I never thought in a million years that I would be making movies someday. I was surprised this week when I did just that. For a class project, two friends and I used the movie feature on our digital cameras to record footage of professors and classmates. We used a Canon A75 and a Kodak Easyshare. My camera, the A75, would record 3 minutes at a time - the perfect length of an interview. We'd sent the questions on ahead of time so that people could prepare their responses.

We'd tried to find a digital video camera to borrow or rent but had no luck. We decided that whatever quality we got with our point-and-shoot cameras would have to do. It turns out that the small cameras were less intimidating to people. We were able to balance them on shelves or books, or just hold them waist high and talk to our subjects. It also made for easy entry into cramped offices.

Once we had all the footage shot the next step was editing it together, documentary style. Here's where the problems began: the Canon shot in .avi file format and the Kodak was a .mov. Our plans to use Windows Movie Maker were blown to bits. After a consult with my friend Mike, he offered to help us with Sony Vegas 6.0. Niiiiiiice software, that. Troubles weren't over though, because Vegas was only interested in the audio from the .avi files. It wouldn't import the video until we passed the files through virtualDub.

Once everything was imported into Vegas we were all set. Since we'd used two cameras for most interviews we were able to do some cool stuff: changing angles during a long speech for example. We tossed in some music we'd picked out from ccmixter.org and added a slide show at the end, to go with the credit roll. The final Vegas file was rendered as an .avi and burned to a dvd.

We did a lot of pre-planning, both before shooting any interviews, and before we sat down with Mike to create the video itself, so this helped speed things along. Because we all have plenty of other classes, projects, and responsibilities we needed to be very efficient. Planning out our questions cut down on the amount of clips we needed to record, which directly affected how much video we had to edit. We went through each clip and made notes on which pieces we wanted to use and then assembled this into a basic order. We didn't really change much from this orignial list except to cut from one speaker to the other and back again when two people were responding to the same question.

We presented the finished product to the class yesterday on a standard DVD/television setup. Reactions were positive (and I hope our mark will be good). We also brought in some popcorn for the class to get them in the mood.

The thing that blew most people away is that we shot all the footage with our ordinary, basic digital cameras. Digital cameras have certainly opened the door for more amateurs to take great pictures but who would have realized the potential for making decent quality movies?

My digital rebel has suddenly taken a backseat to the A75 and its movie making power. I've discovered a great new quality in an old friend.