Medium Specificity

Using iMovie I tend to do the self explanatory and easy, such as making slide shows or music videos. This project stretched me to find out more about how someone edits a video in a simple way. I haven’t used fancy editing software, but it is fascinating to know the other tools I have available to me.

Some affordances of iMovie include easy access for Mac users, tutorials and simple form. iMovie is very understandable and easy to use with a simple drag and drop system where moving music or lengthening a picture time is a simple mouse move. There are also many symbols that you can explore with that give you different effects and control over the colors and transitions of the videos.

Some of the affordances I discovered and explored was “Green/Blue Screen” where you can edit two videos filmed in the same location to appear to be talking to/ interacting with one another. I always thought it would be a difficult challenge to do something like this, but some youtube video have it so maybe I could too. I did not want to move my iPhone too much in between shots or something or the angle would be different, so I just took one long video. Though if I were to try this again, I would want a little more specific interaction, yet this includes more coordination. I would need to know how much time is in between each section of dialogue etc. Although if you play the previous video out loud while you’re recording you would need to voice record over the second video. I am not sure if there is an easier way to do it, but it probably is not on iMovie.

Another area I explored was “Picture in Picture” This is where I control what the video is, but then I get to also put another video in the frame on a screen or something else. A limitation I found included the limiting editing availability in this area. The video I placed within my other video, once I tried to match it up to my computer screen I realized in the video it wasn’t completely rectangle. I even filmed another version to try to make the inserted video less noticable and able to blend in.

The last area I specifically explored in this assignment was editing pictures. I took two pictures and laid them on top of one another. I tried to make it look like the dog was in a completely different location. I realize now that it probably would have worked tons better if I used a dog in front of a green screen or something, because everytime I used the eraser icon it seemed to take out a specific color from the whole picture. So sometime it took out more of the dog than I wanted to. When I saw the eraser icon I assumed I could zoom in and erase certain parts I did not want, and have more control of what I was erasing. This is not the case, and I became more frustrated with the lack of control I had. Another small limitation would be the lack of movement we could control. I would love to maybe take someone on a green screen and place them in front of a background, but what if I want to shift their figure over slightly? I have not found an easy way to help with that either.