What's in your box, and what you actually want to make
Before we open any editing software, I want you to do something that feels like a waste of time and isn't: figure out what you actually have, and what you actually want to end up with.
I skip this step in my head every single time I start a project, and every single time I regret it about twenty minutes in. So we're doing it on purpose, out loud, on day one.
First, take inventory
Get everything you're working with into one place you can see. Not organized yet. Just gathered. This might be:
- A shoe box of mini DV tapes or VHS tapes
- A Ziploc bag of loose photos (I have some personal experience with this one)
- A phone full of clips you took at Grandma's 90th birthday
- An old external hard drive nobody's opened in six years
- Some combination of all of the above, none of it labeled
Write down, on paper or in a notes app, roughly what you have. "12 photos, unlabeled, look like the 1970s." "3 VHS tapes, one says 'Xmas 92' in Sharpie, the other two say nothing." "47 phone videos from 2019 to now, all named things like IMG_4471."
You are not sorting yet. You are just naming the mess so you know its size.
Then ask yourself who this is for
This is the part people skip, and it's the part that actually determines everything else you do. A video is not just a pile of clips in order. It's an answer to a question somebody's going to ask. So before you touch a single file, answer this:
Who is going to watch this, and what do you want them to feel when it's over?
That's it. Write down one sentence. "I want my mom to see her dad's voice again before she forgets what it sounded like." "I want my kids to know their great-grandpa was more than a name on a headstone." "I want Teresa's family to laugh at the home video of the dog eating the Thanksgiving turkey."
Once you know that sentence, a lot of decisions get easier. You'll know which clips matter and which ones you can leave out. And you should leave some out — that's one of my strong opinions and I'll say it now so it's on the table: shorter is almost always better. A four-minute video that people actually finish watching beats a forty-minute one that sits at 30% forever because nobody has the time. You don't owe every clip a spot just because it exists.
What "in your own words" actually sounds like
Here's a thing that happens more than people expect. You sit down to record a little intro or an interview clip, and you think it needs to sound like a documentary. It doesn't.
My nephew Jax narrated a clip about his great-grandpa for a family project once. He didn't know the man's name at first — he just called him "the old guy in the brown chair." I almost redid the narration. Then I sat with it for a minute and left it in. That's exactly how a nine-year-old talks about a great-grandfather he never met, and honestly, it told you more about the distance between generations than any fact-filled narration would have. Sometimes the wrong words are the right words.
So when you're planning what you want to make, don't aim for polished. Aim for true. If you've got a kid, a grandparent, or an aunt who talks a certain way, let them talk that way in the final video. Don't smooth it into something that sounds like a stranger wrote it.
Write a one-line plan
By the end of tonight, before you touch any software, I want you to have:
- A rough list of what's in your box (tapes, photos, phone clips, whatever)
- One sentence about who it's for and what you want them to feel
- A guess — just a guess — at how long the final video should be. Three minutes? Five? If you're not sure, guess short. You can always add.
That's the whole assignment. It looks small. It isn't. Most people who get stuck halfway through a project got stuck because they never did this part, and now they've got two hours of footage and no idea what they're building toward.
Before next time
Go find your box, your bag, your folder — whatever holds your footage and photos — and just look at it. Don't touch the editor yet. Bring your one-sentence plan next time, even if it changes later. It usually does, and that's fine.