the day, be aware of the direction you are shooting and taking account of where your subject is vs. the light source. For instance, if you have your two kids standing indoors facing you with their backs to a large window and it’s very sunny out. They will likely appear as silhouettes, due to the strong light source behind them outweighing the light source indoors. Refer to the example in the middle of the “Let There Be Light” article posted Oct 2, 2009. After doing so, you may need to click “home” to get back to the navigation.

At night, you want to be sure the area you are recording video is nicely lit – it doesn’t always have to be screaming with light, but “nicely lit.” You can see by my iPhone video above that the restaurant was not brightly lit, but adequate enough to give a warm, cozy feel. (or maybe that’s because Nja was there!).

Next is “Steadiness.” Now, believe it or not, the smaller the camera, the harder it is to steady, and the slightest movement can mean a jolt in the imagery. Use a tri-pod whenever possible and when it makes sense. Hand-held is great for when you are moving around other people and obstacles. The pictures below show how to hold an average sized consumer digital video camera when using the flip-out LCD screen. Also, the smaller the camera, the more aware you need to be of where your fingers are in relation to the lens:

Gemma has her right hand through the hand strap in a conventional grip, while her left hand is gripped around the small Sony, supporting the bottom for stability.

Gemma has her right hand in the standard grip again and has her left hand gripping the side and corner of the LCD - this is also convenient not only for stability, but because most small digi cams have duplicate controls on the side of the LCD as well.

Keep in mind that if you are left handed, you can reverse the grips shown above, however the camera would then be pointed back at YOU; Doyoyoyoing!  

OK, two more quick points – Editing or “Post Production” is the next topic, then we will touch on “Sharing.” Many of you who have never edited my shy away from the concept, however, you don’t have to do anything fancy to have a nice holiday video compilation. Windows Movie Maker or iMovie if you are a MAC user, are great consumer programs loaded into most systems out of the box. They are easy to use and have simple to follow instructions and help menus. There are plenty of forums online as well. You can also look into a $99 USD program, Adobe Premiere Elements, which is the consumer version of Adobe Premiere Pro. Using any of these programs allow you to string different clips together, trim off unwanted footage, and add titles, music or narration.

Lastly, is “Sharing!” There are many ways you can share your videos. If you own a website domain, you can post them on a link in an area either public for anyone to see, or just share the link with those whom you want to share the video with. Another easy way, of course, is YouTube. Imagine how cool it would be to have a “Family” YouTube Channel where different members of your family from all over the world can log into the YouTube account and post videos, then send e-mails out to everyone in the family to notify everyone of the new video posts!

Hey that’s E-Marketing! And it works… If you are a business, you can post your company holiday party on your site or develop a YouTube Channel specifically for posting ALL fun company videos, not just the holiday season. This could be a HUGE Human Resources score, as this builds great employee morale!

And speaking of Company Videos, eh-hem… If you are planning something you would like to archive on video but it’s to big of a production to do yourselves, please consider having Shin-Dig Film Productions help with your next… Shin-Dig! Perhaps your company holiday party also includes awards, a retrospective of the year, speakers etc; Have them video taped and archive them. The video below is an example of some of the corporate Event video work we have done in the past:


Please see our Products and Services Page to see more!
Articles coming soon incude our new Wedding Videos Demo, as well as an update and promo for our involvement in association working with Streaming Video Systems on the Sydney to Hobart Streaming Brodcast aboard Merit! Please let us know if there is ever anything you would like us to write about – it doesn’t even have to be about vudeo, it could be about… FOOD! Hey did I ever tell you about the time I had a cooking show? Oh crap – the guy at the desk next to me just told me to “Shut-Up.” … the cooking show is coming back, by the way…