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Make Your Own Movies! A Guide for Kids

Table of Contents

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

 

Chapter One: Lights, Camera, Action!

Meet Zach: he's thirteen, and goes to Washington Middle School . He's also a dedicated skateboarder, and spends a lot of time after school and on Saturdays "boarding" with his friends. He and some other kids in the neighborhood are members of the Quicksilvers Club. They use a cool skateboarding arena at Lyons Park , a few blocks from home.

Zach's sister, Caitlin, is eleven-"almost twelve!" she reminds us-red-haired and freckle-faced. She has tried skateboarding, but she'd rather ride her bicycle. Caitlin is starting at Washington this fall.

Javier is thirteen and goes to Washington . He's Zach and Caitlin's friend, and lives down the block. His dad just bought a brand-new video camera, and the kids have decided to make a movie of the upcoming skateboarding competition at the park.

Zach wants to shoot some cool action footage while he's in the competition, but Ramon, Javier's dad-who lent them the camera for the morning-told them: "Absolutely NO filming on skateboards!"

There's a knock on Zach and Caitlin's door early Saturday morning. Caitlin, who's up and dressed already, answers.

"Hi Cate!" Javier says with a grin.

"Don't call me that!" Caitlin hates that name. "My name is Caitlin!"

"Right. I keep forgetting. Caitlin . Are you guys ready?"

Caitlin lets Javier in. "We've been ready. You're late!"

In the living room, Zach finishes gathering his skateboarding gear-his neat black and silver board and matching helmet, and his knee and elbow pads. He checks a large box containing a clipboard, reflective tinfoil, duct tape, cable, and other gear. As Javier and Caitlin enter, he looks up: "Did you bring it?"

Javier holds up the camera. "Got it. My dad said-"

"I know, I know. No shooting on the skateboard," Zach says, making a face.

Javier puts the camera into the box, along with a spare battery and an extra blank cassette. Ben-Caitlin and Zach's dad-enters. "If you want to get there early to do some filming, we'd better go," he tells the kids.

We're ready, dad," Caitlin replies. The trio gathers their gear and heads out the door. Outside they load the gear in the family car and climb in. They're off for the skateboard park and a day of moviemaking.

At the skateboard park-a large open area with a half-pipe, ramps, railings and an obstacle course-a crowd of parents, friends and boarders gather for the morning's competition. The visiting team, the Wheeler-Dealers, has already arrived and practice on the ramps and half-pipe.

...

The skateboarding competition begins. Zach hands the camera over to Caitlin so he can get ready. He's worried that they don't have a separate microphone: "The sound isn't gonna be so great."

Caitlin and Javier take turns shooting as Zach and the other kids zoom up and down the half-pipe, doing awesome ollies , grinds, and the occasional slam. In between, they grab shots of the crowd cheering and applauding, a lucky shot or two of grommets taking tumbles. Ben moves around the park, taking pictures with his digital still camera.

"Close-ups, closeups!" Caitlin reminds Javier, and he moves in close to get a few shots of kids strapping on their pads and helmets, the expression on the faces of anxious parents, and little brothers and sisters watching wide-eyed.

Zach is ready for his run. Caitlin zooms in to show the determined look on Zach's face, then pulls back quickly as he flies down the half-pipe ramp. She knows that zooms are tricky to do, but she hopes this one will work. She tilts up as Zach reaches the lip of the half-pipe, turns and heads down-only to tumble in a heap as his skateboard gets away from him!

The skateboard meet is soon over, and Zach returns in time to shoot some footage of kids and parents packing up and getting ready to go.

Javier says teasingly, "we still got a lot of great shots-even though you slammed."

Zach replies: "The only reason I missed that trick is because I was worrying about you messing up the shot!"

At home, the three hurry to the computer and turn it on. Zach rewinds the tape in the camera as Caitlin readies the cable that connects the camera to the PC. Javier loads up the video editing software.

When the rewinding is complete, Caitlin plugs in the one end of the cable to the camera, the other end to the computer.

The video editing software recognizes the camera and is ready for the first step: capture . The kids have almost an hour of video, which is going to take up about thirteen gigabytes of hard drive space. With all the files their skateboard video will create, they're glad that Zach and Caitlin's dad recently installed a "humongous" hard drive.

Using the mouse, Zach clicks on the capture button on the screen: the camera automatically starts playing back the video, while the computer copies the footage to the hard drive.

"The computer will take an hour to get all the video," Zach says.

"Let's plan our movie while we're waiting," Caitlin suggests.

They haven't actually seen any of the footage they shot-something they know they really ought to do-but they know who their audience is, and what kind of story they are going to tell.

Their first, and most important audience, is the members of the Quicksilver skateboard club and their parents. If they do a good job, people might ask them to show their finished video at school assemblies, and to other skateboarding fans.

