Making iMovies

Having enough trouble operating a DVD drive on a regular basis, I would have never imagined that I would ever attempt at making a movie on my computer.... but today, the impossibility became a reality! At the butt crack of dawn, we met Christina & David at the C.W. Post Library for the MovieMaker / iMovie workshop. I was definitely relieved to hear that the workshop was designed for beginners. The instructors gave a great introduction to equipment pieces (camera, tripod, firewire, etc.), different shots and angles - nice, simple, to-the-point and most importantly, understandable!

Then we were informed that the session was to be split between pc users and mac users (bummer!), but I guess it will allow easier instruction. We first formed groups and went out to get video footage around campus - our group found some nice flowers, climbed a tree, stalked a father playing football with his son on the lawn... overall, good times!

Christina was the mac instructor and she was wonderful! Being a pc user herself, having spent very little time with a mac, and learning everything via the apple tutorial... Christina was an amazing instructor! Today I saw real collaboration at work. Although the "instructor" was not an expert on the iMovie software, she facilitated an atmosphere in which all the participants were learning from each other. We soon realize that there were several versions of iMovie in the room and it was simply impossible to give a traditional how-to lecture... instead, we experimented and was successful doing so.

Personally, I'm pretty bummed about having the iMovie '08 because it actually has less special effects built into the program when compared with the '06 version of the software - which we all thought was a bit strange. Granted the layout and workspace of the two versions were different, the '08 was clearly missing many of the editing features... unless it's strategically hidden somewhere just to piss us off! So, if you have any idea where to find the special effects on the iMovie '08, please let me know!