Tag Archives: Ken Burns effect

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 Make a Science Video Without Film Footage

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What if you would like to make a video about a topic but you don’t have a lot of footage?  Or perhaps you would like to describe a new technique, but have only still shots of your equipment and procedures.  Maybe you would like to describe a science concept, but have only audio of someone explaining their work?  Can you still make a video?  Of course.  In fact, there is an editing technique called “montage”, in which the videographer creates a narrative using a sequence of still images to tell a story.  This approach can be very effective, as this video illustrates:

You’ll note that in this video, “Congo River: Artery of the Forest”, the creators not only used montage, but also some other ideas I’ve discussed in previous posts.  Like many scientists, they had taken lots of pictures of various scenes and people, known a B-roll, which were the basis for this video.  As I described earlier, it’s important to shoot lots of still images and video footage in addition to your primary footage (e.g., interviews with key subjects), which can be used for opening and closing credit sequences, for transitions between video segments, and especially to break up long interviews (“talking heads”).

In addition to B-roll, the video also asks (and answers) a dramatic question:  “Will the scientists get their samples despite all the logistical challenges?” In a previous post, I explained the purpose of the dramatic question and why we should try to identify and incorporate the dramatic question into science videos.  The basic idea is to grab the viewer’s attention and keep them watching to see how things turn out.

Finally, it’s possible to mesh film clips with still images very effectively to create a more interesting video than one that is composed entirely of video clips.  In fact, by using a Ken Burns effect on still images, you can create the impression of movement, which blends well with film clips; the viewer often does not notice that the video contains a montage of still images. Here is one of my videos in which I used a combination of footage and still images (as well as animations) to explain sea-level rise and impacts on coastal wetlands (see minute 6:50 to 7:22 for one sequence):

In addition, you can also incorporate sound effects and voiceover to enhance a montage of still images. The “Congo River: Artery of the Forest” video does this very effectively (sounds of stamping along with passport images, for example).  In my video, I added sounds of water movement and frogs chirping to give life to still images.

So if you have an idea for a video, don’t be deterred by the lack of film clips. If you have still images of your research and a good dramatic question, you still can develop a compelling video.  In upcoming tutorials, I’ll show in greater detail how to incorporate the montage technique into your movie editing repertoire.