Zach wants to begin with the competition itself: "It's the most exciting part!" he argues.

But Caitlin wants to tell the story in chronological order, as it happened. "No way! We'll start with everybody showing up at the park, then show you and the Quicksilvers warming up- "

Like brothers and sisters everywhere, Zach and Caitlin continue to disagree, but Javier has the best idea. "We can do both! We'll use a few skateboarding scenes with the titles, but then tell the story as it happened. We can have shots of the boarders putting on their pads and stuff, the other kids, and the parents trying not to close their eyes while they watch."

"But what if we don't have enough good shots?' Caitlin worries. Even though they have almost an hour of footage, the kids know from previous experience that shots that look good while they're shooting often turn out blurry, or jiggly, or are just plain boring.

"We're only making a five minute movie," Zach reminds her. "We can use some stuff we shot afterwards, when we all went out for pizza."

"Whatever," Javier says. "If we don't get started, we won't have anything to show at our party tomorrow night." He turns to Caitlin: "Your dad was taking pictures with his digital camera. Can we use some of those?"

Caitlin goes off to see her dad about using the pictures he shot, while Javier and Zach check on the capture progress.

They're just in time: the last of the footage is going into the computer. Caitlin returns, holding a CD containing the pictures Ben shot at the skateboard park. She puts the disc in the drive and copies the images into the same place on the computer's hard drive, sometimes called an asset bin or project folder , where the captured video is stored. "It's better to keep all your stuff in one place," she says.

Javier nods. "You always were a neat freak."

Soon, our trio is hard at work. They unplug the camera from the computer, making sure to rewind the original tape label it, and put it in a safe place. That way if something happens to their captured video-computers do occasionally have problems-they'll have the original footage. The software's capture tool senses when the camera was started and stopped, and has automatically divided the capture file into separate scenes, called clips . Now it's time for the next step, editing.

With Javier and Caitlin looking over his shoulder, Zach gets the first turn at the computer. First they watch the movie all the way through. Caitlin makes notes on the shots that are obviously unusable-like that "great shot" of the kid doing an ollie grind that got spoiled when someone stepped in front of the camera. They all agree: that shot's outta here. "Maybe we can use some of it," Caitlin says in a wishful-thinking kind of way.

Zach switches the editing software to storyboard view, so they can see how everything fits together. One at a time, Zach clicks on each shot in the project window and drags it into the storyboard. Each clip in the storyboard shows up as a still image. In just a few minutes, they have all the usable clips, lined up in eight or ten rows in the storyboard. Zach switches the editing software to timeline view.

Now the clips appear in a single row, in a long window that stretches beyond the screen. The topmost tracks in the timeline are for video and audio. Other tracks can be used for titles, sound effects, narration and music, which the kids will add later. Even after taking out the clips they don't want, they still have forty-five minutes of footage.

Zach scrolls the timeline from one end to the other, checking that all the clips are there. Making a scissors motion with his finger, he says: "It's cuttin' time!"

Working on one clip at a time-and with Caitlin and Javier offering suggestions-Zach finds the most interesting parts of each clip, and cuts out the rest. Some clips have two or three scenes that might be usable, and Caitlin makes notes in case they have to bring them back later. Zach switches back and forth between timeline and storyboard views as he progresses.

Fortunately, Zach, Caitlin and Javier have a story to tell, so they quickly scan each clip in the preview window, to see how it tells their story.

Javier points: that scene where Jeremy puts on his pads ought to go next to the one of the other kid buckling on his helmet. "It's kind of like knights putting on armor," he says.

Caitlin suggests that the blurry shot of the blonde girl shooting down the half-pipe, her ponytail flying out from under her helmet, might make a good background for the title sequence. "We'll speed it up so she goes zip! into the air."

Another hour goes by. Eileen, Caitlin and Zach's mom, comes in with lemonade. Ben pops in to ask how it's going, then says, "No drinks near the computer!"

Finally they've put together the footage they want into a rough cut, which is only a general idea of the movie they want . Their project is about twenty minutes long, way more than they need, especially if they include the still images.

Now comes the hard part: editing down the already-trimmed footage into a tight, action-packed video. Each member of the team has a turn at editing, while the others look on. Zach sees where they can make a big cut, by taking out all the scenes after the meet. "We know it's over," he says, "and we've already seen them arriving."

Caitlin thinks it isn't complete without at least one or two shots of the people leaving, but she knows that, even if they cut those scenes out, they can always add them back later. Digital video editing is called non-destructive , meaning that no matter what clips they remove, the original video is unchanged.

Zach really likes his shots of the kids getting ready, but realizes that just one or two short scenes get the idea across, and they don't need a long sequence.

