This week in Media 1 was the first time we were able to create media in class time. We were asked to piece together a small edited clip to the theme “colour” composed of online archival footage on a program that we had handy or were familiar with. It was a welcome change from the housekeeping and beat-around-the-bush trivialities of previous weeks. It was my first time using video editing software so I would have appreciated some more teacher involvement but faired okay from intuition and the help of peers.
The software I was using is the simple free-to-mac iMovie, which on first impression appeared tidy, organised and user friendly though soon proved otherwise. As I feel is the downfall with most mac programs was its ability to make the simplest components hard to find by instinct. For example to start editing video one must first create an event, within which you create a movie, within which you import clips, within which you can start a timeline process for editing. Initially this is unnecessarily complex but with time the process became faster but still seemed unnatural. This set-up would be useful for somebody who simultaneously works on numerous large-scale projects.
iMovie offers simple and straightforward cutting, ordering and playback features. However it fell short in many simple areas. As my project was based around “colour” I found it frustrating the lack of a palette to apply to frames and had to rely solely on contrast and saturation (this was further antagonised by the inherent fact that most archival footage is black and white.) This would be less applicable to everyday videos but would be a simple addition that would please me greatly.
The program is also quite limited in what you can manipulate with raw footage. I was left high and dry searching for ways to flip images and reverse playing order. I was told by friends that the adobe premier pro is much better software that offers a wider range of techniques and applications. I was however able to speed up, slow down and add transitions, titles and texts from a large sample library. Though this was useful to play around with in a relaxed project it would become frustrating from a professional perspective as you are completely unable to add your own designs or templates, you’re even roadblocked if you want to align the text as subtitles.
One positive for the program is its efficiency with basic audio. The ability to easily extract audio footage from clips is supported by the simple process to record or import other audio and sample from a large library of apple sounds and loops. The structure of the timeline also makes it easy to match the audio with video or vice-versa and cut or fade to suit.
That seems a harsh criticism of iMovie considering this is my first time using video editing software but my peers also hold a common opinion that it leaves much to be desired. Nevertheless, here is my iMovie edited footage titled “Tickle Me Pink (Just Another Day In The Office)”. It is inspired by a movie about a book, based on a true story of a psychotic cow who wants to plunge the world into never-ending black and white, who can only be thwarted by a time-travelling plumber who can change the world by jumping on turtles. The characters in this film are animated and any likeliness to persons living or dead is unfortunate. Enjoy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoXw8_32PDI