The Making of Pace Riders
How to Make a Movie with Sony Home Studio Solutions
Do you have an idea for a movie but aren't sure how to get started? To show you how easy a project like this
can be, we set out to make our own movie — a short film about bicycling — using only a video camera, a microphone, and three of our favorite Sony Creative Software Home Studio Solutions. For "actors," we rounded up some of our bicycling-enthusiast friends and headed for the open road to shoot video. Here's how the project came together:
Phase 1: Creating the narration
To make the voice track for the movie, we recorded one of the riders as he talked about bicycling. To do this, we used
Sound Forge Audio Studio software and a microphone plugged into the mic input of our computer's sound card.
Once we recorded the dialog, we added region markers to identify sections we felt would be useable in our movie. In most cases, careful placement of the region in and out 
markers was enough, but other times we used Sound Forge Audio Studio editing tools to delete sounds such as breath noise, throat clearing, and word stumbling.
Next, we used some of the built-in effects plug-ins to improve the sound of the narration. We normalized the narration to make it as loud as possible without distortion, and also added compression so the volume sounded more consistent throughout the movie. Finally, we created a separate, new file out of each region and saved the new files with the Sony Perfect Clarity Audio (.pca) compressed file format to save space without losing audio quality.
Next, we brought the narration audio files into Vegas Movie Studio+DVD software and placed them onto the Timeline of one track. We rearranged the audio events so that the narration told our story in the proper sequence of events.
Phase 2: Creating the video
With the narration in place, we created a story board using drawings to represent movie scenes. To do this, we used an electronic drawing tablet and photo editing software, but you could also draw on paper and scan the pictures into your computer as JPEG images. Each picture represented a shot we wanted during a section of the dialog. We placed our drawings onto the Timeline to help us visualize what the final video would look like.
Using the built-in character generator, we then placed text over each image with a detailed explanation of what the shot should be. We saved one frame for every image as a JPEG file and imported each of them into a word processing document, one per page. This became a detailed shot list for our location video shoot.
In Vegas Movie Studio software, we used the Sony Video Capture application to identify and batch-capture all of the useable footage from our camera into separate digital video files. We then replaced our JPEG drawings with the appropriate video clips. Once all of the video was in place, we added effects and transitions, such as slow motion and crossfades. With the movie almost finished, we rendered the project to a NTSC DV file and imported it into ACID Music Studio software so we could create a custom soundtrack for our movie.
Phase 3: Creating the music
With our rendered movie on the timeline, we were able to watch the video as we created the music. ACID Music Studio software makes it easy for anyone to create royalty-free songs using the included music loops. With over 1,700 loops to choose from, we had plenty of material to work with, and quickly created an entire song to play behind the narration. We added filters and effects such as compression, equalization, simple delay, and reverb to enhance the music and achieved a nice mix with the ACID Music Studio mixing tools, then rendered our finished music to be used in our final video edit.
Phase 4: Finishing touchesBack in Vegas Movie Studio+DVD software, we imported our music into our movie project as an audio track and positioned it on the timeline so that it fit nicely with the video. We listened to the music as we made some final editing decisions on the timing of the narration and in and out points of the video. We mixed the music in with the existing narration audio track, and used a volume envelope to control the music's volume over time so that it didn't interfere with the narration. We removed the text descriptions that were in place for the storyboard and added text overlays for the credits and other text. Finally, we rendered the finished movie as a Windows Media file and uploaded it to our Web site.
Watch the Complete Pace Riders Movie
