How to Make a Home Video Keepsake for Your Next Special Occasion

Do you have tons of pictures lying around? Or a special occasion coming up, and you want to do something nice but you don’t have a lot of money?

Why not make a keep sake video loaded with memories and music. All you’ll need is the right camera and the right lens to make it happen.

Let’s get started with what you will need to make this video that will have people coming to you wanting you to make them one.

First of all please note most places that do these type of videos charge five dollars per picture so a nice video can cost around five hundred dollars. But you will have one that cost nothing.

Please also note according to if you have help or not this video can have some tiny flaws, but the overall performance and the price (zero) outweigh any flaws it might have.

Step (1) Gather all the pictures you want to use in your video. If your making an anniversary tape then get old pictures of when the couple married through out the years and up until the current date.

Sweet sixteen tape, then gather baby shots all through school days until current days etc.

Step (2) Place your pictures in stacks in the order you want them displayed on the movie.

Such as a child graduating college you may want to put birth then kindergarten and first grade then second grade etc.

Step (3) Pick the music you want for each separate group of photo’s. You can do this two different ways, either selecting your music off a stereo or computer and burning them onto a Cd, or by using sites such as lime wire or other sites that let you download and save in a particular spot that can be easily retrieved.

Step (4) Try to use your imagination and use it to where it’s personable when it comes to the individual you are making the movie for. For example my family is goofy and I added the Adams Family Theme music to mine along with goofy faces or Halloween costumes on etc.

I also have a brother in law that races stock cars so I downloaded the music( Gentlemen start your engines) and then the tires squealing off with his pictures of him in his race car in the background. When making these videos use songs that are their favorite to go along with their picture or something to key into everyone that this is their song.

Step (5) Once you have your pictures, the order they’ll be played in and your music, then it’s time to get yourself set up. Grab a tripod and find a quiet spot in the house where no one will come in or knock or a phone will ring etc. Use a back drop on the wall or table top is what I prefer.

Some people may elect to tape the back of the pictures to the wall and aim the camcorder there, this does work and you have more control over the zooming in as well. I place mine on a computer desk up against something as another picture frame and toss over a pretty piece of cloth just in case camera picks up something other than the whole picture.

Step (6) Put your first picture up, position it and zoom in on the picture and once you have it the way you want it, then have someone cut on your music or you can cut it on and then press record on your video camera. Record for about ten seconds on each photo and once your ready to move onto another picture, hit pause on your camera and then pause on your Cd or computer site where your playing your music from.

Step (7) Continue this process and in each different interval if you would like to put messages or a person’s name if you are doing a video for Mother’s day and there are six kid’s then place each kid’s name on a sheet of paper before starting there segment, you can make these yourself or print them out on the computer.

Step (8) Go through each segment with the music pausing then recording etc. Take many breaks in between and stretch because this can be a very long process, it’s really according to how many pictures you are using.

This project can take up to 2 hours to make but the turnout in the end is well worth it. Ask the person who you made it for, who’s either crying now or laughing. Memories are something you can not put a price on.

Photo by Gabriel Petry on Unsplash

 
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