Tag Archives: filmmaking

How to Make a Video without Film Footage: Montage Revisited

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montage_thumbnailA commenter recently took me to task for using a blog post title that was misleading. The post, which was one of my first on this blog (August 2012!!), described a film editing technique called “montage” in which the filmmaker uses a series of still images instead of footage to tell a story in a video. The title of the post was “How to Make a Science Video Without Film Footage”. The commenter said that I failed to tell how to do it, what software to use, or to provide a tutorial. Therefore, my post was “wrongly named”.

My intent with that post was to encourage budding scientist videographers, who have no video footage but do have lots of photographs depicting their research, to go ahead and make a video with whatever media they have in hand. I described how someone in this situation could still create an effective video with a sequence of photos and included a video example that primarily used still images to produce a narrative. I also described how one might use the “Ken Burns” effect to add motion to photographs and also sound effects (birds or crickets chirping, water sounds), all of which add to the illusion of movement in the montage.

My plan was to do a follow-up post and tutorial to demonstrate how to implement the montage technique….but I never got around to it.

The comment, though, told me that people were searching for tutorials showing how to make a video without film footage. So in this post, I would like to offer a tutorial that shows step by step how to edit still images to create a video. As you will see, I provide instructions on how to import photos, how to add a “Ken Burns effect”, how to add transitions between photos, how to add text titles, and how to add music or sound effects to bring the montage to life. Although I used iMovie (Version 10.0.8) for this tutorial, the principles of the montage technique generally apply to other editing software.

Note: This tutorial assumes that the viewer is familiar with the basic editing tools in the iMovie application (or some other editing software). However, you don’t need a lot of editing experience to apply this technique. In fact, montage is perhaps the easiest technique for a novice videographer to use when first starting to make videos.

Be sure to select the HD version (1080p) and full screen for best viewing (direct link to the video on YouTube):

How to Shoot Better Video with an iPhone

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Filming with a cellphone is easy…if you know the basics. You might think everyone knows those basics by now—for example, that video shot in portrait mode (phone held upright) will not play back properly on 16:9 aspect monitors (phones, computers, TVs). Apparently not everyone got the memo, judging by all the wrongly-oriented, amateur videos shown on news outlets. And there are several other simple, but often overlooked, ways to shoot better video with a phone.

So I’ve created a brief video to cover all the essentials (plus a few extras), which will improve the quality of videos filmed with an iPhone (direct link to video):

iMovie for iOS Tutorial Updated

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I recently traveled to France and England and used my iPhone 5s and the iMovie app to create a series of videos about the places I visited. I wanted to test the ease with which I could shoot and edit videos with my iPhone, and this trip provided that opportunity. The iMovie for iOS app has been improved and includes a variety of useful tools and options, many of which are easier to use than in previous versions. The ability to edit footage quickly with this app and produce a quality movie meant that I did not need to wait until I got back to the hotel and to my computer to edit. In most cases, I was able to edit the video on the fly as I was shooting the footage. I often had the video completely edited and ready to share by the time we finished touring for the day–much to the amazement of my traveling companions. By the end of the trip, I had created ten short videos that documented what we saw and did each day. I would never have accomplished this with a camera and desktop editing software, as that would have required me to sacrifice my evenings to download the files and then painstakingly review and edit the footage on my computer.

In any case, this experience showed me that with a little practice, it is incredibly easy and efficient to create a quality video with an iPhone and the iMovie app. As I pointed out in a previous post, it’s like having a film studio in your pocket. If you were doing field research, attending a conference, or just traveling as I was, this shoot and edit approach would be a sure-fire way to ensure a finished video product—as opposed to a bunch of random footage stored on a memory card.

