PE2_iMovie

As I went on with the iMovie Essentials Training on Lynda.com, I found out why I had problems inserting still photos into my movie trailer.  I think it was because I was trying to create a movie trailer for a movie that had yet to exist. 

In this tutorial, the trainer explains how to make a movie trailer.  He is completing this trailer for the movie he has been making throughout the training. 

I see that as he is creating his movie trailer, his tools on the right hand side are grayed out just like mine are.  This must have been my problem. 




What I ended up doing instead of creating my Cats! The Musical movie (mostly because I didn't have enough salvageable footage of my crazy cats), I decided to use the best shots I had in iPhoto to make a movie.  I opened a new project to start from scratch, and then I started perusing the plethora of cat pictures I have saved on my computer.  I quickly came to realize that I have more pictures of animals than I do of humans.  It's a good thing I have embraced the whole Cat Lady thing.

I spent quite a lot of time going through my pictures, making clips out of them, making sure the clips were the appropriate duration for the size of the picture (some pictures panned up, and they needed a longer on-screen duration than others), and putting them in some reasonable order.  I then inserted text and transitions.  Lastly, I needed some music to accompany the cats.  Sadly, I did not have the soundtrack for the eponymous Broadway musical, but I found a piece by Yann Tiersen ("Amelie" soundtrack) that is just as whimsical as my cats are.  I had to adjust the audio level of the video clip I inserted. 
Here is a screen shot of the trainer showing how this is done.

The trainer shared extremely helpful information on how to fade in/out audio (which I used int he beginning and at the end of the movie), and how to turn up/down certain background noises.  He also explained how to use the iTunes library to find background music.  I did not use the sound effects, but learning about them is bound to be beneficial in the near future.  I recently made a movie with some of my students that will undoubtedly benefit from sound effects and background/voice levels tweaked. 

Here is a screen shot of me adding audio to my project.