Apple Training Series: iLife ’09

272 Hollywood, Here I Come: Creating Visual Effects

Creating a Polished Opening

A strong opening is critical for every video project, and since you’re not deep

into the body of your story yet, it’s one of the least distracting places to try out

different visual effects.

Remember, however, that your opening shots set the tone and the mood for

the rest of the piece. If you keep this in mind, you can effectively prepare your

viewers for what’s to come and engage them in your movie from the opening

moments.

Adding a Still Image from iPhoto

One way to give the movie a nice introduction is to grab a still photo and put a

title over it. In many situations, you’ll have both video and still photos of the same

event. Fortunately, you can view your iPhoto library from right inside iMovie.

1 From the Project Library, open ATS-Bhutan - (Lesson 9).

This is a project containing all the edits made in Lesson 8. If you completed

Lesson 8, you can also continue working in the

ATS-Bhutan - (Start) project.

2 Click the Photos button in the Event Browser.

Photos button

Adding a Still Image from iPhoto 273

The Photos Browser opens, showing all the Events from your iPhoto

library. You can navigate to other iPhoto albums using the icons at the

top of the iPhoto library.

3 Find the Bhutan Event, and double-click it.

You can limit the Photos Browser to show only pictures from the

same date as the Event currently open in the iMovie Event Browser or

from a date range. The clips in this project had to be modified, so they’re

no longer linked to the photos from the same Event. In your own projects,

however, this is a quick way to find photos from the same Event as your

video.

4 Find the photo of the mountain vista pictured below.

5 Drag the photo into the project, adding it before the first shot. Play the

project.

274 Hollywood, Here I Come: Creating Visual Effects

The still photo is added and an automatic zoom-out effect is applied. You

can customize that effect in the Crop window.

6 Click the still photo in the Project Browser, and press C to open the Crop

window.

Swap Start and End button

The green box indicates the starting frame, and the red box indicates the

ending frame. iMovie automatically animates from the start to the end,

creating the zoom effect.

Because this is the opening of the show, we want to invite the viewer

into the location. A zoom in, instead of a zoom out, would be more

effective.

7 Click the Swap Start and End button, then press the Spacebar to play.

That switches the zoom out to a zoom in. You can also click the green

or red box and manually adjust it to create a custom movement.

8 Click Done to close the Crop window.