Guest Stars
Creative Video Themes
Now that I’ve been bitten by the video-editing bug I’ve found myself busy as a bee creating new movies. Between all the personal projects—with two small children there is always an event to be recorded for prosperity—and commissioned work I’m always looking for new ways to keep each project interesting and different. The more interesting the movie, the more people we can get to watch them and that’s what it’s all about after all—having people watch the movies we create. So what makes a home movie more intriguing? In this article I’ll share some of my creative movie themes and provide some generals pointers on creating them.
To quote Julie Andrews, the beginning is a very good place to start—a creative opening makes a big difference. The opening of your video will set the tone and often the theme for the whole video. Once your theme is set you can bring it back throughout the entire project. Coming up with the theme can sometimes feel daunting but there are great ideas all over; you just need to keep your eyes and mind open.
Think about what videos are. They’re pictures, right? So think of the traditional ways we display still pictures. Of course there’s the photo album but there are also picture frames, bulletin boards, scrapbooks. All of these make great ways to open a home movie. We’ve seen some of these used in the contest entries with the photo album opening and in a slight variation we saw the picture frame on the wall as a closing in the Log House video.
Look around your surroundings. You could record video or stills of the art-filled frames in the living room, the photographs on the mantle, the French Memo Board on the wall, and the pictures on the refrigerator door. Use these simple clips as the background of your video. It doesn’t matter that something else may be displayed on them in reality. The beauty of Premiere Elements is the 100 tracks of video, which enables us to layer videos over another and use these backgrounds to create interesting openings. For example, you could create an opening for a video of children with a refrigerator door background. Layer the background with your refrigerator video, illustration, or still picture and then add your videos held up by some fun title magnets. If you have Photoshop Elements you can create the titles with it instead of the Premiere Elements Title tool to add dimension with bevels and shadows. Each picture or video segment should be on their own track, as well as the magnets and anything else on your door. One tip I suggest when creating layered backgrounds is once you’ve layered in the full look take a snapshot of the frame so you can reuse it again and again without recreating the entire scene each time.
You can add back the image each time you want to repeat the background and only layer the video or image you’ll be manipulating. Then you can introduce chapters and segments by zooming up from the small sized pictures on the door to full screen and then back down again when it’s time to switch scenes.
I used a similar effect with this background for a 75th birthday tribute. I opened the video by bringing the card into the foreground and carried the theme through the entire project. This video happened to be created with stills but the same concept could be created using live video or a combination of video and stills. As the video traveled through the years of the subject’s life the individual images were either brought up into the full screen or reduced back to photo size and laid back into the board. This background is slightly more complicated to make because each ribbon segment needs to be on its own track I will share the way it was done.
To create this background, I first created the ribbons. In Photoshop Elements, I laid down all the ribbons and buttons. You can experiment with gradients, bevels, and other effects to get the look you want. When you are happy with the look, save the file. Next you need to create each ribbon as a separate GIF file so you can have your photos layered within the ribbons just as you would in an actual board. To do this you’ll need to create as many additional layers as ribbon sections (16). Once you have 17 layers of the same full image you need to start erasing. Erase all but one segment of the ribbon on each of the 16 layers so that each layer has one of the segments as above except for the full image on the 17th layer. Using the layer visibility check box makes it easier to work through (the checkbox with the eye icon to the far most left of the layer image on the layer tab). You’ll also select and deselect these eye images to save each of your ribbon files as a separate GIF file. The GIF file format preserves the transparency. Photoshop Elements will only save what is visible on the screen in this file format but make sure you give a new file name each time you save a layer.
Once you have all your individual ribbon segments files you can import them to your Premiere Elements project. Don’t forget to save and import the entire ribbon board to make it easier to place your pictures/video on the board. Then start layering away. If you are using video I recommend using frame hold to freeze the videos on the background. You can split the frame and start the video action once you’ve zoomed up to a full screen. Don’t forget to take your snapshot of the final layered image to use later. If you can foresee instances where you may want the same background but with certain pictures omitted you can right click and uncheck enable for these frames and then take additional snapshots.
A portion of the 30 tracks of video used for the aforementioned background.
The layering concept works well for photo albums pages and scrapbooks as well. Once again create your backgrounds in Photoshop Elements or scan in your favorite scrapbook page. Then layer on your video or stills.
I’ve only touched on a few of the creative ideas for opening and creating a theme for a video. Ideas can come from so many sources. Pay close attention to television. There are some very creative ideas in TV openings and ads. Some are real easy to recreate. One of my favorite old shows, Mad About You, had a classic but real simple opening with stills and boxed out titles. Purchase the theme song (The Final Frontier by Andrew Gold) and it makes a great opening for an anniversary video. Another classic program opening, Friends can be imitated to a degree. It’s hard to get it completely the same unless you want to record your friends dancing around in a water fountain. And if you do don’t forget to bring your lamp with you so you can click it off at the end. But with the theme song, the right font (available if you search the web) and a little creativity you could create a pretty close replication. I also love the HP ads for their digital photography products. With a little ingenuity you can create a video inspired by the HP ads or any other ad or show you admire. So keep your eyes peeled for all the many sources that can make your video editing projects more creative, more enjoyable, and more fun.
January 2006
About Beth
Beth Wachsman is a highly regarded juggler living in New York City. She juggles motherhood (2 small children, a husband, friends, friends’ children, birthday parties, social engagements, grocery shopping, etc.) and her growing interest in digital video editing (editing personal projects, editing projects for her family, editing projects for her friends, writing articles for the Forum, discovering new editing tricks and gadgets, etc.). She also was formerly a marketing manager at several national publications. But to continue successfully juggle motherhood and video editing she had to drop her marketing manager responsibilities six months ago. Now she juggles faster than ever, but finds it more rewarding.
When Beth’s children are grown and she has free time that isn’t solely devoted to editing, she would like to go to sleep. And then see a movie. And go the beach. And write more children’s stories. And throw a party for her friends. And go back to Italy. And if her husband remembers to videotape all of it, she would edit the footage into another movie.