Javier is really good at putting together the high-action sequences, using shots from completely different parts of the video, but making them look like they belong together. "I'm just naturally talented," he says with a grin, then dodges the wadded-up paper his friends hurl at him. "Actually, I watch a lot of bike racing and car racing videos. They do the same thing. If it's only on the screen for a second or two, you can't even tell."

Caitlin takes over the editing from Javier, and starts trimming the clips. Even after editing, several clips are a almost a minute long, and she knows that nobody will pay attention to that long a shot unless something really exciting is going on. She cuts twenty-second clips down to fifteen, and ten-second ones to five seconds, ignoring Javier's cries of: "No! that's my best shot!" and Zach's gripes that his sister almost completely cut out his awesome 180 ollie. "I know, I know," Caitlin replies. "But my zoom was too shaky." She points to the preview screen, where the scene appears to bounce like a pogo stick. "See? Then, with a wicked smile, "But I will leave your face plant at the end !"

Zach shakes his head. He definitely doesn't want a scene of him falling down. "Forget it."

By eliminating the scenes at the pizzeria, our trio has their skateboard movie down to just over six minutes. They can use the photos Ben took, but they'll put them in a separate part of the movie, called a chapter, like a chapter in a book .

Trimming the movie down to their five minute goal might be possible, but they've been at it for hours, and it's getting late. "Come over tomorrow and we'll finish it up," Zach tells Javier.

 

The next morning, Caitlin sleepily rubs her eyes as she enters the den. Surprise! Zach and Javier are already at the computer.

"Hey! You were supposed to wake me up," Caitlin glares accusingly at her brother.

"I tried, but you were snoring too loud!" Zach replies.

Javier tells her, "Not to worry. We haven't even started yet."

Caitlin hurries to the kitchen, grabs a bowl of cereal and comes back. The editing program is open and their project cued at the beginning. "We'd better watch the whole thing through one more time," she suggests.

After a they make a few more cuts and trims to the video, our moviemaking trio agrees: it's as good as they cam make it.

One last thing: Zach clicks on the soundtrack under each clip to delete the original sound, recorded along with the video at the skateboard park. With the exception of the crowd noise and some skateboard sounds, it's unusable anyway. "No big deal," he says. We're gonna have a music soundtrack anyway."

Now it's time to put in a few of the best still photos. Caitlin takes over, selecting a dozen images showing kids in mid-air over the half-pipe, others zooming down the railings, and the awarding of trophies at the end. She drags the images from the project bin to the timeline. Since the stills will be in a separate chapter, she places them at the very end of the video they just finished.

"I think it's cool!" Zach pronounces, as the three of them watch the nearly-completed video.

"It's almost cool," Caitlin says. "But we need some dissolve and wipes and things." What she means by "dissolves and wipes and things" are transitions, the way one clip is connected to the next. The most common ones are cuts and dissolves. A fast-paced TV commercial might have as many as forty or fifty shots in the thirty-second spot, joined by cuts, with maybe a dissolve or two.

Caitlin would love to use some of the really elaborate transitions, the spiral wipes, the speckle dissolves, but, with Javier and Zach looking over her shoulder, manages to stick to the simpler ones. She finds a pair of shots, both featuring skateboarders zooming down the ramp away from the camera, and convinces the boys that a wipe would work here. "Just this one, I promise!" She opens the transition menu and drags it into the space between the shots.

Finished with editing, our team decides it's time to add music. And they've planned this part: they've found some "actually prehistoric" (Caitlin's words) surfing music from the seventies that works with the skateboarding scenes, and some upbeat rock to go with the rest. They've already transferred the music onto the computer's hard drive, and translated it into MP3 file clips, one that most video editing software can use.

Zach, now doing the editing, begins to drag music clips onto the timeline's music track. With just six minutes of video, and about one minute of still photos, they won't need much. The hard part will be figuring out where to start and end the music.

Javier says, "the skateboarding stuff would be great if we could sync the music in time with the video."

"Can we do that?" Caitlin asks. "And do we have time?" In just a few hours they'll be showing their video to their friends; it had better be good.

Zach opens the audio editing section of the program to do some editing on the music track. He adjusts the track so that the music beats line up perfectly with the cuts on the video. Zach clicks on a sequence to play it. "This is so cool!" he says. "Watch."

Caitlin and Javier approve: "Awesome!"

Zach wants to do more tweaking, but Caitlin says it's time to add the chapters and menus-a process called authoring -and finish this project.

Now our kids have to figure out how to make their video easy to watch on a DVD player. Caitlin takes a piece of paper and a pencil and outlines her idea, drawing rectangles and lines on the page. "Look," she says, pointing to the rectangles: "We've got four separate sections in our video: The first is when all the kids and parents come to the park. These are the scenes of the boarders putting on their gear and stuff."

