Beth's on the Move: Moving Day

Video is here

After a year of preparing, moving day has arrived.  We spent the day overseeing the move our belongings from the house into the truck.   All the happy (and sad) memories of living in the house for twenty years flashed before my eyes - it was bittersweet.

For this video, I focused on the advice about not to move the camera, but take shorter clips and do a lot of editing.   To reduce camera shake (until I figure out if I want to spend money on tripod)

• Swiveled my body instead of moving camera
• Held the camera with both hands and tried to keep it still
• Took clips at different angles, and short ones

For this video, I had 72 clips!    I got very agile with the clip tool.   Here's some reflections on the editing process:

• Have a sense of the story you want to tell before you begin shooting.  Delete mistakes as you go along.  I kept previewing my clips in order as the day of unfolded, to delete and re-take.
• When I copied the clips to my computer, I looked at them and copied the ones I wanted to use to another folder.  Once in that folder I named them by scene using a letter and number.  For example, the first sequence had three clips, so these were named a-1, a-2, and a-3.
• I made a rough cut with the movie maker tool in FLIP.  Then I watched it and noted where I wanted to cut, delete a clip entirley, or move the order around.
• Then I went in and did the cuts and trims.  While working the folder, I would do a save as for trimmed clip.  The clip I was replacing, I would rename it x so it was placed at the bottem.   (I used view as name to keep the clips in alphabetical order.

Comments

[CogDog]

Wow, that was beautifully shot and edited- great pace and use of multiple clips. And the house you are leaving behind is lovely, I can see why it's hard to go. There is something both eerie and dramatic about those kinds of shots of empty rooms.

So when you get to California, you can just play it in reverse to unpack?

On a related storytelling note, my colleague Cole Camplese at Penn State University blogged about this clip of Ira GLass (This American Life) talking about the part of creativity that is "getting rid of crap"- not nearly everything that you thought would work really does-- baring things down to essentials.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qmtwa1yZRM

Happy trails

[Wendy]

Wow - you turned yourself into a video editing pro quickly! The last clip of the kids is absolutely adorable.

[Jordan Viator]

I really enjoyed this video clip and your editing advice, Beth. I have to say, the best moment for me was Harry at the end and his slight "hello California". Sometimes you can't plan some of the best clips you catch on video : )

Hope the move is going well!

[Rebecca Leaman]

Looks like you're really getting the hang of it, Beth - nicely done!

[Beth Kanter]

@jordan - Harry ad libbed that one. I just told them to turn and wave to the house and say goodbye. He's good with the ad libs.

Alan - thanks so much for the tip of taking a lot of clips. Seems to work.

Thank god for the clip camera - the only thing that has kept me sane during this - both the one I'm using and the one I got for the kids.

[Kivi Leroux Miller]

I cannot believe I just sat and watched a video of someone else moving! But I just had to see how you put it all together after your description of the process! You are so great, Beth, at going with what you have and creating incredible teaching moments for the rest of us.

[Chris Dumas]

Very impressed!

Thanks for sharing Beth!