It seems that excruciating feeling we all have when faced with enduring someone else’s home movies is as old as film itself. I mean, who wants to suffer through three hours of little Jimmy splashing in the pool, especially when you’d swear that, for two of those hours, the camera is merely pointing up to the sky or flopping around like a walleye out of water?

I think that’s half the reason those tapes never get out of the closet: the person behind the lens is just clueless. But really, good home video camera work really isn’t too difficult if you adopt just a few simple tactics. 

Recently, I ran across, at esquire.com, this wonderful collection of tips, straight from the mouth of one of the living legends of camera awesomeness, Steve Sabol, president of NFL Films, the man who nearly single-handedly made documenting live sports action a work of art. Following his simple guidelines for camera-pointing will undoubtedly bring smiles to the faces of your kid’s kids when they’re someday subjected, as well, to the dreaded home movie viewing session:

1. Keep the camera steady.
Tip: The first sign of an amateur filmmaker is a shaky shot. Don’t zoom in-and-out. Stay steady, focused, quiet, and completely out of the shot.

“During Super Bowl IV, [Chiefs coach Hank Stram] was like Henny Youngman, delivering one-liners on the sidelines,” says Sabol. “His famous quotes — ‘They’re flat as hell’, ‘Looks like a Chinese fire drill out there’ — almost never made the light of day because I was laughing hysterically, my camera shook and killed the shot. We’re very fortunate that our second cameraman didn’t find Stram nearly as funny as I did. I almost ruined NFL history. The lesson I learned? Stay focused.”

I’d add: edit in the camera, particularly if you don’t plan to cut further later. While the tendency might be to continue rolling indefinitely as you compose new shots, stop the camera, set up the new shot, and then roll again. The end result will feel much more cohesive, and the seasick factor will be reduced considerably.

2. Shoot from your knees.
Tip: If you only film at eye level, you’re destined to capture ambulances, fork-lifts, concession stands — there’s nothing poetic about any of that. But if you shoot from the ground-up, the sky, the clouds, the crowd instill a heroic, dramatic feel.

“There are countless iconic shots that wouldn’t have been the same had they not been shot from the knees,” says Sabol. “John Riggins’s famous touchdown run versus the Dolphins in Super Bowl XVII — in that shot, you get Riggins’s face, the gritting of his teeth, and the feel and taste of the line of scrimmage. Shot from field level, that moment just isn’t the same.”

Varying the horizontal angle of view is also important. Don’t just stand off first base when recording that t-ball game; move around, giving yourself diverse backgrounds and alternate views of the action. And if you do plan to edit the material later, the variety that multiple camera positions afford will be invaluable as you cut the shots together.

3. Capture the sidelines.
Tip: Consider the action both on and off the playing field, because sometimes the most vibrant emotions get hidden under a helmet.

“The shot we got of Packers coach Mike McCarthy crumbling to his knees after [Arizona Cardinals linebacker] Karlos Dansby returned that interception for a touchdown in last year’s playoffs comes to mind,” says Sabol. “Sudden death overtime with the ball, and in an instant — the season was over. That shot, taken from behind McCarthy, with the field of play in front of him, said it all.”

And get closer! The further you are from the subject, the more you’ll have to zoom in to capture faces and expressions. And trust me, you want to be on a closer shot. In 20 years, you’ll be struggling to pick out which one of the little people in that dance recital group is yours if you’re stuck on that wide shot for fear you’ll miss any action. Besides, the further you zoom in, the more difficult it is to hold steady. No one wants to see Jimmy’s head. Then his feet. Then his head. You get the idea. Up close is good!

4. Always be shooting.
Tip: Film is expensive. Video isn’t. Capture it all. The best theater is spontaneous theater. You’ll miss those moments if you lose the heavy trigger finger.

“Prior to Super Bowl XXII, one of our cameramen followed John Elway from the locker room to the field,” says Sabol. “On that walk, Elway dodges a sea of balloons, gets stuck behind a pair of horses, and is trapped behind a marching band. It takes him a few minutes to simply get to the field. We never would have gotten any of that footage had we not let the film run like water.”

And don’t forget the moment right after the moment. Your kid gets that great hit, and you nailed the shot perfectly. But the best part is his or her reaction to their success. That’s when you want to keep the camera on them, nice and close, to capture their joy.

5. Get the little things, too.
Tip: One of the best ways to capture the human (child’s) spirit is to capture the moments that tell a bigger story.

“One of my favorite pieces of footage is a shot we did of Dick Butkus’s hands,” says Sabol. “We filmed it on a cold day at Wrigley Field in 1967. It’s just Butkus’s hands, bandaged and bloodied, his ten knuckles covered in contusions. That one shot tells you everything you ever needed to know about Dick Butkus.”

Not so sure you want to document for posterity any bloody hands, but the point is this: it’s life you’re documenting, not a two-hour soccer game. It’s the reason still photographs possess a warmer place in our hearts than those shaky home movies: they capture a single moment in time forever, leaving the rest to our imagination. Video uses those same images, but in stitching together 30 of those pictures every second, the special moments can easily get lost in the volume of it all. So get in close, compose your shots carefully as if you were taking a photo, and remember that in the end, it’s not really the action but the emotion you want to preserve forever.