VA2

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For this project I decided I wanted to stay with my Hawaiian theme so I focused on sunsets.

I went to Flikr to find a series of pictures of sunsets, I downloaded about 8, then narrowed my selection down based on how they looked as they flowed together.

I opened IMOVIE and imported the photos from my folder into the project. I then arranged the photos according to my preference on how they looked. I explored a few transitions, but really liked how the bubble effect looked and decided to keep that for all transitions. When clicking on a slide or transition a small gear icon appeared, using that feature I was able to effect the length of time I wanted for the transition or the slide. I really liked the appearance of some of the slides as the blurred together toward the end, so I made the transitions between them really long.

I had two big challenges. First was the rolling credits at the end. I wanted to use this as a place to site all of my sources. I really had a hard time manipulating text with this tool. I was unable to keep a font when I pasted my source from my word doc into the rolling credit sheet. I had a really cool yellow text on the black background but it ended up getting messed up. In the end I had to go with a solid white. (I have a hard time distinguishing some colors and think my yellow text was a few different shades). I ended up just selecting the whole text and changing the font at the end of my cutting and pasting. The second part that really messed me up in the credits was the speed of the credits. I was unable to find a help feature on how to "slow down" the rolling credits. It was dumb luck when I finally figured it out.

The second challenge I encountered was with the music. I wouldn't say it was nearly as frustrating as the other issue mentioned. I just really liked the song I found and downloaded but it was on 40 seconds long. After I added a title slide and rolling credits (at the correct speed), my movie was about 60 seconds long.

One thing I tried was opening the selection in audicity copying a 25 second piece of music and pasting it in the middle of the song. It ended up sounding really good as all it did was extend the middle of the song. I did some research on how that would affect copyright. I found the track on Jamendo, and it was covered under creative commons license, but I was unable to determine if I could modify the soundtrack while protecting the artists rights. I ended up playing it safe and just placed the soundtrack on a loop. -- It would have been way to easy to just select another track.

With this assignment I learned how to use photos to create a slideshow in IMovie. I had some difficulty, but I think with practice the project would have become easier. Most of the steps were common sense. I last used I-Movie in 1999 so somethings came back to me. Uploading the movie to Youtube was a new experience for me. This too however was not very complicated. The Youtube browser pretty much walks you through the process.

Sources:

Music http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/282650/sunset-bats-dances-intro

First Sunset Picture

http://www.flickr.com/photos/56028148@N00/292867491

Sunset with Boat

http://www.flickr.com/photos/37134982@N00/1093285535

Lanai and Mountains

http://www.flickr.com/photos/58117789@N00/80779353

People Gathering

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Kids Playing

http://www.flickr.com/photos/33345813@N00/895220635

Couple Swimming

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30054343@N07/7308809550