Previous tutorials that I’ve created to show how to shoot and edit a science video on mobile devices used an earlier version of the iMovie app. I finally got around to redoing the tutorial with the current version (2.1.1) of iMovie for iOS–the version I used on this recent trip. This new tutorial uses footage I shot at the Natural History Museum in London and covers the basics of how to use iMovie to edit a video on an iPhone (direct link to video):

Video-Making Workshop at SE Climate Science Center

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IMG_1714Last week, I taught a video-making workshop on the North Carolina State University campus hosted by the Southeast Climate Science Center (US Dept. of Interior). The workshop was held in the James B. Hunt, Jr. Library (photo at left) a fantastic facility for a video workshop as you’ll see in a moment. I was invited to teach the workshop by Jerry McMahon, Director of SE CSC, and logistics were arranged by Aranzazu Lascurain, Program Coordinator for SE CSC.

The 1.5 day workshop was a combination of lecture, discussion, and hands-on exercises. The goal was to demystify the video-making process and teach the basics of planning, shooting, editing, and publishing a video. There were about twenty participants (students, faculty, and staff) who each came with an idea for a video that they would develop during the workshop. I provided some background and basic information about each phase of the video-making process, and then participants would practice using their individual video projects. Participants used mobile devices (phones, tablets) to film and edit, and the library provided iPads and iPad minis for those without them. We also periodically watched examples of science videos and discussed the pros and cons of each.

The first day of the workshop was held in the “Creativity Studio”—a high-tech “white-box” IMG_1719space for teaching, learning, and collaboration and features high-definition projectors and movable/writable walls. At left is a photo of workshop participants during the video planning exercise.

After lunch, we covered filming, and participants set off in pairs to shoot footage. The idea was to take turns filming and being filmed on camera. One group took advantage of the library location and interviewed people about how scientists could be better communicators.

IMG_1704On the second day of the workshop, we moved to the Teaching and Visualization Lab, a “black-box” space that offers 270-degree immersive projection on three walls for a total of 80 linear feet of display surface (see photo at right). We covered movie editing and publishing and reviewed some of the participants’ video projects.

I was impressed with the variety of ideas and approaches that the participants employed in their video projects. It was an intense teaching and learning experience for me, but I was pleased with how well everything went. There were a few technical glitches, but we managed in spite of them. And everyone seemed to have fun and to enjoy the video-making process.

The iPhone: A Film Studio in Your Pocket

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One of the biggest misconceptions I encounter about video-making is the belief that one needs special equipment (expensive cameras and microphones), a film studio, and special training to make a quality video. That was perhaps true in the past, but not today. The iPhone in particular has made filmmaking accessible to anyone who wants to create a short video or a full-length documentary. In fact, award-winning films have been partially or totally shot with an iPhone. The following are a few examples.

Some of the footage for the documentary, “Searching for Sugarman” was shot on an iPhone because the director, Malik Bendjelloul, ran out of money. Most of the film was shot on Super 8mm, but a few final scenes were filmed with an iPhone and 8mm Vintage Camera app. I highly recommend this film, by the way, which won an Academy Award in 2013 for Best Documentary Feature. Fantastic example of how to tell a story. Below is the trailer for the film (if you cannot see the player window on your device, here’s the link):

A feature film, “And Uneasy Lies the Mind” was shot entirely with an iPhone 5. The director, Ricky Fosheim, explains in the trailer below why he chose the iPhone and displays some of the accessories he used (link to video in case you can’t see the player window on your device):

Here is a film featuring beautiful imagery from Thailand that was filmed with an iPhone 4s and edited with Final Cut Pro; a Vimeo “Staff Pick” (here’s the direct link to the film):

The next film was made by French filmmaker Maël Sevestre with an iPhone 4s and shows what kind of interesting cinematography can be accomplished with a cell phone camera (if you can’t see the player window, follow this link):

And there is even an iPhone Film Festival. Here’s a music video, “Summer Wine”, that won second place in that category (can’t see the player window? here’s the direct link):

I hope these few examples convince you that you can make an excellent video with your iPhone. I’m now shooting a lot of my tutorials with my iPhone 5s because of the portability and ease of use. With the launch of iPhone 6, which has an even better camera (1080p high definition film at 60 frames per second, video stabilization, 128 gigabytes of storage), amateur and professional filmmakers will have even more moviemaking power in their pockets. And combined with simple but powerful movie-editing apps like iMovie, the iPhone becomes an amazing film studio that you can carry with you anywhere.