Movie Tom.Com explores the limits of short movie-making for the classroom. The digital revolution in education allows teachers for the first time to quickly create custom sequences to suit their curriculum. For example, the old Hollywood technique of ‘rear projection’ now becomes possible because current computer screens don’t flicker. Combine this with puppetry, among the fastest methods because the actor can read the script off-camera in real time rather than memorize it. This deceptively ’simple’ (rear projection used to require huge sound stages) combination allows rapid production of movies with exotic and/or moving sets – and this is just one of the many techniques now enhanced and simplified with digital methods.
Rather than relying on canned avatars and sets, current and traditional tools can be combined to create scenes bounded only by the imagination. Characters and props differing in size, colouring and texture (for example an avatar, a paper cutout doll, clip art, an oil painting, a plastic doll, and a toy prop ..) might be brought to life together in scenes by using blue screen, voice-synch animation, natural media emulation, colour effects, and shadow puppetry. Voices and sounds can be matched or differentiated with pitch-shifting, multitracking, and vocoding. And text should not be forgotten.
The object of this site is to show by example how such things can now be done vastly more quickly than would have been possible a few years ago. The key point is that the curriculum no longer has to follow the resource. If you need something specific there will now probably be some way to create it – and in minutes rather than days.
This is intended to show how to use typical netbook-configured software to make a movie from the desktop -ie- no live shots. The end result can be very similar to the Ken Burns Effect: PowerPoint (or equivalent) can take clip art and still shots and zoom & move them around to a voice-over. This remains a powerful contemporary format highly suited to educational presentations.
This video used the sequence: PowerPoint > Audacity > Presenter >Captivate > Premiere
There are alternative ways to do this. Sound files can be attached either in Presenter (which then auto-adjusts slide length) as I did in this demo or in Premiere (which allows last-minute positioning, multi-track, and adjusment of volumes). There are dis/advantages to each.
I made heavy use of screen dumps (print screen) for the visuals assembled as elements in PowerPoint slides as an alternative to the more common capture of live action using Captivate. The PowerPoint method has the major advantage that the slides can be re-edited if the bits are too small or illegible. It’s hard to go back and edit a live demonstration.
The whole PowerPoint > Audacity > Presenter >Captivate > Premiere cycle only takes a few minutes so can be done and re-done before finally publishing to the Web. This allows editing & fixing.
A .pdf of the movie which shows the screen shots more clearly can be found here: Make a Movie
You live in a galaxy. As you look beyond our galaxy you see – guess what? – other galaxies. This 4 minute video is about getting the most out of your telescope, binoculars and/or naked eye. It explains why the views you have from within our own Milky Way galaxy are probably as good as, and probably similar to, those anyone could get anywhere else in the Universe.
This video mainly uses the techniques made popular by Ken Burns of still images animated by pan movements and transitions. Another well-known video that uses still images and text is ‘Shift Happens’. Points to discuss:
The ‘Ken Burns Effect’ in cinematography – what can be done with still shots through panning and movement
use of text as in ‘Shift Happens’
whether music is essential, extraneous, and/or noticeable by its absence in a purely documentary video
constructivist potential for this topic -ie- using the web or real-life astronomy images to test the theme that things look pretty similar across the Universe
For Global Astronomy Month or anytime. Telescopes have a narrow field of view. Without a map it is hard to find even famous objects in the sky. This 4 minute video overviews the most common star map/atlas legend symbols.
Unlike most of my videos this one focussed on content rather than media. It is intended as a stimulus for a school , club or scout/guide exercize. Star map reading tends not to be part of any curriculum.
Even those sophisticated in Earth maps may not have grasped the true layout of objects fading off into the Milky Way star clouds – Why would they? It took humankind until the 20th Century to work this out. It’s not obvious.
Participants can easily create the standard set of astro-symbols using PowerPoint and make up their own psuedo-starcharts. Instead of drawing the map an alternative could be to take the camera out under the night sky and film then map some bright area of the sky. But my video exercize is more practical for use during the school day as the Web provides countless examples, photos and drawings of the main map features such as globular clusters, galaxies etc. and all that is needed is some black paper. One good way of drawing astronomical images is with spattered white paint from a toothbrush. Some software also draws good star images and foggy nebulae.
Points to look for and discuss:
created in a PowerPoint as a slide show
NASA and Google animations inserted to give a bit of variety and speed production.
The main technique used here was fade-in overlays. These can be done in many ways but PowerPoint animation is easy to control when you want multiple elements entering at different speeds.
Below are still shots of the items needed to do the map drawing exercize. Make sure to use black & white drawings only:
The Best Views of the Universe are from our own Backyards
A 9-minute movie with a dual purpose: demonstrate quick movie-production techniques combining puppetry and 3D animation while offering food for thought about astronomy.
