There’s nothing better for spicing up a home kung-fu movie than the knife throw. This special effect is easy to create and involves virtually no setup.

The first thing you’ll need is a knife. Don’t use a real knife if you’re working with kids … you’d be amazed at the trouble kids get into when sharp objects are flying through the air.

Establish the scene by filming alternating views of both your attacker and the victim. These establishing shots are important, because both characters won’t be on the screen together when the knife throw actually occurs. First show your attacker brandishing the knife and the victim running toward him in rage.

Knife Throw Staging Area

Now, clear a safe throwing area within your backyard. When everyone is safely out of the way, film a side-view of the attacker throwing the knife off the screen. Instruct your knife master to throw as hard and aggressively as possible … if you’ve cleared everyone out of the way, there won’t be any chance of hitting anyone.

After filming a good throw, bring the victim back onto the scene, and film a close up of him being struck by the knife. The easiest way to accomplish this is by having your victim hold the knife up to his head with one hand, as if the knife has just embedded itself. Use the hand farthest away from the camera so the knife can be seen in the shot. Then, while running the camera, instruct the wounded victim to jerk back as if hit by a hammer, then fall to the ground.

Making your Knife Throw Look Realistic

The trick to making this effect look realistic in your final movie is to edit the two clips very close together. Show the knife throw, and, immediately after the knife leaves the thrower’s hand, cut to the victim jerking back and falling to the ground. It also helps to add a sound effect (like the sound of a flying knife / arrow hitting a target).

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Video Software Options

All the well-filmed video footage in the world does you no good without a powerful video editing software solution. The specific product you use is going to depend on your needs, of course, and on your budget. But it’s a good idea to know something about how all of the different products on the market work, what value you’ll get for your price, what kind of options you’ll have for compressing and distributing your video–and what certain video editing products won’t do for you.

Some General Video Software Features To Watch For

You want video editing software that makes it easy for you to capture video from your camera and painlessly import it into a form that you can work with. Bad video editing software will make you download extra codecs, configure hardware in your operating system, or use extra third-party utilities to let your camera interface with your editing software. Good video editing software should be as easy as plugging in your camera or your mini-DV tape, waiting for the footage to download automatically, and then it’s right there for you in the editing room to do with what you will.

Drag-and-drop video editing is intuitive, gives you precise control over exactly when cuts should happen, lets you visualize the finished product, and sidesteps the need for a lot of tedious timecoding, storyboarding, and other processes that give professional editors more control at the cost of time and money.

There’s no excuse to use an editing package that doesn’t feature drag-and-drop editing, considering how easy and time-effective it is. If you want to make Citizen Kane, make Citizen Kane. If you want to sell products effectively and quickly, use a drag-and-drop solution.

You want video editing software that makes it easy for you to add whatever audio effects, music tracks, or other bells and whistles (sometimes literally) that you need to achieve your design concept. This should also be a drag-and-drop situation. Unfortunately it can be difficult to find an editing package that gives you as much control over your audio tracks as it does over your video tracks. One good solution in a pinch is to try out Animota, a free, open source drag-and-drop audio editor for a variety of operating systems.

Audacity will let you take your raw audio track, tweak it however you might want, then re-import it as an mp3 or other appropriately-formatted file into your video editing package. If you can find a package that gives you good integrated audio editing as well as video editing, by all means use it, but if you can’t find a package that works for you, try this free solution.

You want video editing software that makes it easy to preserve your raw footage while still experimenting with different cuts, arrangements, and music mixes. Traditional film editing is destructive, requiring an editor to physically cut the film and splice it into different arrangements.

There’s just no reason to accept this restriction when you’re dealing with digital video, which after all is just data and which can be easily manipulated and rearranged. Most commercial video editing software is non-destructive, so this isn’t a huge thing to worry about. But if you see any video editing software that emphasizes memory conservation, speed, or similar features, you should double-check to make sure that the software is non-destructive.

Non-destructive solutions preserve your raw footage by making a backup copy and allowing you to edit and manipulate that copy without touching the original footage. This is safer, but means that you have two gigantic movie files in your computer’s memory. Accept the tradeoff in terms of speed and memory and pick an editing solution that preserves your original data: you don’t want to have to reshoot anything just because you tried to get a little bit creative with your editing.

Video Editing Software Summary

You want video editing software that makes it easy to tweak and polish your footage to ensure that it looks as good as possible. Color correction, precise timing, control over the speed that footage plays, and the ability to hand-edit individual frames to fix minor problems are all nice features to have, are generally easy to use, and translate into a much tighter and better product in the end. The ability to color-correct shouldn’t be the major determining factor in which video editing package you choose, but if you can get it without spending a significantly higher amount of money, get it.

