You’ve got the technical sides down. You've got equipment that I could only dream of 13 years ago when my oldest was learning to walk. And you know how to use it.
Here are my artistic opinions with regard to family videos, for viewing by family members. Note that all of this may make the video less interesting to strangers on the internet, but more interesting to you and your family. That should be your aim. If people here say it is boring – FINE!
Consider your audience, both people and TIME. You want a video that family members will watch this month and be interested in. But I think more important – you want a video family members will watch 10, 20, 30 years from now and be interested in.
In my experience, people want to see family members and pets. The scenery & locations are always secondary. In fact, it is just as interesting to see your house as it was 10 years ago, as it is to see a beautiful nature scene or a boat trip or whatever. People will say – oh I remember when we had that sofa! Just as they will say I remember that trip, it was beautiful! Filming people in front of things or places are best.
Food & clothing and decorations and little things that people will be fascinated to see in 10 years. The cake someone made. The car someone drove. Mountains are great, I love them more than most people. But the car you drove daily for 10 years will be gone in 20. The mountains should still be here.
Also, talk. Get people to talk. I know, no one wants to. And indeed it can get boring if there is too much. Again – consider your audience. What grandma says this week may be boring. What grandma said in 2017 is fascinating in 2027. One way around this without being boring is I have recorded interviews of kids and adults every year or so. Just 10 minutes per person – sometimes I’ll setup a camera and let kids interview themselves. I haven’t edited the footage. I’ll dig it up in 10 years, and know what my 10 year olds were saying, which will be fascinating when they are 20. This reminds me – I haven’t done this in a while.
And silliness. My fondest clips are silliness. We rode a 4 person bike over a speed bump. The video quality was atrocious and shaking. I set the video to the dramatic theme music from 2001. Pure silly. But I still love it, will not give it up for anything.
With regard to music – I choose music which was memorable at the time. The music we listened too the most at that time. I’ll violate this if I am going for a certain feeling or silliness like the 2001 theme. When I was aiming for a feeling of sadness, I chose some acoustic guitar set to footage of our cat that ran away.
Thoughts on pacing:
I like to vary pacing. Fast music, talking, slow music, talking. Like a good concert that yo-yos emotions up and down and all around. Clip lengths will vary with that pacing. So I see nothing wrong with an interesting 3 minute clip if you are aiming for a calm, peaceful recollection of your son climbing in the backyard on a lazy weekend. But don’t fill up 20 minutes with that. And to repeat – for a family video, there is nothing wrong with a 3 minute clip of people talking. What comes to mind is my wife and daughter talking about her cast, what happened, add some silliness like if she can scratch her nose, etc. Or another clip which might have been 3 minutes of my daughter doing a little game where she giggled, and then tried to keep a straight face only to break out giggling again. The audience isn’t strangers on the internet. The audience is you and your family members. To me – some 3-4 minute clips are priceless.
My family videos tend to cover about 3 to 6 months of time, and be 13 to 19 minutes long. I find that works out good once the kids are old enough to talk and do interesting things. I've edited only one video for my kids when they were under 2 and that was less than 7 minutes.
