Your Photos and Video Are Worthless | Let’s Fix Them

Last time we looked at why your photos and video are worthless – we have lost the desire to tell a story with our media. This week let’s take a look at how to revive interest – how to share the story of our lives using our photos and video as a backdrop.

How do we take advantage of the many benefits digital media offers? First we need to get back to good, old fashioned storytelling. Media contains the story of your life in images. Before shooting photos and video, think about why you are doing so. What are you going to do with the files? This will help you plan beforehand to get the shots you want and help free you from trying to get everything, because “I’ll do something with it eventually.”

Clear the Canvas – Organize Your Existing Media

There are many ways to get started, but the first is to organize your media in ways that make sense to your story. It can be based on people, places, events, dates, or anything else that works for you. Next, weed out the junk immediately. Go through your photos and delete those that really offer no value to your story or as a historical record.

You don’t need six versions of the same basic shot of your sorority sisters posing. Do a quick edit of your video footage and eliminate the scenes with the cap on, or of little Joey picking his nose (unless that’s part of the story).

Make sure you annotate your photos and scenes with important names, dates, captions, etc. This is where the real story will develop. There are a lot of different software programs and techniques to care of this quickly and easily. The sooner after capturing your media the better chance you’ll remember the important details.

Make the Canvas Bigger – Include Your Old Media

Also be sure to digitize your old media so it can be included in the new story you intend to tell. Creating a story of Grandpa with only digital photos from the past ten years will not be good enough.

When I say digitize your old media, I do not mean put a VHS on DVD. You need an uncompressed version if you intend to edit, or tell a story with, your footage. Trying to edit from a DVD requires special software and will look far worse than the original footage. Digitizing your old media means getting it on a hard drive in either .mov or .avi format, so that it may be imported by your movie editing software.

The Outline – Why are You Doing This Anyway?

Next, think about the overall story you want to tell. Here are some questions to ask yourself:

• What is the purpose? Is it a tribute, a year in review, event-driven?
• How long do you want the final project to be? (20 minutes is about the maximum most people will view).
• Are you using more photos, video, or a pretty even mixture? That will help determine what software you’ll use.

Once you have answered those basic questions, you are ready to begin sifting through your media. It’s much easier to look through your media when you know approximately how long you want the final movie to be. Keeping to a storyboard helps prevent you from including extraneous photos for no reason. If they don’t add to the story, they won’t make sense to the viewer.

Keep in mind, a 100 photo slideshow is usually around 12 minutes, which wouldn’t leave you much time left for video. Budget your time wisely and stick to your story. You can show more events in less time using photos. Unless you’re a fabulous photographer, you’ll probably show more of your subject’s personality in the video clips.

Let’s say you’re doing a year in review story. You want your viewers (your friends and family) to get a feel for how you spent your year. To pack in as many events as possible, add photos. To fill in the detail, add video.

The Story of Your Life – Written By You

The story is the really important part; this is where personalization becomes really important. Be sure to include plenty of captions, titles and other written markers to connect your viewers with the images shown. But don’t go overboard. You don’t need something on every photo or scene – and stay away from writing paragraphs.

Simply stating who is in a photo doesn’t endear the subject to the viewer. Poke fun of them if it’s a silly photo, cry with them on a serious one.

Remember the audience and purpose of your story. Like any good story, you’ll need re-writes, rearranging photos, cutting scenes out, adding captions, etc. Sure it takes time, but that is what will make it valuable to those with whom you share it.

Like any good movie, you want your viewers to be captivated by the characters. Make sure your movie lets the viewers into your life.

The soundtrack

Make sure you (the editor) takes a holistic approach. Using rock n’ roll music with spinning photos and crazy transitions will certainly not tell the story of your uncle’s 90th birthday. The photos, videos, backgrounds, titles, and music should all work in harmony with the intended story.

Adding popular music tracks often distracts and diminishes your story. You aren’t creating a music video and do not want people thinking about their memory of a particular song rather than your story. Using good production music that is appropriate (i.e. marching band for a military theme) will enhance the story and keep the focus on the people and images rather than on the band.

Sharing your masterpiece

If you are creating a digital story for a specific event, you’ll probably be showing it to a large group. DVD’s work best, either on a TV or a projector. They are also great to send as gifts. The other way to share is using the web (not email – file sizes are too large). There are many services to explore. Be careful and see what is included. File size limitations, codec restrictions, cost, video time length limits, and recipient software requirements all can make your sharing experience less than enjoyable.

Give your memories some value

Remember to treat your memories with the love and care they deserve. Digitize and back up all your media that contributes to your life’s story. Then really tell a story with them. Let your friends and family really feel your personality through your photos and video. Don’t just slap them on Facebook. Let your media speak to people by allowing it to tell your story.