8 Tapes from 8 Cities and Locations, Need some Ideas what to do with it all!

[JamesW]

Hey you creative types:

I have 8 tapes worth of footage from London, Santa Fe, The Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Montreal, UMass Amherst and my fire department waiting to be worked on. Unfortunately that whole pesky editing thing still needs to be done on a computer that barely runs 'Google Earth'. So, while I wait for Apple to process my order and ship me my new computer I feel like some brainstorming could be done!x

I could break down what I have from these areas to some more detail, but for the most part it's decent hand held shots and smooth pans from a fluid head tripod. Mainly scenery and 1st person shots, nothing terribly exciting.

Also, I do some composition work and can work many different musical ideas via Reason snyth... Can't wait to hear some of the ideas!

[Mal]

Well, as with any production, try and tell a story.

It doesn't have to be super clearly defined, but ANY story you can tell with the footage you have will make it a worthwhile production.

[CJDaniels]

Hey you creative types:

I have 8 tapes worth of footage from London, Santa Fe, The Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Montreal, UMass Amherst and my fire department waiting to be worked on. Unfortunately that whole pesky editing thing still needs to be done on a computer that barely runs 'Google Earth'. So, while I wait for Apple to process my order and ship me my new computer I feel like some brainstorming could be done!x

I could break down what I have from these areas to some more detail, but for the most part it's decent hand held shots and smooth pans from a fluid head tripod. Mainly scenery and 1st person shots, nothing terribly exciting.

Also, I do some composition work and can work many different musical ideas via Reason snyth... Can't wait to hear some of the ideas!
Dude, I feel your pain. I have about 18 tapes, 11 from europe that I have only touched 1 tape.

in August I edited my first HV20 tape from a party (not my first editing, i edit on the side) the tape was from June when I left on my trip. I just re-edited the whole thing again this week. I am going to have a real hard time with the Europe stuff, but many cool parties and clubs will be easier.

[pete f]

Hi, this is a good question you ask because
if handled incorrectly as a process, the sorting
and prepping of footage to use in your NLE timeline
can in fact scare you away from getting down and dirty
with the editing process.

First, I suggest this product
http://www.videoredo.com/en/ProductPlus.htm
you can use it to excise useful clips from
your tapes with the minimum of effort.
It drastically cuts down the amount of time it takes to
get rid of the bad bits and leaves you with
much refined and pruned shot_reels.
There is a demo available, and once you
mark sections of a reel that you hate, you invert all cuts
and the reduced new mpg is saved when you rename
and save without a need to re-render!
It's great.

Next, get you NLE and try and string a few clips end to end.
I usually write....or, find a suitable piece of music to loop in
a background player, and sort of jam around in the video editor
with the various clips whilst the music plays.

Eventually you'll get to the new stage where you have
a couple of minutes of clips arranged, and you'll be able
to put tape 2 thru the videoRedoPlus process and then
on into your NLE for serious editing and arranging.

Things to remember...always save often when you are
in to your project main. It can really be a blow to do a while evening
of editing to make a mistake and not save and then cpu crash or power goes off etc.

Also, remember, the more creative you can remain
throughout the entire process, the better.

At the end of the day, there's no gain without pain.

[JamesW]

Thanks for the suggestions... I'm deifnitely going to take my time uploading the clips, being sure to sort and label them so I know exactly which clips is which.

At first I was thinking a simple montage of shots with a musical score, but that just seems overdone. Besides that, I was hoping maybe doing a voice over that entails some goofy story of some guy's travels through the world. Or maybe just a "Planet Earth" type documentary that displays the magnificence of the creations done by mankind and nature.

[Numbox]

You could try and find similar spots on the footage from different locations and then, using masking and crossfading, try to make the illusion of all the locations being one next to another. You know, like they take make city panoramas, using pictures of different areas of the city and combining them to make it seem laike they're right next to each other.