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Welcome to Animoto Video Marketing

Internet TV is here-its name is Brightcove.com. Have you been asking yourself what TV will look like when it moves online?  Although Brightcove is marketing itself as the ideal host for all producers and marketers of online video products, at this point it seems to be more appropriate as a platform for creators and marketers of professional video content. If you’re an Internet marketer who already has a successful site and who needs a platform to manage a line of video products, Brightcove is the perfect choice for your business. Another perfect choice is to be found at Animoto_com_/34/2"> Animoto.com.

How to launch an online video business at Brightcove.com

You can launch your own Internet channel on Brightcove for marketing your video products. Brightcove offers video content producers two options: the Brightcove Network and the Brightcove Platform. With either option you can create a free account that lets you create your own video channel, upload and sell your video products, and insert videos from Brightcove.com on your own blog or web site.

The basic format is called the Brightcove Network. It’s free to use and simple to understand. What can you do with the Brightcove Network? The Brightcove Network allows independent content producers to:

* Publish video products for free
* Let Brightcove manage your advertising
* Keep half of the advertising revenue
* Sell downloads of your video products

Brightcove makes it easy to encode and upload your videos. You can add thumbnails, text descriptions, or video stills to make it easy for customers to find the titles they’re interested in. You can even organize your videos into lineups to control how they are viewed. Your channel is published for free on Brightcove.com, and you can embed codes in your blog posts to place content on your own site. Brightcove takes care of the hosting and delivery of your content. Major media corporations are already using Brightcove to host millions of video streams. Brightcove helps you reach an audience with your video content by listing your videos in the major Internet search engines. SEO features built into your Brightcove channel get your videos listed and ranked in the major video search engines, as well as in traditional text-based search engines.

The Brightcove Platform is designed for media companies, broadcasters and Internet marketers. The Brightcove platform allows you to choose your preferred format for creating a revenue stream from your online video products. By paying a user fee to publish your videos, Brightcove allows you to:

* Sell your own advertising or choose to run no ads at all
* Keep all revenue generated from your advertising
* Sell downloads of your video products

Video Marketing Summary

When you market your product with skill and determination, customers will find you on the Internet. And when video marketing customers find what they’re looking for, they don’t care if it’s being delivered by a big production studio or by an individual entrepreneur with a webcam.

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Lack of focus is the main cause of failure in business. This is true no matter what business you’re in. Focus acts like electricity-you can’t see it directly, but you can see how it affects companies and people when it’s running through them. To be a successful video producer and Internet marketer, you must make yourself an expert in one field or niche-the best way to do that is by sharpening your focus. Before you start to create your next video product, consider these simple tips to put the power of focus to work in your business:

Focus increases your self-discipline. Focused people are able to distinguish between the jobs that bring them closer to their desired goals and the daily demands that only waste their time. They don’t get overwhelmed by all the urgent but unimportant jobs that demand their attention.

Focused people know where they want to go. When you have a focus, you have a vision of what you want to achieve. Above all, focused people concentrate on reaching their goals. Focus helps you measure your results and readjust your game plan when necessary.

How to increase your video focus

Post reminders for yourself. Hang your favorite motivational signs where you’ll see them when an idea for a video product seems to be going nowhere. Written reminders can help you recover your focus.

Set daily priorities. Be sure you have an action plan for every day. As you become more skilled at video production and as you learn from your mistakes, this will become second nature to you. But you will always need to do this. Always go back to your list of priorities before you jump into a new task.

Complete the video project you’re working on before you start a new one. We all want to create as many revenue streams as possible-this is a basic part of what we do as Internet marketers. But you’ll only make money by getting video products online one at a time. People who lack focus find themselves getting excited about a new idea before they have finished a project. If you have fallen into the habit of leaving projects undone, you suffer from a lack of focus.

Video Idea Book

Keep an idea book with you. When you’re working on an idea for one video product, it’s not uncommon to get a stream of ideas that could be a starting point for other great video products. Don’t let your next “great idea” cause you to lose your focus. Jot it down and keep working on the first project-stay focused on one project until it’s completed. Don’t start work on another idea until the last project is up and running on the Internet.

Stay focused on your vision. Write the vision for your video product where you can see it every day. Remembering your vision will keep you from drifting. If you get stuck, narrow your options and choose a single point to talk about. If you find yourself throwing out all types of different solutions and ideas at your viewers, you’ll only create chaos.

Lack of focus is the main cause of failure in business. This is true no matter what business you’re in. Focus acts like electricity-you can’t see it directly, but you can see how it affects companies and people when it’s running through them. Keep yourself in focus as well as your videos.

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