Growing Kids Big

Schoolchildren generally have more imaginative ideas for videomaking than grown-ups. Uninhibited by the limitations of a tiny camcorder or the conventions of electronic recording they suggest all sorts of wonderful scenarios for Dad to record.

The Gulliver's Travels theme often proves most popular, with kids playing the giants and parents the terrified Lilliputians! In this instance, however, parents soon learn they can't always apply film techniques to video.

But don't despair. A number of creative video techniques will help you get around these limitations.

Compare and Contrast

Movies like The Incredible Shrinking Man and Honey, I Blew Up the Kid! juxtapose large and small characters with a variety of processes. Most are unavailable to the average videomaker, particularly those involving post-production optical techniques. For example, "traveling matte" runs two negatives together through a printer; a specially defined area on one negative automatically blocks out the identical area on the other.

Pro-video achieves a similar effect using blue screen or chromakey. Again, defined areas of one picture block out parts of another. Both systems will place "giants" with "little people" so that both appear to be in the same frame at the same time.

But you won't find equipment that mixes and matches to that extent available to you as a budget accessory.

Until you do, it is, you'll have to adopt more prosaic ta…