Your home footage can add a great deal of warmth to the project. It invites the viewers into the life of the person being celebrated. This, of course, is not to say that all video footage should be used. Unless you always use a tripod and proper lighting, your home video footage may not be the best footage to incorporate into the project; this is why we suggest that it is better to use short clips of footage so that it may be used to accent a scene. This should not discourage you from using home video rather, it should encourage you to use it in creative ways. An important part of choosing video clips is deciding whether the activity is better on video than it is as a static image. We all know that a picture of a child throwing their food across the table isn't nearly as funny as seeing it on video. This would be a good example of a video clip to use. Sometimes you may not have a picture of something you want to show, but you have a video clip of it, but the video is shaky. We, at LOL, can create a still image from the video so that we are able to include it in the project. Photo / Video Montages need to be well rounded and your video selection should reflect that.

We accept home footage in the following formats; vhs, hi-8, 8mm, Digital8, vhs-c, dvd, MiniDV, Full Size DV, DVCam, all professional video formats and digital computer files. Additionally, we can have film transferred from 8mm, super-8, 16mm and 35mm to a video format so that we can include it in your montage. Note the location of the clip you want to include by rewinding the tape and resetting the counter to zero and writing down the counter location of your clips. This is not necassary for video tapes that include timecode such as MiniDV and Digital8.