Assignment 4

The Assignment: Create a movie using iMovie that has audio included in it.

With such a broad assignment it was hard to know where to begin. We made lists of what we were passionate about, or what we wanted to learn more about in class. A movie driven from passion is more entertaining, as the viewer can sense the interest of the maker. When the maker is passionate about what they create, the time and effort filming and editing are less likely to get frustrating. However, in class I did not seem to come up with “the idea” that was bound to work. I am passionate about many things, but most I would not be able to film. For instance, I am very passionate about saving the whales, especially those who are endangered, from the pacific fishers that continuously hunt them illegally. Obviously, I would not be able to gain my own footage pertaining to this issue. I am also very passionate about the people in this world who love me and care for me, this is my family, my amazing boyfriend, my high school group of girl friends, and also although not a person my golden retriever. However, all of these people live five hours away and so creating a movie that incorporated them was impossible.

After much time pondering I came to the conclusion that I wanted to create a movie with a simple topic so that I would be able to spend many hours editing and creating a soundtrack, not just gathering footage. Creating a soundtrack was of particular interest to me, because this was our first opportunity to use music in our movies. We could not use others music, but we could create our own if we knew how to play an instrument or use a program such as garageband on the computer. I did not know how to use garageband at the time and was excited to find out how it worked; since I own a MacBook the program came with my computer.

The idea for my topic was one that I thought of on a walk through the cemetery on a beautiful fall day. I have always enjoyed the beauty of nature, and on the walk my breath was taken away by the tossing orange, and yellow leaves. As I observed, the different kinds of leaves had different personalities as they reacted differently with the wind. The skinny leaves twittered frantically, while the maple leaves slowly waved. The trees themselves, would shake and sway left to right, they looked as though they were strong sentinels waltzing. As I watched, I realized that focusing on the beauty in the movement of leaves would be a great subject for my movie. So captivated was I by their movement that for that reason alone I wished to document it. I would then be able to relive this gorgeous fall day again.

As the topic was extremely simple, the soundtrack became an important element in keeping viewers attention. In the graveyard, it was not only the sight of the leaves but the wind in your hair and the crisp smell of cold decaying leaves that gave the experience. Without such elements that created the experience, the soundtrack became the substitute. Music, as many are aware, is able to express a mood and give a listener sensations that are unattainable through visuals. Using garageband I worked to create a background score that mimicked the wind, and different sounds the leaves created in their motion. I ended up creating three different musical sections, they were interpretive of different wind speeds that caused different sounds and feelings to arise from the leaves. The three sections also thwarted redundancy in the soundtrack, thus keeping viewer attention.

Using iMovie, I brought in my clips and was upset to see that the saturation of color on the video camera did not transfer over to the computer. Compared to the camera and real life, the leaves looked dull once transferred to the computer. I never found a way to fix this issue but in the future I hope to be able to adjust this so that my movie more realistically shows the magnificent color that the leaves were.

Sequencing of images was extremely difficult, since the images changed to the beat of the music. I had to first import the soundtrack into iMovie and then find where each beat happened with the playhead to determine where images would change. The sequences of the first section were wider shots of many trees and their beauty as a culmination, spreading across the hills in a fire of red and oranges. These clips were longer since I used panning, and wanted to capture the grand scale, spacious feeling that is not evident with shorter clips. The second sequence had shorter shots of the leaves close up. In this section I was focusing on the energy of the leaves in strong wind. Since their movements were quick and jittery, short clips were effective. In the third sequence, I still showed leaves and trees close up, but the clips were longer since these were shots of leaves in a slow breeze.

I was very pleased with how the movie turned out. Looking back, the choice to have a simple topic was wise. We had limited time to work and that decision gave me the freedom to spend a lot of time bringing everything together in the movie. Transitions, timing, sequencing, and the soundtrack were all done with precision, which produced a successful movie.