Expert Tips: How to Make Home Videos for Your Family Look Professional

Making home movies has never been easier, but where do you start? Whether you’re recording on your smartphone or with a digital camera, if you have the right video editing software, you can create professional-level videos that people will want to watch over and over again. Ready to get started? In this article, we’ll walk you through expert tips, common mistakes, and the best video editing features for how to make a movie on your computer.

You don’t have to buy the latest, greatest equipment to make home movies that look and sound professional and cool – you just need to know a few tricks of the trade. Here are our top tips on how to make a video that you’ll be proud to share with the world.

Disclaimer: We use affiliate links in this article. When you click an affiliate link and make a purchase, we receive commissions. If you want to support our portal, you can use the links. Otherwise, you can find the recommended products or articles using a search engine.

The front-facing camera on your phone is great for selfies or checking if you have spinach stuck between your teeth, but it’s not the best for making videos. Your rear-facing camera will always record at a higher resolution, creating a more professional look – even before you start the editing process. Plus, if you need to use your phone’s flash, you won’t be able to use it with your front camera.

Even the best phone cameras can’t beat an actual digital camera or camcorder. If you have a camera, or if you have a budget for your home movies, you may want to invest in one of the best cameras online. When shopping for a camera, consider the features you’ll use most to make pro-level home videos. These include resolution (1080p, 4K, etc.), special effects, and popular camera settings, among others.

Best cameras you can purchase from Amazon

Shaky-cam is an effect that some filmmakers use to make a movie feel more amateur or to make the audience uncomfortable to add to the tension in a scene. In most cases, it’s not something you want when you make a movie. You want to have steady, smooth shots that are in focus and framed properly. You can improve the stability of your static shots by investing in a tripod or making a rig to hold your phone or camera while you film. If you need to move with the camera, don’t worry, though. With the right video editing software, you can smooth out shaky shots.

Be careful with placing your camera and jumping in the shot, as it’s often difficult to set up the shot and ensure that the focus is right without someone behind the camera to make adjustments. Many cameras have autofocus options, and some phone cameras do too. Play with this and, if necessary, get a friend to be your camera person to ensure you get the shot you want.

Thanks to the rise of phone cameras and social video platforms like Instagram and TikTok, people often record videos in portrait mode – holding their phone upright as they normally would. That’s a bad idea when you make your own video because the aspect ratio will not fit TVs or most video-sharing platforms. If you shoot in landscape mode, you’ll be set up to create a video that fills your TV or computer screen properly – and that you can convert to the most common aspect ratios for film and video.

Have you ever wondered why some scenes in movies and TV shows look better than pictures or videos that people shoot on the fly? In many cases, it’s because filmmakers understand the rule of thirds. If you analyze a shot from one of their videos, you can divide the screen into three sections across and three sections from top to bottom. In almost every instance, you’ll find that the focal points of the shot are at the intersecting points of those lines. You can do the same thing and get the same beautiful result by adding a grid when shooting your video. Most phone cameras and almost all digital cameras have a setting to add a grid, making this bit of cinematography that much easier.

When you’re learning how to make a movie, another trick to getting beautiful shots is creating the right lighting. When shooting outside, the best lighting can be found in the mornings for the first two to three hours after sunrise and in the afternoon or evening, up to about an hour before the sun starts to set. These times provide enough lighting without overwhelming the camera when the sun is straight overhead.

If you’re shooting inside, don’t rely solely on available lighting. To give your actors and scenes a three-dimensional look, add lighting from at least two directions. If there’s a lot of light in the area but it’s all coming from one direction, you can use a large white poster board or a professional light reflector set opposite from the light source (or at an angle) to give the same effect. Play around with different light sources and angles to see which ones give you the best results.

Along with playing with your lighting angles and sources, you can also create more interesting shots for your homemade movie clips by experimenting with angles when shooting. Instead of shooting actors or atmospheric scenes straight on, take a shot from the side or from a 45-degree angle. Take several shots of the same scene from different angles, and you can make the video more interesting by editing them together into a single scene – just like the pros!

Zooming into a scene can create a dramatic or comedic effect, but using the zoom feature on your phone or digital camera can mess with the resolution and the quality of the image you get. Instead of pinching and zooming on your device, you can zoom with your feet by walking slowly and steadily toward your subject. You’ll want to hold your camera as still as possible while doing this to minimize any jostling or shaking, but it doesn’t have to be perfect. When you get to the editing part of the process of how to make a home video, you can smooth out that shakiness with the right editing software.