This script started life as a children’s book manuscript. However, I got a good response from an article on this theme:
So the challenge was to translate this into the much more band-intensive medium of a movie. Many techniques were employed. Puppets were not used to be ‘cute’ or to appeal to younger children. Rather, they were much easier to use with a one-man-&-a-laptop movie studio. A puppeteer can read the script off-camera in real-time, not needing to memorize it. Note, however that the bear in the TV scenes is an iClone animation using the puppet bear’s face and in the final scene is a voice-synched animation (CrazyTalk) of a still shot of the puppet (against a blue screen). Animations are even easier to use when there are potential edits, revisions, and re-uses of the script.
Points to consider and discuss:
use of spoof (puppet as “1st bear in outer space ..”) to parody the notion that ‘experts’ are needed to discuss what should be ‘general knowledge’ for the human race -ie- our wherebouts in space.
animal puppets and alternatives - whether live actors, picture cut-outs, avatars, clay models, dolls, clip art cartoons or other character portrayals would be equally or more effective.
‘rear projection’ technique live-filming puppets in front of still image and moving image screens.
‘chroma key’ with talking head in final scene.
‘integrated media’ -ie- carrying a character (astronaut) across multiple media -ie- puppet > 3D avatar (iClone) > talking head (CrazyTalk) avatar.
3D character’s ‘space suit’ created from iClone ‘hero’ armour with colour brightened and de-contrasted.
helmets created from CrazyTalk ‘fun messenger frame’.
voices using falsetto rather than digital pitch-shifting.
archival public domain movie and NASA space footage.
home photos of stars using ‘night shot’ feature of standard videocamera.
interior of house from 3D iClone sets.
videoscreen created from animated .gif of movie laid over a powerpoint image of room and TV created from Win Media Player screen shot.
song created with software and multitrack harmonies.
alternative ways of presenting same message -ie- 4 page text version, podcast…etc.
alternatives to ‘preachy’ message -ie whether some discovery method might better convey this message
This sort of movie is termed a parody or spoof – a send-up of a common genre of movie. The main purpose is to illustrate different types of characters that can be used -ie- clip art, miniatures, paper cutouts, and digital avatars, as well as use of sound clips for continuity. Particularly watch the dinosaur enter the ‘make-over chamber’.
A cross between The Wizard of Oz and Maynard G. Krebs and The Son of the Monster that Devoured Cleveland. The entire nonsense was filmed at my desk. The Hollywood sets are from LionHead Studios The Movies, which allows creation of your own movies. Flyover was done with camera filming still shot of The Movies set. PowerPoint was used to animate the characters in still shots. Other shots used hand puppetry. ‘Make-up’ was ‘natural media’ effects in Painter software (Van Gogh, cartoon, metallic .. etc) applied to still shot of hand puppet (similar effects are available with Photoshop). These still shots were then animated using CrazyTalk software and the sequences strung together.
The ‘make-over chamber’ scene illustrates the technique of ‘rear projection + puppetry” now made possible with non-flickering computer screens. A plastic dinosaur is bobbed up and down while the set itself (from The Movies) is ‘moved’ on screen using keyboard controls. Because the chamber is a 3D set its walls appear to move past as the dinosaur ‘walks into it’. The exit from the chamber was an avatar dinosaur from Kahootz. Such puppetry can be done with either real puppets or avatars. The opening credits scene looks similar but was actually done with still images of the dinosaurs and Hollywood background animated in PowerPoint. The latter method lends itself to re-use and editing.
Dinosaur as ‘Walk of Fame’ star was done with PowerPoint ‘fill’ effects. Cheesy end rolling credits done with stock Adobe Premiere ‘title’ effects.
Instrumental sountracks were from Serif MoviePlus. Concluding song was composed and sung at my desk, hence the lame sound as I didn’t want others to hear me singing it. Points to consider and discuss:
Types of characters that can be created: clip art, miniatures, paper cutouts, and digital avatars .. etc
visual special effects
zooming of still shots for fly-over
animation of still shots to bring life to characters
editing and re-usability of PowerPoint animated scenes
rear projection + puppetry technique for moving scenes
audio: merits of commercial clips, compose-your-own etc.
