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Health & Fitness

Make-Your-Own Movie Night

Friday night usually means one of two things for families: If it's Fall and you live in Ohio, you are probably at a football game. Or if you aren't into sports (like us) it's probably "Movie Night"...

Boy Oh Boy Oh Boy - "Make-Your-Own Movie Night"

Friday night usually means one of two things for most families:

  • If it's Fall and you live in Ohio, you are probably at a football game (a legal requirement in some communities).
  • Or if you aren't into sports (like us) it is probably "Movie Night" at the dollar theater or with a rental or by streaming something on Netflix.


Well, on a recent Friday night it was just me and the boys (Carter age 9, Mason age 6, and Grant age 4). Mom was out for the night working, doing a home party for Thirty-One Gifts. So rather than settle for just watching a movie, we decided to make our own.

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This turned out to be a great way to spend the night. The boys all got a chance to learn some lines, practice, act, mess up, laugh, do retakes, follow directions, and finally see the result of all their work. As much fun as it was to make the movie, I know it will be just as fun years from now to re-watch what we made, laugh at how cute they used to be, and maybe even get a little sad about how much they have grown up. But the great thing is we will always have this snippet of time captured forever.

And with today's technology it is so easy to create, edit and publish your own home movies, there's no reason not to do this yourself.  Once you come up with a fun idea, it is as easy as 1, 2, 3.

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Step 1: Record the Video

There are loads of choices for filming your movie and none of them even need to have actual film. In fact, you are far better off to record everything digitally, making it much easier to edit in Step 2 later on. For our recording we used our normal home digital camera, a Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3.  It takes still images, but also records excellent HD video. Of course you can use just about any modern digital camera, or even your smart phone.

Step 2: Edit the Video

Once you have the video recorded, you might want to do some simple editing to take out the goofs (we had a few), trim up the extra stuff before and after a take, and to throw in items like a intro title or credits at the end. Again, you have loads of options for this.

I used Camtasia Studio for editing our video. It is not a free program, so it may not be your first choice. However, I already have the program for training videos I make, so it made sense for me to use. Instead, you could use one of many video editing choices including Windows Movie Maker or Apple iMovie. You can even use YouTube to edit your videos online now.

Step 3: Publish the Video

Now that your cinematic masterpiece is complete, it is time to share it with the world. I recommend uploading the video to YouTube, which is what we did. YouTube is free and easy to use. By default the only limitations are the video can only be up to 15 minutes long, and you are not supposed to included copyrighted material. Once you have your YouTube account going though, you can click an option to remove the 15-minute limitation so you can upload longer videos.

Beyond publishing the video to YouTube, make sure you share it with friends, family and others through such outlets as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Blogger, and email.

Well, enough with the technical steps, let's get to the movie! You can view the video above in the post or click the link below to see the 1-minute result of the one hour we spent having fun, being creative and laughing a lot.

"A Small Drink of Water" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUjXQz7R9DQ

So how about you? Have you made a movie with your family? Leave some comments to tell how it went, or better yet, leave a link to your online video.

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