The Spark Returns

I am starting to feel better, finally, YAY! And as such, the spark of creativity is beginning to return. I am tentatively planning to start submitting again in January, and in the meantime, those mini-video projects I wrote about are dancing around in my mind again.

Last night, I was wondering about creating special effects for one of my ideas, so I played around a bit with Movie Maker and Gimp (a free Linux-based program comparable to Photoshop). This is what I created, with thanks to Emory for giving me permission to post it:

It's very short and goes quick, so watch out! (It is literally only one second long!) This was a very simple test to see if my idea would work. And it did! But the effects I have used here are very simple, nothing compared to what I'd like to do for the idea I have. (That will require major Gimp-age, it's gonna take me a while to complete it, but it will be soooo worth it.)

HOW I CREATED THE EFFECTS

I took the original bit of footage in Movie Maker, and took a picture of every frame. (Little camera icon in the lower right corner of the preview box). Each frame is 0:00:00.07 -- one seventh of a second, if I'm reading that right?? So for the bit above, I took 15 photos. Then I opened each photo in Gimp and edited it with the effect I wanted, and saved it. Then I went back to Movie Maker, pulled the original footage down into the audio portion of the timeline so I could keep the soundtrack to the footage, and inserted each of the 15 photos in order into the video portion. As photos and not video, they were pre-set to show for 5 seconds, so I highlighted the photo in the timeline, and shortened the length to the minimum for photos which is 0:00:00.13, twice as long as the original frame in the footage. Pasted together like that, when I pressed play, they ran smoothly together like the original footage, only in slow motion. Which looked cool, but meant it wouldn't sync up with the audio from the original footage. So then, I went to effects, and added the "Speed Up, Double Time" effect to each photo. And when I pressed play again, PRESTO! Runs just like the original footage, in the same amount of time, with the added special effects! YAY ME! I love that I am able to teach myself this stuff!