On your computer you should have a free little program called Windows Movie Maker. It should be at Start/Programs/Windows Movie Maker (in XP). If you don’t have it already you can get it here. While I’m not really impressed with Windows Movie Maker, we will discuss the use of it here since it is free.
Open WMM and in the left hand column click on ‘import pictures’. Then import your music and sounds from the ‘import music’ link at the same location. Save this collection under a recognizable name for future use.
Towards the bottom of WMM you will see ’show storyboard’ and if you click it it will change to ’show timeline’. Make sure you are on the timeline. Then select the music piece you want to use for your opening and drag it to the audio track. If needed, you can clip the track. Just drag the ends of the track to the correct point. (You can see more details of the timeline view by clicking the ‘+’ magnifying button.) Right clicking on the track will give you options for volume, fade in, fade out, etc. If you have a second (or more) piece of music that you want to use, drag it down to the audio track too and edit it to your specifications.
Now you can start dragging pictures to the Video track. (If you magnify your timeline so that it is as large as it will go, these next steps will be easier for you.) I like to have my pictures change on the beats of the music. This means that you will need to lengthen or shorten your picture duration to match your music. On the audio track you can see the pattern your music makes. This will help you to match the beats. Keep in mind that if you are going to add words to your pictures they will need to be visible long enough for people to read the words. So you may need to skip a couple beats to make this work.
Once you have your pictures approximately where you want them to be, you can start adding your synopsis. Select your starting picture, make sure that the menu under ‘edit movie’ is showing, and click on ‘Make Titles or Credits’. Select the appropriate option you want and enter and edit your text. Keep your written segments short and concise so that the end-viewer will not have trouble following your train of thought. Repeat this process for all pictures you want to add words on.
Once all your words are entered, you can start adding video effects and transitions. Have fun experimenting with these because they will add panache to your movie. These will slightly change your transitions from one picture to the next so you may have to do a little more editing on the length of your pictures to get them to transition at the correct time to match your music.
If you want to add sound effects you will need to finish your movie (as we will talk about in a moment) and then reimport it as a video. Then you will be able to add a second layer of sound to the movie.
To finish your movie click on Finish Movie/Save to my computer. I just saved it with the preinserted settings and some people were having trouble getting mine to stream, so you might want to save yours a little smaller.
That’s it! You did it! Way to go. You are now ready to upload your movie to YouTube or GodTube.
I would love to see your movie so please comment with a link to yours.
Next time we’ll talk about something else. See you then.
