Getting Started: Writing Video Letters

"Dear Gramma how are you? Thank you for the handkerchiefs I will sure have fun with them I guess. Well I will say goodbye now Love from your grandson Jimmy."

"TO GRAYLOCKS@SENIORS.ORG

FROM ROLLERDUDE@NETSURFACE.COM

YO GRAMMA! COOL 64 BIT AUDIO BOARD FOR BDAY. ALREADY SYNTHED JENNY'S FONEVOICE (HEEHEEHEE) BIG FAT THANX & LUVYA

BOJAMES"

Behold the fall and rise of correspondence: the medium of the telephone nearly killed it; then the medium of the Internet revived it. Whatever Jimmy's literary skills, the e-mail process has somehow liberated his personal voice.

Why? Because different people communicate best in different media--and maybe your best tool for letter writing isn't a pen or a even a PC. Maybe your personal voice will sound most clearly in the medium of video. So let's see how to create a video letter for a distant friend or family member while honoring the official Getting Started members' pledge: low tech, low cost, low sweat.

Before you begin, you need to answer two basic questions: who is the letter for? And will you edit your footage?

In face-to-face conversation, you vary both the content and style of your discourse to fit your listener. And the same is true in letter writing (or, in this case, shooting). For instance, a letter to your car-crazy cousin Willard might devote a lot of space to restoring your 1948 Hudson, while an epistle to Grandma might omit that old wreck completely (the car, not Grandma). To determine what you include in your tape and how you treat it, the first step is to visualize the recipient.

With your audience firmly in mind, step two is to decide whether to edit your missive in the camcorder as you shoot it or to transfer selected scenes to an edited dub. Each approach has plusses and minuses. With in-camera editing, your letter is done as soon as you've finished shooting. Additionally, the results have a spontaneous warts-and-all personality that would be dampened by editing.

But be aware that an off-the-cuff letter has two big drawbacks:

You can't change your mind about the shots: about their length and placement in the video, or even whether or not they're included. You're forced to decide all your program content on the fly and then live with the results.

You have to shoot the whole letter at once because you can't edit in interesting footage from previously documented birthdays, vacations, school performances, and other video treasures.

In contrast, a compilation of other footage is far more time-consuming to assemble, unless you just copy portions of previously edited programs, suffering noticeable quality loss in the process. But if your system allows audio dubbing, you can edit your show and then add a narrated commentary that can greatly enrich the visuals.

As usual, the better approach for you comes down to a matter of personal preference. To help you decide, let's follow the two different processes of editing while you shoot and then editing in post production.

Since editing in the camera will lock down your content, the first big step is pre-planning. Make a list of each topic, in order, preferably with notes about what you want to include.

As you structure your letter, remember that the video medium is far better at showing than at telling. So, if Jimmy's news is that he plastered his room with rock posters and lit the results with ultraviolet lamps, don't stand him in front of your lens to report this aesthetic triumph. Instead, follow with the camcorder as he conducts a tour (with on-camera commentary) of his achievement.

For obvious reasons, the same principle applies to your bonsai collection or the 1948 Hudson: instead of yakking about something, document it visually, with commentary.

Of course, if the achievement you're reporting is an essay on Spinoza, you may be in trouble, visually. In some cases, the best approach is to let your subjects "talk" to the viewer directly. To set this up, choose a location with good lighting and low background noise for better sound recording. Near (but not in front of) a sunny window in your home is a good possibility.

Then quiz your subjects on what they want to talk about, to prime their pumps. Why? To prevent disasters like this: