Help for a magician

[qmikhailq]

Dear Video Help forum members,

My name is Mikhail Valer' Yevich. And I have been a magician for 5 years now. Recently Ive recorded some video footage of me doign awesome stuff .

Now then in the near future I would like to post these video's on my site. www.mastermagician.nl (it's not fully up yet but you guys can take a quick look)

Unfortunatly I don't know anyone who can edit it for me to make it a good and proffesional promotional video. After I found this forum I thought maybe you guys would like to help me out! Unfortunatly im not rich so it wil have to be out of the kindness of your heart. And maybe some bragging rites!

Well let me know would love to work on this project with some1,

Mikhail.

[apostrophe]

Your post seemed kind of lonely here with no replies so I thought I'd try to post something, being new to the forum myself. It can be disappointing if no one replies ...

I think the key words " ...edit it for me..." were kind of a turn-off for forum members. There's that old chestnut about ".. helps he who helps himself" .

I'm certainly an amatuer when it comes to editting but that hasn't stopped me from trying to do things that I didn't think I could do and it's quite enjoyable to expand one's horizons.

It shouldn't be too hard to do what you want to do.

What I would do is look at other "professional" promotional videos until you find one that grabs you. Then study it to see how you can imitate the format. In hollywood I think they call that an omage' (some french word)...

Many of the toools suggested here, while low cost or free have a bit of a learning curve and a few bugs here and there which makes using them a little tricky.

Maybe you already have some editting software. I believe you also want authoring software to throw things together (import) to make a DVD. The aura of "professional" presentation is just an illusion, something you could relate to, maybe try to think of it as an extention of your main interest. The advantage of doing it yourself is that you maintain control over the presentation. Off hand I would say don't give too much away, keep it short, but try to make it attention grabbiing first then as visually pleasing as possible after, avoid wide shots, do some flash to white transitions between clips and above all get a zippy musical score for the background, slide the audio around and trim clips to try to match the beat of the music. Music might be copyrighted so be careful, though I think you can use 8 bars worth of each. Trying to go "professional" could have its pitfalls as compared with doing something primarily for one's own amusement and education. Which is pretty much my motivation.

Actually this forum is more about technical issues than composition. I'm kind of interested in both but more from a standpoint of tinkering with existing material. Production is an art in itself. I like being an armchair general after-the-fact, snooping and experimenting. OTOH, Starting from scratch, may take a while to get what you want.

AVS4YOU has a suite of nice little software that works bug-free (so far) it was on sale for a while. I got like a dozen little software tools for around $40 license for all including an editor, file convertors and authoring program. What you want to do is pretty conventional so they might be just the thing. I always seem to want to push the envelope when it seems something can't be done which is why I'm interested in the more esoteric software and techniques, which this forum seems to be a good place to find discussion about.

I think if you actually try to do it yourself you might find that it is fun if you have an actual problem then I imagine forum members might be more willing to chime in with some advice if you describe what you are doing and with what software, file types etc.

[zoobie]

good answer
or you can hire a pro to assemble it all by next thursday

[qmikhailq]

Hi guys,

Thanks for the responses. And you have given me something to think about.

the reason I don't want to do this is myself is not because I think I wont enjoy it. I love new experiences. It's just that I dont have the time. I am so occupied with my own things I barely have time to post this response.

Plus hiring a pro is an option I just thought that some1 who enjoys editing as a hobby might enjoy a project like this. Unfortunatly no1 seems to have the time.

I am willing to give some compensation for the effort,

Let me know and thanks for all the good advice so far.