If you ever hang out with people in the film industry, it won’t be too long before you hear the term “fix it in post.” In this case, “post” refers to post-production and, specifically, editing. While you can fix a lot of mistakes in post, you should try to shoot each scene as close to perfection as possible. This means using all of the tools at your disposal. You may not have a Steadicam or a crane, but your camera likely has onboard features and effects that will make your editing job a lot easier.

If you’re shooting footage for a montage, for example, and you want to capture a lot of actions in a brief amount of time, you may want to use your camera’s time-lapse effect. Want to create some additional drama? Try shooting in slow-motion. And, just like we recommend you play with different angles, take a few different shots with different effects enabled. See what results you get and if you want to use them again.

Finally, think of a movie you’ve seen with a really compelling scene between two people. Did the camera just sit there the whole time, capturing both people? While a two-shot (the industry term for a scene featuring two people) is a perfectly reasonable shot to take, it gets boring after a while. Worse, if you try to capture a whole scene between two or more people without moving the camera, you’re going to have to do take after take until you get the perfect one. How many times are you willing to run through the same scene to get the perfect take?

Instead, take different shots from different angles, like we recommended earlier, and then blend them together by alternating shots of one person and then another. This breaks up the scene, makes it more visually appealing, and gives you more room for mistakes and reshoots. Then you can take the best shots from each angle and put together a really cool-looking scene when you edit your movie on a PC or MacBook.

Now that we’ve discussed a few expert tips to shoot a cool home movie, let’s talk about the part of the process where the real magic happens: editing. If you’re going to learn how to make videos, you can’t ignore this vital step. Otherwise, you’re going to end up with long, uncut videos that no one wants to watch.

Before we get into the meat of the subject, though, let’s start by discussing a few very common beginner mistakes that you’ll want to avoid:

This is one of the first lessons that new filmmakers learn when they start figuring out how to make a movie. You may think that your living room has perfect lighting because you can see well enough to read a book, but that’s not always the case. The human eye is better than any camera you can buy. Cameras don’t capture as much light as your eyes, and they don’t filter out visual noise or fill in the blanks like your brain does. So, if you try to shoot in normal lighting in your home, office, or any other interior setting, you’re likely to get a video that looks flat and dark.

As we mentioned earlier, play with the lighting where you’ll be shooting. If there’s enough light but it’s creating unflattering shadows, use a white poster board or a sheet just off-camera to reflect the light back and create a more even and three-dimensional look. Getting the lighting right takes time, but it’s always worth it.

Yes, your camera probably has an onboard microphone, and your phone definitely has one, but relying on these will leave you with inadequate audio that may be hard to hear – especially if there’s a lot of ambient noise where you’re shooting. We definitely recommend investing in a directional microphone when you create a movie. If you already have footage that you want to use, you may be able to clean up the audio track in the editing process, or you can use software that allows you to add a voiceover or other audio to your video in post.

Don’t assume you got the shot the first time. Whenever possible, always take multiple shots so that you have lots of material to work with when you start your video edits. This will also give you different angles and interesting footage to experiment with your style as you learn how to make a good video.

Whenever you can, use your grid to line up your shot. Make sure that you’re not cutting off the tops of people’s heads, and always double-check where the camera is focused. This is one of the most important aspects of how to make a video montage or any other type of home movie.

Finally, all too often, new video creators will try to edit out all of their mistakes in the post-production process. This almost always looks terrible in the end. So, instead of relying on your video editing software’s features, even when you make a short video, always try to shoot the perfect video as if you didn’t have any editing software at all. This way, you’ll have a good place to start and your video will only get better with editing.

Now that we’ve covered a few mistakes to avoid, let’s talk about how to choose the best video-editing software for your needs. We’ll start by discussing a few of the most popular editing features to help you with making home movies that look like they were made by a pro.

As we mentioned earlier, you should always try to get the best shots possible while you’re making a family movie, but it’s sometimes impossible to be completely still. For those cases, stabilization can be a lifesaver!

Ready to try out some or all of these popular editing features as you learn how to create a video that you and your family will love? Why not give Movavi Video Editor Plus a try today?

Download Movavi Video Editor for Windows

Download Movavi Video Editor for Mac

So, you’ve made a video – now what? One of the most overlooked parts of how to make movies is where to save and organize your files. Depending on the resolution and length of a family video, these files can get pretty huge. If you try to save them all on your PC or MacBook, you’re likely to run out of space pretty quickly. What can you do? Let’s review the three most popular ways to save and organize your videos.

Now you should have all the information you need to make your own movie, a video compilation, or a family video. Family home videos are a lot of fun, but they can be more than just fun. They can be real works of art if you shoot them with care, pay attention to aspects like lighting and sound, and use the best video editing tools for the job. So, enjoy filming with your family and friends, and then give Movavi Video Editor a try to see how cool you can make those videos!