I decided to create my first tutorial for my favorite assignment, the Your Life IS A Movie! assignment. It was a fun but complicated assignment!

First, I decided on which trailer I wanted to use to create the video. I ultimately decided to use Eat, Pray, Love’s trailer because I wanted to use clips I took while I was abroad and in NYC over the summer, and I felt like the movie and trailer matched my sentiments towards those clips. I also felt like I had a lot of clips that worked with the words used in the trailer! Then, when I had picked the trailer, I used the 4K Video Downloader. There are directions on this page as to how to download this tool. I have found it very helpful for downloading YouTube videos quickly and effectively to use. When I am downloading a video, such as this trailer, to just use the audio, I go with the lowest visual quality because it is unnecessary for what I need it for.

I then brought the file I downloaded into iMovie to serve as the audio. I cut the beginning part because I felt like it did not fit for the trailer I wanted to create. I then had to gather the clips I wanted to use from my phone, so to do so, I put them together in an iMovie on my phone in the app. I just dragged them into a line. Looking back on it, it would probably be a good idea to put spaces between them so that they would be easier to cut…. Then, I uploaded that video to YouTube through the iMovie app on my phone. I tried initially to make it Private but then I was unable to download, so I made it public. I then downloaded it using the 4K Downloader again. I am sure there is an easier way to get the clips to your computer, but mine were too big to email. If your clips are already on your computer, you are set!

I then uploaded the file with my clips to iMovie in the same file as the audio. I put my video at the end of the audio file, and I eventually realized I could just go through my clip and split it by left clicking where I wanted to split the clip. I kept splitting it up until most of the clips were individual. I then started listening to the music and planning out what I wanted to do. When I heard things, such as “balance,” I added a clip of me doing a balancing yoga pose. I put my friends in NYC waving for when the lyrics talk about friends in NYC. It depends on how you thematically want to put it together. I used videos from my adventures abroad and in NYC, and I tried to match the themes of the words to different clips. Once I had matched as many as I could, I filled in the other gaps with other clips. I tried to match the flow of the clips to the music as best as I could. I adjusted the length and placement of the clips by extending them or dragging them around in iMovie. I took a while playing around with different clips and flows.

I also decided to make all of my clips, except the one where my friends in NYC are waving, silent by going to the green bar underneath the clips and dragging the horizontal line down to 0%. In iMovie, if you put one video above the other, it will show that video. Even though the clip I downloaded from YouTube of the official trailer, had images, mine were the ones that showed. I also silenced the clips of mine so that the only audio was the original trailer.

After creating the actual video, I had to decide on titles. I feel kind of like the iMovie text looks funny and not professional, so I did not want much text. I decided to just have the title of the trailer at the end- a play off of the title of the original trailer’s movie- Eat, Pray, Travel. I decided to not have text at the beginning or throughout the video to allow the clips to speak for themselves.

After I liked the way it looked, I downloaded it as a file from iMovie by going to File, Share, File. Once I downloaded the movie as a file onto my computer, I uploaded it to YouTube by dragging the file to the Upload Video page on YouTube. You can find this page by looking in the top right corner of your YouTube page. There should be what looks like an old video camera with a plus sign on it. Click that icon and click Upload Video.

This can be a challenging and time consuming project, but it is so fun!! Good luck!

Check out the video below and let me know if you have any questions in the comments!!