She points to the next rectangles: "Here are the skateboarding shots, and here is the ending, with everyone going home, and maybe some shots of pizza." Caitlin indicates the fourth rectangle: "And here is the slide show." With a final flourish of the pencil, she connects all four rectangles to a new rectangle she labels 'MENU.' "Four parts, four chapters."

Javier shakes his head. "I don't think we need four chapters. Even including the slide show, our video is only about eight minutes long. I don't want to be clicking my remote every two minutes."

Zach chimes in. "We don't need any chapters. Just go from the video to the slide show."

Caitlin considers this. Then: "How about two chapters? One for the video, one for the slide show."

Zach and Javier agree. "People can watch the whole video, or the movie and slide show separately," Javier says.

"And the title can be the menu," Zach adds.

Javier gets his turn to edit. He picks a still image for the menu background, a shot of the skateboard park. Now for the text. Pulling up the menu editing window, he finds a large number of type styles to choose from. "What's the name of our movie?" he asks the others.

Zach suggests a title for the video: "Revenge of the Quicksilvers," since their team won the contest. Caitlin argues that, since they might want to show the video to the Wheeler-Dealers, they should pick a less in-your-face title.

"How about 'Quick Wheels'?" Caitlin offers. It works for the boys. Javier types in the name in the title editor. To make the text stand out from the background, he selects a typeface with a shadow behind it.

Then, using the same typeface in a smaller size, Javier types "Play Movie" under the title, then turns the phrase into a button, which he links to the first scene of the movie. That's where the movie will start playing when a viewer clicks the Play button on a DVD remote control.

Using the software's built-in music creation, Javier finds a fifteen-second music clip that will play while the menu is on the screen. He sets both the title and the music to loop, or repeat endlessly, until the viewer clicks his remote control.

Now Javier sets a chapter marker on the timeline where the slide show starts, and makes a new button, called "Slide Show" to link to it.

When a viewer clicks on the Slide Show button, the DVD jumps to the appropriate marker and starts to play.

Javier then checks the menu in the preview window to make sure that all three buttons change color when the viewer selects them. "Menu's done," he announces.

"It's time to make our DVD!" says Zach, always eager.

Caitlin says, "Uh-uh. First we gotta preview the project." She opens the editing software's preview window and tries the controls to make sure their DVD will work correctly in a player. She clicks on Pause, Play, Menu and Stop icons, then uses the arrow icons to move from the "Play Movie" to the "Slide Show" buttons.

Authoring is done. Now it's time to render the project, which means outputting their movie to be viewed by others. The video editing software offers a few basic choices: they can save their video to directly to a DVD or to the computer's hard drive, which makes it easy to make more copies later. They can also save it to videotape or CD. They can also export it for broadcast on the World Wide Web.

Once they choose to output their video to DVD, the software takes care of the rest. Rendering can take up to an hour (or more, depending on the speed of the computer and the length of the project), so our young moviemakers head to Javier's house, where they use his computer to draw some designs for the DVD box jacket. They can't use the computer while it's rendering, because it uses all its memory to make the DVD.

That afternoon, Javier, Caitlin and Zach return, with a DVD box and jacket, to see if their project is done. Sure enough, the completed disc sits in the DVD burner's open tray. Zach takes the disc and heads to the living room for one final test: playing it on the family DVD player. They turn on the TV and watch expectantly. The disc spins in the player and the menu pops on screen!

"It works!" Zach leaps out of his chair.

Caitlin grabs the remote. "Maybe," she says. "We haven't tried the menu."

She pushes the remote control's arrow buttons to make sure the right menu buttons light up, then selects 'Slide Show.' The still photos begin to play. Caitlin clicks the remote's 'Menu' button and the DVD returns to the main menu. " Now it works," she says.

That evening, Zach, Caitlin and Javier watch their video for the umpteenth time. But this time they are watching with the members of the Quicksilvers and their parents. They stand in the back of the room as Ben darkens the lights and clicks on the remote to begin the show. Caitlin drums her fingers, Zach tries to keep from closing his eyes, and Javier wishes he were anywhere else but here.

Our moviemakers needn't worry. When the first scene appears, showing Quicksilvers and Wheeler-Dealers soaring down ramps and into the air, the small audience cheers!

"Quick Wheels" is a huge hit with everyone. After they show the movie for the second time, Eileen talks about making a DVD of the photos of the wildflowers they shot last year on their vacation; other parents ask about bringing over their old home movies for the kids to turn into digital videos.

Caitlin turns to Zach and Javier: "We've got a problem, guys."

"What do you mean?" Zach says. "The movie was awesome!"

Javier is puzzled. "You didn't think it was great?"

Caitlin grins. "The problem is, do we want to be making movies for everyone, or do we want to show kids how easy it is to make their own?"

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If you want to learn how easy it is to make your own digital movies, turn the page, and follow along. Before you know it, you'll be as much of a pro as our moviemaking friends!

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