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Editing Music Editing Music From "Making Home Movies" episode DMHM-112

Nothing energizes a video like great music. It creates a mood and therefore facilitates the telling of any good story.

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	Figure A
	Figure B
	Figure C
	Figure D

• It's relatively simple to load songs from your video CDs into a video-editing program (figure A). Using songs such as period music for a video about your grandparents (figure B), for example, works especially well because the individual pieces of music can take the viewer back to a specific time and place.

• Think of music as a way to create a mood and a transition between quotes. It also immediately signals to viewers that they are watching something more refined than a typical home movie.

• Once the opening of the video is complete, the volume of the music track is raised to form a sound bed underneath the title page (figure C). It will feel natural and fluid because the viewer has already heard the music in the opening segment.

• Keep any music running under the interview at about 20 percent of the level of the interview.

• Also, when fading up audio remember to make sure that the fade doesn't swallow up the last word of the quote. Start raising the audio level just before the last word is spoken, but make sure it doesn't reach its full volume until about a half-second after the speaker has finished talking. This sounds more natural than a sudden rise in volume. The key is to use sound to reinforce the narrative provided by the interview and to ease the transitions between the interview and the pictures. If viewers are distracted by a sudden shift in volume, the discrepancy breaks their concentration on what the subject has to say.

• Pay just as much attention to the sound as to the pictures, since what people hear will influence what they see.

• Move the camera in close to capture good natural sound (figure D), which will boost the energy of the home movie.

• And finally, don't be afraid to add music. It will help sustain the pace and ease transitions between video, narration and still pictures.