First attempt at using iMovie

Shortly before the holidays I was sitting listening to a few of my records, it was early in the morning and for some odd reason I felt a creative urge hit me. I decided to film a record playing from different angles and in different lights using my iPhone. I could have used my actual camera but once I had figure out how I was going to position the phone to prevent shaky footage, I realised my iPhone would practically be easier to work with. 

I put on a record, the torch on my phone and got filming! I had no idea at first the capabilities of iMovie and it's editing software, although in my younger days I tinkered around with Windows Movie Maker creating goofy clips with my friends, so I had a rough idea of how video editing worked. I managed to get all the clips together after uploading them, then progressed to cutting them and tidying up the start and end of each one of the clips. There are a lot of options regarding filtering, colour, contrast etc. but I felt that on only my first attempt, that would be overkill. 

Once I had all of the clips together in the order that I wanted, I looked into cropping and panning. I had fun with this because it gives the impression that the camera was actually moving during filming, of which I lacked the equipment for. I may have went overboard with the cropping and speed etc. because at some points in the film I feel the panning goes a little too fast and particular clips aren't shown for enough time. But of course this is something to take on board for future experiments and projects.

The last stage was audio. Now as much I would have liked to have kept the original audio track (The Sound of Bread) on each clip, they wouldn't have flowed together and would have sounded wrong. So I took away all audio and went for one of the many, many choices iMovie gives you at this stage of the process. It might not fit in with the speed in which he film progresses but I felt it was the most appropriate. If I ever go back to editing this particular group of clips I'm going to try and record the audio of my record player separately, so it picks up the crackles and authenticity of the record, and then splice that with the film. 

Well - here's what I came up with! It took me about 1 hour, so keep that in mind.

Playing about with beach photos

Spent about half an hour on fusing these 2 pictures together. Using the editing app 'Afterlight' on my iPhone I was able to layer the 2 photographs (that were taken on my camera which I synched onto my phone using iTunes) and adjust contrast, saturation, composition, exposure etc. 

Neither of the photographs of my brother and sister were posed or set up in any way. Pretty happy I was able to achieve this with my iPhone, I suppose I have little faith in it when it comes to creative activites but this proves me otherwise! I'll continue to explore the features of 'Afterlight' and other such apps, and update my blog on my findings.

Testing the app 'Cinamatic'

Two weeks ago a man had an incident whilst out on his bicycle. He suffered a fall because of a bad heart. This meant that the local ambulance team were forced to close off the road and call in the air ambulance.

I decided to capitalise on this tragic event and take a walk down the road across from my street and take some videos of the helicopter. Of course I felt a little bad for the guy getting stretchered into the helicopter and all but - I had to try this app out right? He was fine any way, plus they were in no rush whatsoever! I was waiting for the damn thing to take off for more than half an hour... Eventually he made it to Edinburgh where I'm sure he made a full recovery!

The audio on this tester video cuts out after each individual clip but in the future I'll edit the sound out, or at least make it less obvious to people watching.

The filter choice irritated me and I settled for the default, grainy, cheesy retro look. It worked okay, but as I said I'm gonna keep my eye out for opportunities regarding subjects to film.

Summer 2014

I have been thinking how I will spend my free time over the coming Summer holidays. As well as working 5 days a week at Hawick Knitwear I have 2 holidays to look forward to - Nairn, Inverness with my family and Poland with 3 friends, both in June. So in no way will I be 'bored' this Summer.

Receiving an A4 Moleskine sketchbook from my friend Flora will likely prove a very worthy - if a little belated - birthday present indeed. I plan and hope to keep up my creative ways throughout the summer and keeping my sketchbook at hand will almost certainly help.

Updating this blog will be a regular occurrence. I am also hoping to pursue a certain extra-curricular activity that will involve some guts (I don't mean intestines) and patience, then again it might not happen, probably because of the risks involved...I hope I'm not hyping it up too much ha ha.

Anyway this post was just for me to affirm my intentions for the coming months. I hope it helps!