Video Halloween Ideas

These Halloween ideas will make your holiday activities better and scarier, whether you're doing a haunted house, costume party, or scary porch to greet trick-or-treaters.

These are all video special effects that you can do yourself. All you need is some basic equipment and a little creativity.

For examples and complete instructions, try these:

"Screaming Head Video"

"Scary Pumpkin Video")

Here are some other ideas you could try:

		Creepy Crawlies -- Video a bunch of worms, ants, or spiders. Make multiple semi-transparent layers, and change the colors, luminosity, etc.
		The Wall of Pumpkins -- Film pumpkins individually or in groups, then use your editing software to fit as many in the frame as you want.

Witches Dancing in Fire and Smoke -- Two layers, both filmed in the dark with selective spotlights: one of witches in costume dancing around, the other of smoke from a campfire.

Ghosts Wandering in a Graveyard -- Just set up your camcorder on a tripod, aim it at a graveyard, and run around in flowing sheets. Make the frames with people semi-transparent over the frames with the empty graveyard. If you film during the day, play with saturation and lightness to get a night effect.

These special effects can be done with a camcorder, video digital camera or even video cell phone, and video editing software like Sony Vegas Movie Studio (my favorite: powerful, easy to use and not too expensive).

Audacity, free audio editing and mixing software, can also come in handy. A video projector will let you project them on a wall, but you can also show them on any video screen or TV.