It's impossible for anybody to really give you advice considering how
much there is to know about making movies (making videos...)
You really have to start doing some research and learning all of the
tools and technology. That's why god made the internet.
Here's sort of the basic workflow outline and it might give you some
ideas to start some research. I've seriously over-simplified here.
There can be a lot that goes into all of these steps. Be prepared to
learn as you go.
cheap/easy:
1)production (shoot)
-get a digital still camera with the video feature
2)post-production (edit)
-copy video clips from your camera's memory card onto your computer.
Use some little program like windows movie maker or Quicktime or maybe
a utility that came with the camera to trim the video clip (cut off the
[censored] at the beginning and the end that you don't want). Maybe add some
music depending on the software.
3)distribution
-upload the clip to a web gallery.
a bit more expensive:
1)production
-Get a mini-DV video camcorder. This is pretty much the consumer
standard and you can get them at Best Buy or Circuit city or whatever.
Range is from around $300 - $3000. You can get something decent
starting around 500 or 600, although $1000-$1500 is not a waste of money
for the right camera.
2)post-production
-Get a computer with a firewire port (AKA: IEEE 1394, iLink) or get a
firewire adapter upgrade for your computer. Also, you should have a
large, secondary hard drive. Editing video takes a lot of hard drive
space.
-Get some editing software. From cheapest/easiest to best/most
expensive, the range goes kind of like this Windows Movie Maker (win),
iMovie (mac), Adobe Premiere Elements (win), Apple Final Cut Express
(mac), Sony Vegas (win), Adobe Premiere Pro (win), Apple Final Cut Pro
(mac). If you've never edited, and you want something that is very easy
to learn and surprisingly powerful for how cheap it is, check out Adobe
Premiere Elements at around $99 (windows only). The same is almost true
for Final Cut express on Mac, but its a bit harder to learn for newbies.
iMovie, which comes with every new mac is very useful for beginners as
well.
-Connect your DV camera to the computer through firewire and start
learning how to edit.
3)Distribution
-Use your editing program to export files for the web. You'll have a
lot more options for compression with better editing packages.
-Or, export your videos as files for a DVD authoring Program and make
DVDs. Apple iDVD and Roxio Easy Media Creator are the easier ones.
Adobe Premiere Elements has DVD Authoring built in, which is a great
feature. Your computer must have a DVD Burner drive.
Oh yeah, you kind of need something interesting to point your camera at
in the first place. Garbage in, Garbage out. There's no way I can tell
you how to shoot something cool. So, either be born a good
photographer, or try that trial and error thing.
Anyway, start doing some research. If you hit any roadblocks and you
have some specific questions, I can give you some advice. Email this
username at yahoo.com
--
nbrazzi - _______________
Intellectual brilliance is no guarantee against being dead wrong.
-Carl Sagan
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