2014 End of the Year Video

It’s the end of the year. Seriously.

I’m sure I say it every year. I’m sure you say it every year. It goes by so quickly. It seems like just yesterday, I was getting ready for my son to start kindergarten. Yet here we are. Another calendar year to be preserved to memory.

Of course, I love creating photo books to document the year. But to add a little fun, I also love making a video of our year using photos and videos.

Here’s what I look for when making my end of the year video:

1. Horizontal photos.

2. Photos in a series – even if some are slightly out of focus.

3. Photos with funny and differing expressions.

4. Photos featuring family members.

5. Not necessarily my favorites (those are for my photo book) but photos and videos that represent our year.

Of course, I could spend way more time editing each photo in the video – but then I would never finish!!! My goal is not to have a perfect product but to finish something that my family can watch together for years to come. This is the third year in a row I’ve made one of these videos. It’s now a tradition!

Here is my 2014 video.

I know….there are a lot of photos! And they go by really quickly. But what I try to do for these videos is show several photos that are very similar with slight adjustments. It’s a lot of mini-stop motion photos spliced together to convey our life. It helps to show the variety in our year.

For this video, I worked really hard with the pacing of the photos. I tied to match the changing of photos with the beat of the music. To help make the connection, I selected a song with a pronounced beat. While the photos are chronological, I did not label the months, like I did in my 2013 video.

If you want to follow what I’ve done, I’ve prepared my strategy and screen capture video of working in Apple’s iMovie to create a similar video for your family. I reveal the organizational and program shortcuts I use to save time.