The Teenagers Guide to Making Movies for the Net

By Mark Shapiro

 How can you help your teens safely make great videos for the Internet?

Many of us have teenagers who want to use our camcorders and our editing gear and computers to make movies. Of course, there are many teens that already have their own cameras and editing gear, and just need a little guidance re how to best utilize these resources.

Before we start diving into the various technical challenges to be considered, lets look at the most important issues – the content itself. What is the movie about and who is the movie for? Who is going to watch this flick? How is it going to be distributed? Emailed to few close friends, posted to YouTube or MySpace video with privacy enabled, or are the kids planning on going wide with this and want the whole world to see what they are doing?

Regarding content – you need to consider the important issues of privacy and controversy.

Regarding privacy, you need to encourage them to create films that promote their ideas and concepts without endangering their Internet safety and privacy. They have to be aware that “bad” people may watch their videos and may attempt to contact them as a result of what is shown, said or performed in the videos. Lots of young teens and young adults like creating a video blog that exposes their inner thoughts and desires. They turn on their web cam and just let the truth flow forth, sharing their feelings, their thoughts and sometimes, their identity.

Kids need to be aware of how to protect their anonymity – how to protect themselves from online predators who may find a revealing personal video to be the open door that they can use to get close to a naïve teenager.

Content

Who is this video destined for? Who is the target audience? Is this a kid audience that seeks out extreme sports and stunts, that enjoys discussing sexual matters, that wants to push the edge as far as they can without landing themselves in jail? What do your kids want to say? I am all for encouraging my teenager’s freedom to express themselves but not when it threatens to create a pall that could follow them for the rest of their lives. It is our job as parents to know what our kids are doing and to make sure that we understand it and guide it.

Our teens love to create content that their parents do not approve of – it may be violent, it may be sexual, it may have controversial drug, religious or political statements. As a parent, you need to set some kinds of content and language parameters. If they refuse to follow, then it may be time to take that camcorder and Adobe Premiere away.

OK, enough of my parents rant. Let me get off my soapbox and discuss the more technical aspects of teenage movie making.

Aside from content, the major challenge is length. My kids think nothing of making half hour mini-epics starring themselves and their friends. Unfortunately, no one except themselves and their friends would ever want to endure it (oops I mean watch it.).

Plus if they are planning on posting the video on a web site, they will have to make compromises regarding length as most online video sharing sites have limits to the size of videos that can be uploaded.

Shorter is better. Maybe print that on your kid’s pillows so they will get it. The shorter and tighter their video, the more likely it is to be seen and shared online.

And if they are using your computer to do the editing, the less likely they are to fill up your hard drive and keep you from doing your work.

There are three main technical concerns that teens need to be aware of when creating their videos. Shooting, audio and editing.

Shooting

They need to make sure that the original footage is high enough quality for the final output. If they plan to share it on the net, they can get away with using a lower resolution setting on a digital hard drive camcorder, shooting on a DVD camcorder or using one of the new flash video camcorders. However, if they want to enter a contest or distribute their video via DVD or tape, they ought to shoot using the highest resolution settings on a hard drive camcorder or use a camcorder that records onto DV tape.

Teenagers (and adult) don’t like using tripods. Even though tripod will make the video look a lot more professional, most teens don’t want to take up the time to set up a tripod. They also may feel that a tripod hampers their style. They want to be able to move, jump and run. However, as we know, watching jumpy, choppy video can make you seasick.

There are some tricks. By shooting mostly wide angle, the shakiness is not quite so obvious but they get the cool, deep focus look they like. In addition, by shooting wide angle, focus itself is much less critical.

A good trick to learn is to move the camcorder physically in and out relative to the subject. Instead of using zoom, they ought to move the camcorder close when they want a close up and further away when they want a wide shot.

Also, as teens like to cut and edit, encourage them to shoot lots of cutaways and close-ups. Have them shoot from a variety of different angles – as crazy and as wild as possible. The more variety they can get in the shots, the more fun they will have when they get to the video editing stage.

Finally, if they plan on posting the finished video for the web, they need to keep backgrounds as simple as possible and to shoot mostly close-ups and medium shots, not big wide shots as much of the fine details will be lost when converted to flash and watched on a small computer screen. Also, if they are shooting for the web, they need to be informed that the more action and movement, the more challenge placed upon the hosting web sites compression codecs and possibly, the lower the final quality.

Audio is the biggest challenge

It is very hard to get decent audio using most consumer camcorders. The less expensive the camcorder, the worse the mike and the mike placement. If they want to get good audio, they have to use some kind of external miking system.

For you as a parent, this translates into buying an external mike system and making sure they know how to use it correctly. I recommend either using a shotgun mike that mounts on the camcorder or an inexpensive wireless microphone system. These consist of a receiver unit that mounts on your camcorder and a mike/transmitter system that is held by the talent or attached to them somehow.

Of course, you can avoid the entire audio problem by having them create their own music videos, performing to a recorded audio track. You can use a popular hit song that they can lip sync to or they can create an original music track. All you need is a boom box and the camcorder. Hit play on the boom box and have them do their stuff. Later, during the editing process, you can strip out the boom box audio and use the audio directly for the source. Good audio can also be obtained by doing a voice-over during the video editing process.

Editing it all together

Finally, editing. Some teens hate editing because it is a lot of work. Others love it because it is the most creative part of the video process.  They can cut the video into little pieces, move it all around, and then add all kinds of cool video effects and transitions, wild and crazy text effects and titles, as well as audio layering and sound effects. For teens that hate editing, you can use an automated video program like muvee’s autoProducer.

The first step in editing together a music video is to lay down the audio track from the original sound source, tape or CD onto the editing software’s timeline. Then they can create their music video by doing a series of video only inserts, ignoring the wild sound captured when the shot the various video segments. Of course they could add in some wild audio as a separate layer, to add an additional dimension to the final movie or music video.

After they are finished shooting, capturing audio and editing, the final step is to share the video. This could be as easy as inviting their friends over to watch, to making a record to tape copy for the friends and relatives, or after compressing the video, uploading it to one of more video sites so that the entire world can see what they have done. One final word of caution – if they are uploading the video to a YouTube or MetaCafe, you want to make sure they have not included any materials that might get them into trouble. You might also want to make sure that any contact or identification content is carefully screened or even totally eliminated. Some of these online videos get seen by millions by people worldwide. You probably don’t want some weirdo online video fan calling up your teenage kid in the middle of the night.

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Resources

Film Foundation’s Making Movies: A Guide for Young Filmmakers production manual. Created with the assistance and expertise of 25 professional film artists and educators, the manual is a detailed text that takes you step-by-step through the filmmaking process…from story concept to completed film.