How to make and distribute digital movies

By Max Sparber

At its simplest, all you need to make a digital film is a recording device like a camcorder or video-enabled cell phone, and all you need to distribute it is an Internet connection. A rough short movie can be made with the camera itself, by shooting scenes sequentially, but if an aspiring digital filmmaker wants to create a more polished movie, he or she will need to edit the raw footage. Fortunately, surprisingly sophisticated editing software is now available for little or no money.

Here, then, is a step-by-step guide to the tools of digital filmmaking:

Get a digital recording device

Most digital cameras are now able to shoot digital video to some extent, and the cost of cameras is plummeting — stores such as Target and WalMart now sell basic digital cameras for under $50. Additionally, many cell phones can now shoot digital video. These options tend to produce low-resolution images, but can be perfectly serviceable for films distributed via the Internet — and beyond. The band The Presidents of the United States of America recently shot a music video using a cell phone, and the South African feature film SMS Sugar Man was also shot on cell phones.

If you’re willing to invest some money in a proper digital camcorder, the market is saturated with options, ranging from a few hundred dollars to semi-professional models costing thousands of dollars. It’s beyond the scope of this article to give an overview of camcorder options, but those interested in investing in a medium- to high-quality digital video camera are encouraged to head to cnet.com, which offers comprehensive camcorder reviews.

Get an editing program

All new Apple computers come bundled with an excellent introductory digital video editing program called iMovie. It lacks a lot of the bells and whistles of a professional editing program but has good, intuitive, basic controls. After a few hours of playing around with the program, you should be able to piece together various clips into a competent short film. The newest version of iMovie offers some useful sound editing features as well, and the program is designed to work easily with Apple’s entire iLife suite of programs. This means that it is quite easy to add music tracks from iTunes or photographs from iPhoto, burn it to a disc using iDVD, or upload to a Web page using iWeb.

If you’re working with a PC, the nearest equivalent is Windows Movie Maker, available for free download at Microsoft.com. (Here's Microsoft's Windows Movie Maker How-to Center.) If you have the Windows XP operating system, it’s already on your computer. As is often the case with PC software, you’re going to have to work a little harder to put together a film. For example, you’ll need third-party software to burn your completed project to a DVD. Nevertheless, Windows Movie Maker is a simple, fairly intuitive program that offers many of the same features as iMovie.

For those willing to spend some real money, there are some terrifically sophisticated editing programs on the market. The most popular of these are Avid (including its Avid Xpress Pro) and Apple's Final Cut Pro, which both retail for more than $1,000 and require some training to use effectively. Final Cut Express HD retails for about $300.

Convert your movie into the format(s) you want, such as MPEG-4, QuickTime, Windows Media Video, Flash, Real or DivX.

Distribute online

Once you’ve formatted your movie, it’s time to upload it. If you have your own web page and know some basic HTML, it’s easy enough to simply upload the movie to your own server and embed it into your page, but there’s really no need. There are a growing number of websites that will store your digital video for you at no cost, and even provide you with the necessary HTML to plug your digital video into any web page you choose.

The most popular among these is YouTube, which boasts tens of thousands of new clips every day. It is free to have an account at YouTube and the uploading process is simple. Additionally, YouTube comes with a built-in audience and a rough but growing social network: It’s quite easy to find like-minded groups of filmmakers on YouTube and share videos. One disadvantage of YouTube is that videos must be shorter than 10 minutes. However, the company made it possible for members to apply for a “director" status, allowing them to upload much longer films.

Similar to YouTube is Google Video. The uploading process is a little trickier and it takes days rather than hours for videos to get approved, but Google Video has a few advantages. For one thing, if you don’t want to simply give away your video, Google Video allows you to set a price that viewers must pay to watch (they take a percentage). Google Video does not offer the sort of community building tools that YouTube has, however. Both YouTube and Google Video automatically convert your video into a Flash file, which speeds up its download time but decreases the quality of the image.

A third option is Ourmedia, the “Global Home for Grassroots Media." Ourmedia is not as popular as the other two sites and is harder to use at times, but it has a few real advantages. First, it’s associated with the wonderful Internet Archive, an excellent and popular free library of digital media. A video uploaded to Ourmedia will be stored on the Archive, which bodes well for its longevity. Second, Ourmedia is not limited to digital video — you can upload anything that can be digitized, including audio, photographs, documents and music. Finally, Ourmedia preserves the digital document in its original form — if you upload your video as a QuickTime movie, it’ll stay a QuickTime movie, rather than being converted into a Flash movie. QuickTime films are generally higher quality than Flash videos and more easily downloaded, edited and shared.

One final note: Low-budget filmmakers can make and distribute movies for a few hundred or few thousand dollars, but there is also an option for no-budget filmmakers. MTN, Minneapolis’s public access television network, offers courses in digital filmmaking for just a few hundred dollars. Once you’re trained on their equipment, you can use it freely to shoot whatever you want, including digital cameras (which can be checked out) and computers bundled with iMovie and Final Cut. The only condition is that anything shot and edited using their equipment must be shown on public access cable. MTN is at 125 SE Main Street in Minneapolis, Minn., and can be reached at (612) 331-8575. Look for similar programs in your area.

Max Sparber is a designer, playwright and amateur filmmaker. Some of his short films can be seen online at sailormartin.blogspot.com.

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