Video+Editing

** How You Can Create Your Own Movie using [|Windows Movie Maker] in less than One Week ** One of the easiest ways to learn any new program is to  create a project   for yourself.

I was asked to create a Year 9 Introduction video for the school and at first it seemed daunting, but I just thought about (Plan) every aspect of the school and either found existing video that the school had produced, created my own or used still images to tell my story.

As far as video editing tools go, Windows Movie Maker is a great introduction into digital movies. The only drawback to the program is that you cannot lower the sound within a song in the middle of the song. The only way around this is to end the song (and fade out as well) and add another copy of the same song, but splice it to where you want it to start. It's a bit labourious but can be done. If you've got a Mac and are using iMovie, it has this feature!

 **Trick #1**:      Keep your clips to no more than 3-5 seconds. Watch any movie on TV or on DVD and count how long the camera stays on any one particular scene. Unless there is a monologue, the camera angle will change every 3-5 seconds. As an example, a firefighter runs into a building and you the audience knows she has to save a young boy on the 16th floor of the building. You see her enter the building on the ground floor and emerge on the 16th. Your brain can piece together that she had to run up 15 flights of stairs.


 * Trick#2: ** When creating your own movie clips, record at least two versions of the same scene. Take a close-up and a wide-angle. Preferably you would get the reverse shot. If you are trying to portray what it's like to play rugby, you'd have a closeup of a player catching the ball in the line-out and just their face, another shot showing both teams and if possible the shot from the other side of the field.


 * Trick #3: Create plan of what you would like to see. Call it "storyboarding", call it what you'd like, but rough out on a piece of paper or on the computer, what scenes you would like to see. It will help focus your movie.   **