Movie Maker Do’s, Don’ts, and Cool Tricks After talking to several people about what made their movies difficult or frustrating, I found a few common threads.

PROBLEM Not knowing what the other people were doing Not knowing what order the pictures were in Not knowing HOW to record and save narration The L drive took too long

SOLUTION You can work alone Make the script first and fit the pictures to the text Cheat sheet will follow We are working in the lab You can work at home instead

Step 1: Organize your notecards (for both the paper and the movie) See the outline sample to help you Step 2: Write the SCRIPT and type it up. You will turn this in as a separate grade BEFORE you are allowed to start the movie Step 3: RECORD the narration This was the step that most people messed up: Make sure the INPUT LEVEL is set loud (but not too loud or it will lose quality)

Use the stop and start buttons to record SEGMENTS of audio DO NOT check the limit narration box

You must be in TIMELINE VIEW to add narration

After you stop recording, you need to make 100% sure that your narration is saved in the folder with your movie stuff. If you are working with a GROUP then you need to save in the GROUP folder on the L drive. If you are working ALONE save it to your K folder. If you are working at HOME, save it to the flash Of course you can save all three places as long as you give it a specific title. Choose the file location here Give it a good title here Dali narration is a BAD title since it could be anything A GOOD title would be the topic discussed like “Persistence of Memory” or “Surrealism explained” NOTE audio files save as .wma files

OR, you can record all your audio in AUDACITY Audacity is a FREE program that lets you edit audio by creating effects. You can also use it to make your own ring tones.

This is easy…..click the red record button. When you are finished press the stop button. Click FILE and EXPORT. Save it with a unique file name. Alternately, you could put all the sound in this one program and use the mixer functions to fade in and out of music and narration SILENCE did not work well in movies

Visual Content If you have pictures saved as jpeg files, you can import them directly into Movie Maker. If you want to use a close up of a particular part of an image, you will need to use Power Point In ppt INSERT the picture and CROP it. Then resize it to fill the whole slide. A Black background works best for pictures. You will need to create strategic text slides that EMPHASIZE key ideas and definitions. If you have a poet, put the poems in ppt. If you have a musician, create a slide that shows the title of the song and its date. Art? Show the title and date. After you get all your material in ppt, click FILE SAVE AS

Give it a title that makes sense (like Dali, or Kerpash) Choose JPEG from the drop down menu

You will then see this box: Choose EVERY SLIDE

Now that you have your music, your images, and your narration, you are ready to LAYER your elements. Start by creating your opening scene: What is the first thing the viewer will see and hear? Add the images (and video clips) to the timeline Add the narration and stretch the images to the length of time needed to match the audio. You can clip songs to make them shorter, or SPLIT the clip to insert narration in the middle. For example, if you play PART of Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit”, you can split the clip and insert your narration, a slide with the lyrics, and then return to the song with images of Billie on the screen.

Cool things to do in Movie Maker Title slides: Pick a picture and put it in the movie. Make it show for 5-10 seconds To make the title scroll across the page with see through letters (see picture at right)

Click MAKE TITLES OF CREDITS Choose TITLE ON THE SELECTED CLIP (make sure you selected the picture or video you want) Type your title in the box then click TITLE ANIMATION Choose SCROLL INVERTED (inverted means the letters are see through)

Next, you can choose the color by clicking CHANGE TEXT FONT AND COLOR If you make the color black, there will be a black background with words that scroll across the screen. The picture will show through the lettering.