how to make a good film out of your trips

[haggis]

Everyone these days has some sort of action camera. Millions of hours of on board stuff which might mean a lot to the person riding but can be rather boring when stuck together as 4 min piece with rock music or similar.

The problem is, we are all subjected to 2 second scenes on TV and film and audience bores quickly. Trying to make it interesting can be hard. However if there is a story then it becomes a lot easier. A story is what people want to see, even if the video is crap or the sound not so good, the story is the force behind it all.

If you can edit into a story with beginning, middle and end you will have acheived something interesting. Even if its just for yourself.

I have hours and hours of video from past 10 years, most is not really usable as I can't fit it into some form of story.

The edit does take a long long time unless you are lucky enough to have great footage in a nice logical sequence. Dont want to scare you but allow one hours work for 1 minute output. Thats how long it generally takes me.

I have 1TB of video from recent trip, it will take me 2 weeks just to sift through this lot, let alone put something together. Time consuming but rewarding in the end .... I hope

If you are looking for different camera angles and scenes etc, just watch TV and picture yourself behind camera, you can appreciate the amount of work that goes into even the most dull TV show.

As for editing, I use Sony Vegas, most professionals use Final Cut pro. There are several others out there but are all fairly similar. Even the very basic windows video maker thing can do.

I'm no expert but I've been editing for few years, not all great, but passable. I'm lot faster now and have learned a lot.

Good luck!