Paw Prints

I’m in the middle of a passionate love-hate relationship with iLife. I’ve just finished a 25 minute movie using stills and video clips from our trip to visit family just before Christmas in 2007. It’s been great fun to “be” with them while engaging my creative/editor self.

iPhoto can make a quick slide show for you with a backing track, but if you want titles and more control, you need to go to iMovie. Your photos must be in iPhoto, though! (The new iLife ’08) iMovie is a great editor for an amateur like myself. (I had played with the earlier iMovie and never quite finished a project: the Ken Burns effect with photos wasn’t as clear to use and the transitions had an odd workflow.) At over twenty minutes, i wanted my movie to have chapter markers (imagining my young nephews particularly wanting to repeat one section; my spouse’s siblings another).

If you want chapter markers, go to GarageBand.

I’m not sure i understand this division: there is definitely a great deal of audio editing in iMovie. I think i had more power to shape the volume levels in Garageband, but as someone merely mixing in existing clips, the compositional powers were not used. I’ll thank Magnatune for their reasonable licensing rates. While i looked at CCMixer and some of Archive.org’s media, i didn’t feel i could “share alike” in this project. Magnatune and Christine’s suggestions of particular works provided a great celebratory texture, despite my occasionally giving in to using some sound effects. From Garageband, to iDVD where the themes support chapter navigation and adding “extras.”

Moving between applications general meant producing the final version for that ap before going on to the next. While the applications claim to share a media library, i found it awkward to use. It’s clearly designed for the person who has all the disk space in the world, helped on by TimeMachine, no doubt. It wasn’t a barrier to my use, although i did have to use the command line to get produced movies out of the iMovie project and move them to my preferred storage location.

And now for credit and production notes, in progress:

Credits

Magnatune
http://magnatune.com/artists/jag Jag’s “Hoboin’” (Pretty Girl Blues, 2003)
http://magnatune.com/artists/compilation Magnatune Compilation (Christmas Music, 2007)

• Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring (Ralph Rousseau Meulenbroeks)
• Allegro (Richard Savino)
• Silent Night (Ralph Rousseau Meulenbroeks)

01-Angels We Have Heard on High – Hark The Herald Angels Sing (James Edwards) (3:26)
02-Dancing Day Part I – A Virgin Most Pure (Stephane Potvin and the Con Brio Choir) (5:26)
** 03-Good King Wenceslas (James Edwards) (2:02)
** 04-I Saw Three Ships (James Edwards) (1:31)
05-Megan’s Daughter (Cheryl Ann Fulton) (4:29)
06-Gloucestershire Wassail – Wassail Song (James Edwards) (2:43)
08-Sans Day Carrol – Sussex Carol – Deck The Halls (James Edwards) (1:39)
11-Shchedrik – Carol of the Bells (Kitka) (1:22)
?? 12-Bella Gioiosa (Jacob Heringman) (0:47)
13-Oh Come All Ye Faithful (Ralph Rousseau Meulenbroeks) (2:12)
14-We Three Kings (James Edwards) (2:36)
15-Romanesca (Cheryl Ann Fulton) (2:31)
** 16-God Rest You Merry Gentlemen (Ralph Rousseau Meulenbroeks) (1:56)
17-Dancing Day Part II – Coventry Carol (Stephane Potvin and the Con Brio Choir) (3:47)
18-The First Noel – Silent Night (Ralph Rousseau Meulenbroeks) (2:57)
19- (3:15)
20-Waissel – Polish Dance (Jacob Heringman) (1:49)
21-Con Amores Mi Madre (Dufay Collective) (2:08)
22-What Child Is This – Greensleeves (James Edwards) (2:32)
23-Le Souvenir De Vous Me Tue (Asteria) (1:27)
24-Shen Khar Venakhi (Kitka) (4:11)

CD Case: http://kahuna.merrimack.edu/~thull/CDcase/cd.pdf

DVD theme iDVD 7/Forever

Colophon
Canon PowerShot A570IS
iLife ’08: iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie, Garageband, iDVD
Fonts include
PlymouthRock ‘SnowDusted’ (Contact info at tagteamtype.com)
Bone Thugs

Copies: M&D ?, L+?, N+ o, DD o, L+ o, A+ o, J&J?, Gmm?, us, Master

Tags: iDVD, iLife, iMovie

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 27th, 2008 at 8:25 am and is filed under Other Projects, Photography, Today's Log. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.