Make Your Own Video

A topic that comes up from time to time is how to get video to look more like film. It’s usually pretty easy to tell whether a movie was shot on film or on video, even when watching a tape or DVD. Film has an almost mythic status. Naturally enough, this tempts videomakers to try and recreate the “look” of film using a video camera.

If you are really interested in getting video to look like it came from film, there are a whole load of factors you need to take into consideration. There’s too much to cover in a single post here, but I have collected a bunch of URLs that might help:

Technology Corner: Randy Hoffner — The Elusive Film Look

Urban Fox TV: Making Video Look Like Film

Informit.com DV Technology and the Camcorder

How To Get that “film-look” a.k.a How to make my cheap DV cam footage look like 35mm

Here’s a neat idea. Use a camera phone to make videos, even if it’s not a video phone! The trick is software that lets you record a voice-over using the regular phone microphone, while selecting a sequence of photos to form the visual side.

I can think of a whole bunch of interesting ways to play with this.

Read more at: unmediated: HP Labs - Research - StoryCast: Simple, digital storytelling with photos and narration

Looks like another interesting attempt to break out of the traditional idea of a film festival.

Cinemasports is the Iron Chef of Filmmaking. Teams have hours to complete a movie with a list of ingredients. Finished movies screen that very night. Concurrent global events often exchange movies in time for the evening screening.

Filmmakers and audience participate in a unique cinematic experience. An electrified screening that is both world premiere and wrap-up party. Art exploded from a creative pressure cooker. Global exchange and local community building.

Thousands of filmmakers worldwide have embraced Cinemasports - from guerrilla filmmakers in Eastern Europe to 3-Time Academy Award Winner Walter Murch.

Murch says about Cinemasports, “Something emerges that’s not contained in any of the films…”

Generally, these guys seem to have a prety good grip on the social and collaborative aspects of internet technology, and even produce a “video podcast”.

Read more at: Cinemasports :: Welcome

This made me smile a wry smile.

For what seems like ages, there has been a rumbling argument among web videomakers about which format(s) to make and distribute video in. People who work on Windows tend to find it easier to make and distribute WMV. People who work on Macs tend to find it easier to make and distribute Quicktime movies.

However, the real deciding factor ought to be how easy it is for visitors to your site (and subscribers to your feed) to play (and otherwise re-use) the video.

Most people agree, if grudgingly, that more people can use Flash video than anything else. But Flash video can be clumsy to edit and produce. Next in market share is probably Windows Media, due largely to the sheer number of Windows PCs which came with Windows Media Player pre-installed. Trailing in third is Quicktime. Available by default on Macs, and available as a (possible but irritating) free download from Apple for Windows machines.

But raw current market share is not everything. If your video is good enough, it might tempt people to install the required player even if they didn’t have it before. Or, at least, so goes the argument often advaned by Mac users to justify only distributing Quicktime movies.

The argument goes along the lines that since Quicktime can be installed on all systems, then quicktime can have as large a userbase as Flash.

And so on to what made me smile. Microsoft is now offering a Quicktime plug-in for Mac users to allow them to play Windows media files right in their familiar Quicktime player. So now relatively convenient players for all three major formats are available as free downloads. The playing field is level once again, and we are back to installed user base: Flash, then Windows Media, Then Quicktime.

Will we see all these Mac evangelists who have been urging every Windows user to install Quicktime rushing to install the WMV plug-in?

Read more at: play Windows Media files (.wma and .wmv) directly in QuickTime Player

Nerissa “the video queen” recently pointed out one of her articles that I’d not seen, which explains how to get flash video on your website for free. That’s pretty good, considering the big stack of cash needed if you want to buy Macromedia Flash itself.

Read more at: Two Complete Flash Video Making Solutions for $0

You may remember that a while ago I lamented the fact that I could not get a trial version of the new Adobe Elements 2.0 from Adobe. Well, I’ve just checked again, and it seems that (as of 15 December 2005) there is finally a “tryout” version available.

Now I just need to find the time to properly evaluate it. Sigh.

Read more at: Premiere Elements for Windows Downloads.

A few months ago I entered the StockStock film festival. It sounds a good idea - they choose a bunch of video from the Internet Archive and anyone who stumps up $20 gets a copy of their chosen material on tape. The entrant then gets a few weeks to edit it in to something interesting before posting back a completed entry.

So why am I disappointed? Because it seems that despite their novel use of archive footage they seem locked in a weird time warp when it comes to communication and sharing.

• They provide email addresses, yet have never once replied to any of my emailed questions.
• They don’t even acknowledge receipt of submissions, let alone provide feedback to entrants.
• They listed the names of the entrants whose work was selected for screening, but nothing at all about the videos.
• They have not provided any way of contacting other entrants.
• They have not even mentioned how many entrants they had.
• Worst of all, they have not provided any way for interested viewers to see or discuss the entries other than attending a one-off screening in Seattle last September.

This is crazy. I understand that my entry was probably not good enough to make the screening, but how can I get any better with neither feedback nor the ability to see the work of other entrants?

By diligent web searching, I have managed to find a very small number of other entrants who have made their entries from this year’s competition available on-line:

• “An introduction to videoblogging” by Frank Carver
• “Meuchelmörder” by Matt Longest
• “Granny Anime” by Nithin Shenoy
• “3″ by Alan McAnulty and Rik Tweed
• “Success” by Aeryk Pearson

While searching, I also found a few entries from last year, too, but still no official page, or links.

• “Aperture” by Ethan Anderson
• “n00b” by Nithin Shenoy
• “Attack of the Galact-O Cybernaut Mutants” by Alan McAnulty and Rik Tweed

A few others have mentioned their entries, but not (yet) made them available:

• Ethan Anderson
• Art Machine
• Scott Dierdorf

If any readers know of any others, please let me know and I’ll add to this list.

And to the stockstock folks, if you read this:

You have a fantastic opportunity to connect a thriving community of movie editors, please don’t waste it by being a black hole and thinking that one screening (to what, a few hundred people?) is the end of the road. Share the love.

Tips on filmmaking are always welcome. If you have some time to spare, why not take a listen to this recent Cinema Minima podcast about Learning How to Make a Visually Compelling Film.

I love accents and regional dialects, so I was enthralled to find IDEA, the International Dialects of English Archive. There are some interesting samples available, but unfortunately they seem to have a somewhat harsh view on what you can do with them. There also seems some confusion on what rights they give out. The above “copyright” page states:

You may play an IDEA recording or text file in a lecture, class, training session, or workshop directly from the internet, or your students may do so from their own individual terminals, without obtaining special permission; but distributing copies of them either by disc or by digital file, requires special permission and the payment of an appropriate fee.

Yet the front page of the site states:

Once you have chosen a recording to download, simply click on it and save it — at no cost to you!

And when you get to a page of samples it states even more forcefully:

**IMPORTANT** In order to properly play these soundfiles, you must first save them to your hard drive! Please right-click on the desired sample and choose to save it to your computer. Our server does not support streaming audio at this time.

I leave it to you to work out what you actually may or may not do.

Via Complications ensue.

The always thoughtful Robert Nagle (a.k.a idiotprogrammer) has just published a detailled and useful review of Digital Video Hacks by Joshus Paul from O’Reilly.

I’ve been meaning to take a look at this book for a while - I’ve thoroughly enjoyed some of the other books in their “hacks ” series. Robert’s review not only waxes enthusiastic about this book, but includes a bunch of useful references and comparisons too.