Instant Boris Effects

Chapter 15

Animating Still Photos

There may come a time when you find yourself working on a video project without much…well, video. A client may give you still photos and ask you to “do something creative.” Ken Burns popularized the Pan & Scan effect in his prolific documentary work, mostly probably due to the fact that many of the subjects of his work date back to before everybody had a video camera. Pan & Scan—also now known as the “‘Ken Burns effect”—refers to the creation of animation froma still image by importing the image at a large size, then showing only a portion on the screen at a time, moving the image around on the screen or zooming in or out on the image to show one object then another. An example of this would be to show a close ...