embedding instructional media in a silly spoof rather than in a serious ‘now click on the red button …’ style of edu-demo
use of familiar and archetypal themes such as the Wizard of Oz,A Star is Born, make-over TV, monster movies
The scene below was created at the desktop with a tiny plastic toy Sphinx:
The purpose of such a movie is to create a character that can then talk ‘authoritatively’ about events long ago. The Sphinx would, of course be given a deep (pitch-shifted) voice. He’s seen it all! The scene was created using a still image of the plastic sphinx. A sphinx face was also mapped to an avatar (dancing male figure) in iClone software. A still image of that was captured. A morph programme (many free ones on Web) then created a ‘transition morph’ between the two still shots. The movie was assembled from still shot #1, the morph sequence, the 3D animated iClone sequence, and a commercial sound clip I’d bought long ago. Morphing of still shots is essentially being used here as transition tool but the morph software has powerful mapping capability which allows a character to transform like Jekyll to Hyde before our eyes: Points to consider & discuss:
creating a character as a narrator
bringing a character to life
use of still shots v animations
complementary software: morph, 3D animation, audio, movie-making
In real life, winners of contests and adventures hope to receive public recognition. Animation allows us to create all sorts of fanciful ceremonies and rewards for a classroom. Re-use is inherent as each group seeks to follow in the last heroes’ footsteps -ie- no-one seems to be complaining about winning the ’same old’ gold Oscar statues. Here is a gallery exhibition:
This was adapted from some user-generated examples on the Australian Kahootz software site. I just put up some kids’ pictures as the exhibits to show the idea. The Microsoft text to speech voice with hall reverb was used to give the size illusion. Points to observe and discuss:
digital v tangible v symbolic rewards in the classroom
emulating real-life adventure outcomes
special effects: animation, reverb for realism
sharing and re-use of sets, scenes, user-generated sharing
The most familiar early synthetic voice was that of Sparky’s Magic Piano in 1947, popular in schools over a decade. It sounded as though a piano was talking. The technique is called ‘vocoding’. In those days it was a pioneering project, the Sonovox, from Bell Labs. Today, such software is available as freeware. A vocoder, with voice-synched animation can bring an inanimate object ‘to life’.
The vocoder with voice-synched animation can bring an inanimate object ‘to life’. However, they offer much more: a key practical benefit of a synthetic voice is its ease of production. One only has to speak into a microphone or create some text to make an artificial voice. A library of ‘answers’ or ‘lessons’ from the talking piano could be stored as a database of .wav/mp3 files.
The piano sequence required a few stages: a text-to-speech voice allows unlimited amounts of text to be turned into speech. This voice was then played into a .wav-to-midi software converter (many free ones available) to get a .mid file. This was then played in software with the midi set to ‘piano’. The resulting file was unintelligible as speech but was a perfect musical translation of the voice file. That piano .wav file was then imported to Zerius Vocoder software where it became the ’carrier’ .wav file. The voice .wav file became the Zerius vocoder’s ‘modulator’ file. The levels were blended such that the software then made an intelligible ‘talking piano’.
The soundtrack then animated a still frame cartoon piano using CrazyTalk software. This multi-stage process is perhaps too fiddly for a single short piece like that above. However, the idea is to breathe life into a ‘character’ that can then speak whatever text or audio is put into the system. That it works with text-to-speech voices lends it to batch production of material. Points to observe and discuss:
Bringing characters to life.
When and how to use artificial (robotic etc.) voices.
Voice-synched animated visuals.
Vocoder and wav-to-midi to create musical versions of speech or other sounds (industrial sounds, animals, nature, …etc).
The clips below were shot at my desk. They demonstrate special effects techniqes that can make miniatures seem like the real thing.
The blue-screen in the above clips is of secondary importance to the audio effects. The car was recorded on a metal cutting board with a microphone attached so it picked up the actual sound of the toy. That .wav file was then imported to Zerius Vocoder software where it became the ‘modulator’ file. The sound of a real racing car became the ‘carrier’ .wav file. The software then transformed the tiny car sound into that of a full-size car. The same could have been done with the diesel but the toy locomotive’s metal tracks already sounded authentic enough that all was needed was to pitch-shift the sound down in Audacity for it to sound like a real train. More complex vocoding with speech may require more stages of processing. Points to observe and discuss:
Advantages of miniatures over live sets or animations.
Blue (chroma) screen.
Uses of moving vehicle shots in movies.
Audio special effects applications.
Other ways of making small look big (& vice-versa)
The movie below was created ‘out of the box’ when I first downloaded a demo version of Reallusion iClone to try it out. The goal was to see whether it was possible to create an audience reaction in under 1 minute.
The above was inspired by The Blair Witch Project, the most successful independent film and most profitable US film of all time in terms of the ratio of production cost to box office sales. It took a ‘mere’ $35,000 investment and 8 days filming to create an 86 minute film. My objective was to take less than one minute to creep you out, with $0 additional cash outlay, using freeware, canned templates, clip art, a $10 royalty-free soundtrack I’d earlier purchased, ‘out of the box’ programming with no tutorials, in less than 1 day’s filming, audio, & editing. Points to consider and discuss:
Script: the first 21 seconds (40% of entire movie) are mere ‘suspense-building’ music.
Element of surprise.
similarities and differences: creepy v horror films
Theme: identification with people’s feelings about pets.
3D voice-synch’d avatar with ‘canned’ dance routine.
surreal scene would be preposterous and probably downright silly with live actors & set.
Lighting to simulate fire environment.
Pitch-shifting and reverb of vocals to alter character.
