Those of us who have a lot of home videos hanging around, also have some amount of mediocre footage; at least I do. What should we do with it all? Well, don’t trash it just yet. This is an idea I got from a piece of software I tested a while ago. It chopped up any video you ran though it into short bits, rearranged them, and output a new file. I didn’t think it made much sense, but I liked the idea of trying to make sense out of nonsense. After thinking about that concept, a few ideas began to form.

Take your videos out and find the flat and boring footage – you know where they are. Chop them out with an editor into short clips. Make a lot of them and put them all in a directory. Find some good music, or even create your own and drop them into the same directory. Now you’ve got a nice collection of totally forgettable images; what’s next? Well, there are several ways to go. One fun idea is to run them through a program like Movie Morpher Gold by AVnex. You can view your clips and apply special effects and filters in real time, as they play onscreen. You can output them with those effects applied to them. I like to use the .AVI format. Be sure to change the browse wetting from disk to file to locate your clips. There are some unique effects you won’t find anywhere else.

You can also divide the clips up into categories by color, location, focal range, that is, close-ups, mid-range, telephoto, etc; you can organize them by subject like people, scenery, action, etc. You can also organize them by length, or use that as a sub-category within the groups. This will give you a way of accessing them when you start the final editing.

Now you can either match the clips to the audio, or the audio to your clips. Decide which you will do and load it in first. Let’s say you choose to match clips to a song, the load the song in and start loading in the clips next. Test the play and use the in-program editing to shorten video clips from the start or the end to match the beat of the song; try to start/end the clips on strong beats, on the ends of verses, choruses, etc. Unless the music calls for longer cuts, try to keep them short and varied. Cut between a series of categories, such as close-up, mid-range, long shot, repeat, etc. Get crazy, be outrageous; remember you’re working with less than top-drawer clips! Apply a healthy dose of transitions and effects from within the editor. Try using similar effects within a verse of the song, and then change them all for the next verse. You can certainly make several versions of the same song, or make a medley of similar songs with different effects on all the video clips. Then try them out on your friends, or even post them online as “musica reduxs."

BIO: Wayne Rice is a freelance journalist, copywriter, photographer and artist. He currently resides in the United States.