Good Afternoon Everybody!

This has to be one of the better weeks of Digital Storytelling! Movie making is extremely fun and for the most part, I enjoying playing around with the iMovie editor. For this week, we needed to do at least two assignments worth a total of 8 stars or more.

The Assignment

The assignment can be found here and it is worth 4 stars. The exact directions are: “Create a day in the life as an animal. Pick from begining to end pictures or videos of a perfect day in the life of an animal and create a video out of them. Be creative! Include music to go with the feel of the pictures or videos used.”

The Story

Let’s be honest here, anytime there is a possibility of doing an assignment about pets, I choose it. I love my dog and getting to incorporate him into my assignments is a “hoot” as they say. The video should show that my dog actually leads a rather pampered and well taken care of life. So, the next thing I must say is this: If this looks pampered to you, then you might need to reconsider your dog ownership. Do not be offended in any way but hear me out: It is my firm belief that people do not understand what an animal needs. Obviously most of us have not the slightest idea of what a tiger might need, but we also make the mistake of believing our domesticated pets are like us. They are not. I have owned dogs before and I did not take very good care of them, I understand that now. I wanted this video to show the minimum that most dogs need on a daily basis and if you aren’t doing the minimum, try and step up your game. Your pet will thank you. Pretty much all dogs need exercise. I mean REAL exercise where they end up panting and tired. Small dogs might be okay with a brisk walk but bigger dogs will need significantly more. Tying them up  outside will not be sufficient. I see this frequently in my neighborhood and then I see anti social and aggressive dogs. Go for a run! It can only do you good as well. There is much more I can rant about from feeding to grooming to training, but I also have much more to learn myself. I just hope that after watching this video, you may want to glance at your dog and ask yourself if you are giving them the minimum for them to be happy. Many behavior issues stem from boredom and not enough mental stimulation… speaking of boredom, I think my dog needs to go on a run right about now.

The Result

The Process

First thing to do is to record all of your video clips or gather all of your pictures. Making a folder on your desktop to hold all of the video clips is a great way to stay organized. Next, find some potential music that you would want to use for your video. You can use music that you have personally bought from iTunes (or where ever) only if you are making a video for your own personal use. If you are going to upload it to YouTube, I would suggest caution. I use music by Kevin MacLeod and as long as you give him credit and don’t alter the music, you can use it royalty free. Now that you have everything ready, it’s time for some editing! I use iMovie and I have posted a video below that shows what I did. Unfortunately, my sound disappeared on that video so I will describe some of the steps here.

1. Go to the top where you will see two buttons titled “New” and “Import”, click on “New”. If you want a theme you can choose one from what is available, but I usually go with the no theme option. Next, click on “import” and begin importing all the video clips you think you might use. You will see them all show up.
2. Begin selecting clips or parts of clips that you want and place them below in the designated little boxes, where your “movie timeline” is located. Once you have all clips in an order you like, you can move on to transitions.
3. Transitions, music, titles, and etc are located on the bottom left corner. Clicking on these will give you many options and I suggest you play around with a few of them. Sometimes, something that seems like a good idea doesn’t look good in the final product. The video below shows how everything looks and what you need to click in order to make your transitions longer and add your titles.
4. Music is usually my last step. Click on “iTunes” in the lower left hand corner or click “import” and choose your music file. The effect is the same, your music will come up and you will be able to listen to it and choose parts of it. Drag your music clip to it’s designated spot below your movie timeline. You can see how this is done in the video.
5. When you are done tweaking, go to “File” “Share” and “file”. This will allow you choose your resolution, titles, descriptions, etc. It will take a few seconds or minutes for iMovie to export your final product. Now you are done!