Modern Movie Making at Home - Using Your Computer to Create Home Movies

Are you old enough to remember the home movies your grandpa used to take?  They were “works of art” that conjured up fond memories of family events.  Trips to the beach, special holiday get-togethers and birthdays were all marked as a rite of passage.

They were usually grainy, jerky and most in black and white.  Grandpa was the director, producer, editor and major domo of all things audio/visual. My grandpa was exactly like that.  I’m not old enough to remember any old Christmas movies being shot in black and white, but I do remember plenty of adventures surrounding our home movies.

I can remember going shopping at Radio Shack for the brightest light possible.  The salesman convinced him that he they had the perfect light, just like one they used on the Space Shuttle.  Grandpa was sold (he was a great salesman, too, but loved to hear a good pitch!).

Imagine my utter joy when I had to sit on the bright side of that light on Christmas morning.  "Blinding" was not the right description for that experience.

But, that was grandpa, and he loved to make videos of all of us together.  And I’m sure you had many of the same experiences with home movies.

Embarrassingly horrible, they were the archive of your family and nostalgia reigned supreme when grandpa would pull out the old projector, or in my case, the VCR (and don’t those things seem ancient now too!)

Sadly, those reels of film and VHS tapes are probably already disintegrating and many memories will be lost forever.

Thankfully, we have some wonderful tools at our disposal now to keep any new home movies we make last longer and make them easier to create.  I’ll be posting some thoughts and tips on making home movies with new technology that will make anyone a great movie director, producer, and all-around media mogul.

Make sure you sign up as a Gold Member (it’s free, of course) to get all the updates on this new series.  It’s gonna be fun!