Putting Names to Faces for Future Generations

September 11, 2012 8:36 AM

Suggestions for identifying people in home movies for future generations?

I'm sort of the family archivist, and I've been struggling with an approach to home movies. The approach I've settled on is two pronged: once the movies have been digitized, saving one set as just as basic digital copy-- no changes or additions made.

I'd also like to make a sort of "special edition" with edits, photo inserts, and such. I think it's important to identify these people so that future family members can put a name to a face, and the first thing that came to mind was a "pop-up video" effect where a name pops up with a little pointer down to the face,. (Most of the shots are mid-shots of groups of people.) This doesn't seem to be possible with iMovie or FCX (correct me if I'm wrong?). Does anyone have any other ideas for identifying people? There's usually too many people in frame to just throw captions at the bottom.

posted by entropicamericana to media & arts (5 answers total)

I use Microsoft Movie Maker. You can do cuts, edits, soundtrack, etc.

You might want to do title cards, I added them using PowerPoint in between scenes. Titles can be overlaid at different places in the frame (not quite as cool as pop-ups)
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 8:41 AM on September 11, 2012

Can you do an opening/ closing credits type thing with zoomed in screenshots of each individual?
posted by elizardbits at 8:47 AM on September 11, 2012 [2 favorites]

YOo should be able to overlay text on the frame in most video editing tools.
posted by COD at 8:47 AM on September 11, 2012

I recently came across some edited home video and audio footage of long-dead family members who I had not known as a child. They did a lot with subtitles, but that might simply have been because the whole thing hinged on the audio footage and it was important to identify who was speaking.
posted by Sara C. at 8:59 AM on September 11, 2012

Why not just make a shot list, with screen grabs that ID the person? You could make it more like a book than a movie.
posted by Ideefixe at 9:19 AM on September 11, 2012 [1 favorite]