PE_3_iMovie

I have never used an iMovie Theme to produce a video. I have always favored choosing a blank theme thinking that a pre-created theme took away your creative options. So I tried a theme for this post and am not ashamed to say I did not and had not approached this option as an opened-minded educator. It was actually fun and challenging to tell a story with an abbreviated storyline while matching visuals. I used the Romantic Comedy Love Story and wanted to match the theme to my wife's and my second honeymoon to Hawaii. So to my surprise I really enjoyed making the trailer. It made me want to see the full movie when it comes out.

I can see how this feature of iMovie can be used in a classroom of middle and high school students in writing and digital storytelling. A lot has to be said with nothing but images, key words and phrases to tell a story or convey ideas. I can see where with such little space and time students will be telling themselves and their peers to "get to the point". Creating a movie trailer does just that.

This is my hand at creating an iMovie green screen video. I purchased Pinnacle Studio 12 a couple of years ago that came with a green screen. Pinnacle is a very good video editing program for Windows based PC's but lacks the ease of use features that iMovie has (trying not to be bias here). I have used the green screen with Pinnacle and Windows Movie Maker with great results but iMovie by far makes green screen effects easy. I simple stretched the green screen fabric out on the wall, turned on my incandescent lights, the camera, and started talking about using green screens with students. That was the hard part because inserting the video over stills of the Grand Canyon, Eiffel Tower, and an undersea photo backdrop was easy and seamless.  Notice that at the end of the video I just disappeared. That was because I failed to do what the Lynda video suggested and that was to record a few seconds of just green screen and then allowing iMovie to take care of the rest. Below is the results...ignore the the Halloween colors.

I have already started other Lynda.com sessions. I plan on taking advantage of this additional education while I can.