Even from a young age I’ve enjoyed making videos. I remember when my grandparents gifted my parents with a camcorder in the early nineties. At the time it seemed so state of the art to be able to shoot directly to a VHS tape and make your own movies. I wasn’t a prolific film maker as a kid, but when I had a reason (usually for school), I enjoyed working on video projects.
The editing technique was pretty rudimentary back then. I would use our home VCR to record clips being played back by the camcorder. Effects were limited to what the camcorder had built in. This was truly linear editing, and I got pretty good at hitting play and record at the same time. The transitions were pretty rough, but it worked. I usually got A’s.
Fast forward to today, and the options for kids with access to a Mac are pretty outstanding. Over the holiday, I shot a 3 min joke video with my sister for my Uncle with my iPhone and then edited the piece in iMovie on my sister’s Macbook. Kid stuff, but the family was impressed with what we were able to get accomplished in such a short amount of time and the overall quality of the production.
During my recent travels, I’m amazed at how commoditized smart phones are now. iPhones and Android devices are getting to pretty ubiquitous, and they pretty much all shoot HD video now. There’s still a wide gap from the professional tools, but really the only barrier left now is knowledge. People have amazing tools at their disposal, but I guess not everyone’s a creative. I just hope the creative tools makers continue to innovate.
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