When we birth our children, we become card-holding memory capturers.
For every first giggle, first food tried, first step, first tee-ball game, or first day of school, we want nothing more, as parents, than to take in every second of that moment with our whole being. We drink it like it’s our last cup of water, and when thirsty, go back for one more sip.
Hopefully we capture that moment, the one that passes in the blink of an eye, in a photograph or—better yet—on video.
But let me ask you this: What do you do with that photo of your daughter receiving her preschool diploma or the video clip of your son’s first big toothless smile? If you’re like most, you keep that memory on your phone…until you realize you’re out of storage space and begin to delete. NO! DON’T! I beg you, do not delete those precious moments!
You see, someday our memories will begin to fail us. Someday we will forget just how chubby those little cheeks were or how loud and imperfectly our children sang “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” The details, in all their vividness, will begin to fade. Video scrapbooks can save them.
I live for memories. I was that kid who spent hours lying across her grandma’s bed, flipping through cellophane pages, gently re-sticking photos that seemed to have lost their tacky backing. As a little girl, I would beg my parents to set up the movie projector, mesmerized by a young woman in a bridal gown floating across a flickering screen. In college, I studied film, TV production, and journalism and went on to become a news reporter. When I became pregnant with twins in 2003, I transferred my love for capturing moments in time to my babies. I was obsessive, recording every little kiss blown, ball thrown, and step taken. Stacks of tapes lay in a box for years. It wasn’t until I could come up for air from the demands of motherhood, probably five years later, when I began to do something with all the video and photos I had collected. That’s when I became a self-described movie-making mama.
I bought a 27-inch iMac and began using iMovie to edit video scrapbooks for each of my children. I gently molded years of video clips and photographs into themed videos: Baby’s First Year, Christmas Through the Years, Our Summer Vacation, Football, Basketball, and more. To give you an idea as to what it can look like, click play on the clip of my daughter’s Baby’s First Year video scrapbook:
Video Scrapbooking 101
There are many video-editing programs out there today, making it super easy for even the video virgin to create a masterpiece. Most of them work similarly: drag and drop. Many have of a timeline of sorts and an area to which you can upload your photo and video files. Others, like iMovie, already contain your photos, video clips, and options to create title pages. One of the easiest editing programs I have come across is Animoto. I use it professionally as a vlogger with ACMB and to create promotional videos and spots for media marketing clients. However, it can also be used for personal video scrapbooks! The upside? It is simple. It has many fun themes and a ton of non-copyrighted music (which is actually decent and can be uploaded to YouTube or other social media platforms). It also stores your projects in Cloud, which frees up computer space. The downside to Animoto: it isn’t cheap. It averages a cost of $40/month or several hundred a year. iMovie, on the other hand, comes with most Mac computers and is quite capable of producing high-quality videos. A bonus: you can pay $99 at the Apple Store for a year-long project membership, which allows you to hang out in the store with Apple professionals who can teach you how to edit using iMovie. Obviously, I’m a huge fan of iMovie because of its ease; however, the following tips can be used with a variety of video-editing programs:
- Music is everything. For home videos, be sure to pick a program, like iMovie, that is compatible with iTunes. That way, you can grab your favorite song, one that hits home for you, or download a song that “speaks” to your subject matter. When I create Baby’s First Year videos, for example, I often use the following songs: “You’re Gonna Miss This” by Trace Adkins, “Love” by Sugarland, “Let Them Be Little” by Billie Dean, “I Hope You Dance” by LeeAnn Womack, “Blackbird” (I like the version by Sarah McLachlan), various lullaby classics, “Ave Maria,” “Photograph” by Ed Sheeran, “Godspeed” by the Dixie Chicks, “Best Day of My Life” by American Authors, and the list goes on. When I created a video for my grandma’s 90th birthday, I downloaded music from the 1920s, ’30s, ’40s and ’50s. Choose a song that means something to you or the people in your video, in which the words mesh with the meaning you are trying to express. I once used “Under the Sea,” from The Little Mermaid, for a short video of a Dolphin Cruise. Note: You will not be able to upload videos to a public space such as YouTube or Facebook if the music you select is copyrighted, as most songs on iTunes are. However, choosing a song with personal significance is worth only being able to view your video on your personal TV or computer. Another music tip: when adding multiple songs, be sure to utilize the manual fade in and fade out options. Click play to learn how:
- Add quotes and messages. What can make a video scrapbook more scrapbook-like than video? Tell a “story” as you go along using quotes and messages. First, browse quotes about love, sportsmanship, family, growing older, wisdom, and more. Then, create a title page in iMovie using the quote. Quotes are great things to add in between segments in your movie, when, say, transitioning from a section about a person’s childhood years to a segment years later when he/she is getting married. In place of a general quote, you can also include quotes or brief messages from friends, loved ones, or anyone pertinent to the subject of the video. I recently edited a video scrapbook celebrating a neighbor’s military retirement. His wife reached out to old friends and colleagues instrumental to his career. Imagine his surprise when he saw each person’s message come across the screen! When incorporating quotes and messages, however, do be sure to leave them up on the screen long enough so that your audience has time to read the entire quote before the frame changes.
- Transitions. Most video-editing programs offer 30-something transitions to choose from, including wildly enticing hearts, circles, explosion-like crumbling, and more. These can be fun. But they can also be a distraction to the “story” or emotion being conveyed in a piece. Ninety percent of my video scrapbooks use the basic cross dissolve. Why? It usually works best with the timing of the music and conveys a visually appealing, fluid motion to a piece. The cross dissolve, when done slowly, can also be great for showing time lapses or merging two people or events. The timing of transitions is equally as important. If you are making a more serious piece that conveys emotion—for a Baby’s First Year, Wedding, or Anniversary video, for example—you typically want your transitions set for 1.5–2.5 seconds. Here’s how to do that using iMovie:
- Use both photos and video. Nothing will grab someone’s attention and emotion more than seeing a video clip pop up in between still frames of photographs. Short clips, no more than 20 seconds, work best. In Baby’s First Year video scrapbooks I have used short clips such as a baby clapping or taking his/her first steps, a newborn’s yawn, or toddlers hilariously splashing in the bathtub. When you see that clip and hear your little boys’ giggles, the video takes you right back in time. You see it. Your heart can feel it.
- Keep your video scrapbook short. It isn’t easy to narrow down photos or video clips. Each one holds significance to us. I mean, who wouldn’t want to see your sweet daughter on film over and over again, right? However, as much as we love—and I mean love—viewing videos and photos of our captivating and hilarious kids, anything over 20 minutes gets to be a little long for one showing. If you plan to upload your masterpiece to Facebook, keep your video to 10 minutes or less.
To be totally real, creating a video scrapbook takes time. I get it. But, I promise you: your children, parents, future grandchildren, and even future great-great-grandchildren will thank you.
Every so often, usually at our children’s birthdays, we will break out their Baby’s First Year video. Words alone cannot explain the affection with which my 12-year-old sons watch. They smile. They laugh. They ask questions about what they were like as infants and remark about a favorite toy spotted in the video. They have even protectively wiped away a stray tear. I bawl, of course. Then they laugh at their tear-soaked mom, who finds joy not living in the past, but in reliving the past for just a moment with the loves of her life.
One more thing: A video scrapbook makes the best holiday gift EVER. Just be sure to wrap a box of tissues to go along with it!
