Making a Better Baby Video (page 2)

Edit, Edit, Edit!

Now we come to the key for making your videos a success. You have done the groundwork: you have great footage - well composed, beautifully lit and endearing. Now to package it for your audiences. When you make videos for the general public - your friends at the office, friends from school, casual acquaintances - remember that these people are interested in your baby videos because they're interested in you, and their attention span is probably somewhere between a minute and a half and three minutes. For videos that you're sharing with family and close friends, you can go a lot longer - ten to thirty minutes, depending on how much good footage you have. So edit together your long video first - the one you're going to show to Mom and Dad. Save it, and then re-edit a second version from that - it will be significantly shorter, just keeping the highlights.

Be kind to your viewers. People know what they're getting, and they're here to see the baby, not to be blown away by cinemagraphic genius, so you can actually be a little sloppier than you might normally be. You can edit fast and be a bit imprecise in your cuts, but stick to the good footage. Beware of shots that linger too long without a payoff and keep on track.

Always Leave Them Wanting More

Internet distribution methods like YouTube have really revolutionized video usage. Now it's possible to upload videos on a very regular basis and allow interested people to subscribe and be alerted when a new video is posted. This means you can post short videos and long videos and let people choose what to watch. Remember, as with all things on the internet, protect your kids' privacy by creating a private channel when you use a site like YouTube or even social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. Then, if you have a large family-and-friends subscriber base for your baby videos, make them tight and clean and watchable, and your audience will always be delighted when they get an announcement that you've uploaded another better baby video for their viewing pleasure.

Contributing Editor Kyle Cassidy is a visual artist who writes extensively about technology.