Moving Pictures

My first project was for some friends of mine. I had quite a few pictures of their family and I combined them with interesting pictures I had found in my surfing. I set the pictures to Dueling Banjos, made a movie & DVD, scored serious coolness points with the family. Someone else asked me how to do it, so I went back to my original project and mapped the timeline to give them. It was fairly easy from there to produce the second project, which is NSFW and not included here.

Now, whenever I produce a new project, I map the timeline for later use. I've included those timelines with each movie in case anyone wants to use them in their own movies. I've identified the version of each song I used (because different versions will vary in timing) and I've identified all the cuts I've made in the song to make it fit. I've given the start time of each picture clip along with the duration so you don't have to do the math. (Note that there is an occasional disjoint between the start times and the duration -- they don't match up. This is because the movies are made at 29.97 frames per second, but I don't provide durations down to hundredths of frames. Every once in a while, all those 3/100 differences add up to produce a mismatch in the duration/time of 1 frame. If you use my timelines, match your pictures to the start time rather than the duration in these instances.) I've also listed how many pictures are used in each movie so you can get an idea what matches your photoset.

I create my movies using iMovie on a Mac. I'm not familiar with Windows applications, but I'd be surprised if there wasn't something out there that lets you import pictures and then set the duration of the imported clips down to a single frame. That's pretty much all you need. (BTW, that's iMovie 6.xx -- the latest version of iMovie that Apple shipped actually removes features, including the ones that allow you to make movies like this. Happily, you can still download iMovie 6 from the Apple website.)

Carmina Mefi

Let There Be Jets

Journey of the APOD

Paravoz Cannonball

We Will Nuke You

The Long Geishas

Flying

Stop Action Sock Movie

In Work

Roll Your Own

• Don't use your favorite song. It won't be your favorite anymore after you've listened to it -- sometimes in 1 second snippets -- a hundred times.
• You can import your pictures into iMovie via iPhoto. If you just want to drag and drop them from the desktop, you may want to do only one photo first so you can set the default duration to something less than 5 seconds before you drag the rest. I set mine between 1 and 2 seconds, depending on the song.
• Songs with changes in tempo or a song in which you can switch between the drum line, instruments, and/or voice generally produce a movie that's less monotonous than one in which the picture changes at regular intervals. (Of course, there might be times when you're looking for that regular-interval thing, like in the Paravoz Cannonball movie above.)
• In iMovie, you can adjust the duration of any clip by dragging on either end of the clip. Sometimes you will inadvertently drag the entire clip in one direction or another which could put all the previous clips out of synch with the song. If you do this, you can fix it by immediately selecting Undo from the Edit menu (or using the Command-Z key combo).
• You can also adjust the clip duration in iMovie by doubleclicking on the clip and typing in a new duration in the dialog box. This is useful when you're trying to change the duration by only a frame or two.
• When the durations are down to two or three frames, it's almost impossible for the viewer to tell the difference. If you have some fast-moving parts, you can save time by just assigning them all durations of 2 or 3 frames rather than trying to hit the exact length.
• When the clips are in that 2-3 frame region, the viewer doesn't really have enough time to absorb much of the picture. Clips that short are really good at leaving an impression of something rather than showing details. If you have a lot of pictures of a trip to the Sahara or the North Pole, for example, you could do short clips to provide an impression rather than longer clips that are pretty much the same picture. They would also be good if you wanted to do stop-action like the Sock movie.
• A movie like this is a novel way to show your photos, but it's still just a novelty. I create these things as sort of a hobby, but even I can't sit through more than a couple of them without getting antsy. You may want to keep that in mind before you create that DVD with 35 of your favorite photo collections set to music.
• If you plan to stream your movie on the Web, keep an eye on the frame rate when you export. A movie with lots of short (2-3 frames) clips will seem jerky and out of sync with the music if you choose a low frame rate. I wouldn't go lower than 12 fps (and recommend at least 15 fps) if you're going to stream something with lots of short clips.