| I knew the word "cheaply" would attract your attention! These days we have economic crisis's and everybody's griping about having no work -- I'm keepin' busy in my older years teaching people things -- how to use ebay, how to edit movies, how to use YouTube, how to write stand-up humor, how to play the piano by ear, how to flirt, and on and on -- many of these talents will get you $$$, so listen up -- I'll not only tell you how to make movies, but in recent years there's been opportunities galore as the high speed internet is common. For example, when you have a YouTube account, YOU HAVE YOUR OWN TV NETWORK THAT MILLIONS OF PEOPLE CAN WATCH. And you don't pay any money to have your own network. IS THAT AWESOME OR WHAT?? I've been taking movies for 50 years, got my first 8mm movie camera when I was 13. And my hobby was tape recording things. I'm now a video producer who's won about $18,000 from national TV programs, so "movie-making" is still my big hobby! Going back a few decades -- if you wanted to produce a movie for theaters to show, you'd spend millions and millions of dollars to produce these things. NOW -- with high def cameras and high speed Internet, you can make movies with the SAME HIGH TECH QUALITY they had years ago, and put them onto your own TV network (YouTube and such) for millions of people to watch, FER NOTHIN'. Got that??? Produce and edit a film for nothing???? Let me elaborate. Fifteen years ago I'd go to these various seminars, a new thing called digital desktop editing had arrived, for only $100,000 or so, you could edit movies on your computer. Wow, the tricks and special effects and things they could do! Except I couldn't afford it. Then they went down in price. You could buy your own home editing unit for about $400. I bought a few of those. Couldn't get them things to work right. You needed an expensive computer too. Now let me tell you how things are today. I use the "Window Movie Maker" for most of my editing. I can feed my video straight from my camcorder into my computer. Then, I can edit my video -- my "film" -- and put in titles, nifty wipes and fades between scenes, add on a soundtrack of music or whatever, and do some special effects -- I can speed up my film. I can do slow-motion on my film. I can make my film look like a watercolor painting. I can make my movie look like an old time black and white film, with scratches and everything -- I can do all sorts of titling effects, have the letters scroll into frame, or have the letters fly in and out, or superimposed the letters over something to identify someone. I can make a slide show -- drag and drop my pictures from the memory of my computer onto a video timeline, and each picture will show for 4 seconds, with crazy wipes between each of them. Then when I'm done with my masterpiece, I can burn my movie onto a DVD. Or I can "render" it into the memory of my computer. Or I can "stream" it -- so that I can email my movie to someone. So how much does this editing unit cost? NOTHING. IF YOU HAVE A VISTA OR XP COMPUTER, THE EDITING UNIT IS ALREADY BUILT-IN ON YOUR COMPUTER. Is that awesome or what?? Think about that for a minute! You had this in your 'puter all this time and didn't know??? -- now hit the start button on your computer, then "all programs". Look for "Windows Movie Maker". Bring it up right now onto your computer and stare at it.....I'll wait..... At the bottom of your screen you'll see either a "Storyboard" or "Timeline". A Storyboard is a sequence of rectangles, each one representing a video scene or a photograph for your slide show. You'll see small rectangles between each of the big ones. That's so you can see which wipe or fade or transition you've chosen. If you see a time line, you'll see "tracks". One track for the video. One track for the sound. One track for the transitions. And another sound track for any audio that you might want to add. You can split tracks for editing, you can shuffle things around, you can do all sorts of things. Now, first thing -- there's a "switch" right above the timeline on the left side where you can switch it to a "Storyboard" or "Timeline". Make sure it's on "Storyboard" for right now. 'Cuz were gonna make a quick slide show. This is going to be very simple -- we're not shooting for a Cecil B. DeMille spectacular yet, we're just going to slap together a simple slide show for right now. So here's what you do: 1. Make sure you're on the "storyboard" mode -- you should see all them rectangles at the bottom of your screen. 2. Now we need some pictures. Got any pictures in the memory of your computer? Sure you do, there's some "Sample pictures" built into your computer. Use those if you want. Open up your "File" menu, choose "Import" 3. It will bring up a box that you've seen zillians of times, and ask you what pictures you want. To save time, hold down your "Ctrl" key, and highlight a bunch of pictures, may about ten of them for now. That will import them all at once. 4. You should now see these pictures hangin' around at the top middle area of your screen. 5. Now the fun part. Use your mouse, and drag and drop them in any order you want onto the storyboard. 6. Now ya got a slide show. On the right top is a video monitor, if you hit the start arrow under it, you'll see each picture go on for about 4 seconds, then switch to the next one. 7. If you want to, you can already put it onto a DVD as a video, but wait a minute, we can make this show a little bit more interesting! 8. Go to the top, and open up your "Tools" menu. Chose "transitions". Wow, look what opens up -- a whole bunch of squares showing different wipes and fades, a LOT of them -- now we're going to have some real fun -- use your mouse and drag and drop them onto your story board at the bottom, into those little squares between each picture. Each time you do that, your monitor cues up it up so that you can hit your start arrow and see on the monitor how that fade looks. Use a different style fade for each picture. Have some fun playing around here! 9. Now, hit your STOP button on the monitor so that it cues itself up to the beginning of your project. Then hit your start arrow and watch your whole production. Looks much better now, doesn't it? 10. Are we done? Not yet. Let's call this project something and put a title in front of it. 11. Go to the top of the page, and open up the "Tools" menu. 12. Chose the line that says "Titles and Credits". 13. Then it will come up with a box that will ask you where you want your title, choose "Title at the Beginning". It will open a box, and start typing something in it. "My Flowers in June" or whatever pertains to your pictures. Click on "Add title", and it will automatically go to the beginning of your storyboard (or timeline). 14. Now we have a cool slideshow that starts with a title. One more thing. 15. Let's add some music to it! Do you have any music files in your computer? If you don't, you'll have in your documents some "sample music" that you can use that's already in your computer. Import it, just the way you imported your pictures, only this is an audio file instead of a picture file. 16. Now you should have an icon front and center of a music file. Before we drag and drop it, we need to change our "Storyboard" to a "Timeline". Lower left of your screen you should see controls to do that. 17. Drag and drop your music file onto your timeline, it will automatically go to the right line. Make sure the music file starts at the beginning of your project, don't just drop it into the center of the thing, unless you intended the music to sart in themiddle of your show! 18. Ok, now we're ready to look at this thing in real quality! Go to the top left, open the "view" menu. Choose "full screen" . 19. Now, lean back and enjoy your show! 20. You can leave off and work more on it later, but you need to "save" it first. Open "File", then "Save", just like you save your printed documents. 21. What you now have is not a completed video, it has to be "rendered" into a "Windows Media Video" (.wmv) You've just got the "skeleton" of a video. Soooo, open up your "file" menu, hit "Publish Movie", and save it into file in your computer. It will take a few minutes to "render" itself into usable form. 22. Now you've got a REAL movie. These instructions are very basic. But it gets you going on using it. If the "bug" bites you, you'll suddenly be making creative videos of all types. You can make money doing this sort of thing. I'll leave that for another webpage! |
| MAKE AND EDIT YOUR OWN MOVIES CHEAPLY! |
