Monks Make Mac Movies (Musically!)
 With a Mac, Apple software, some good video footage, and some suitable music (and some good taste and discretion), anyone can make a fun music video, and share them with friends on DVD or on the Web.
Thanks to Apple, complete amateurs can make impressive video productions. All that is needed is a digital video camera, a Macintosh computer with a Superdrive (one which will burn DVDs), and the iLife suite of applications which normally come with Macs. This I know from actual experience, and I’ll try to share how it can be done.
Our Goal – a Short Music Video
In 2003 and 2005, monks from Atma Jyoti Ashram, a small Hindu monastery in Southern California, went on pilgrimages to India, visiting holy places throughout the country. We took over twenty hours of video in our sojourns, and when we returned, we wanted to take some of the better footage and turn it into some short features, and later some music videos.
The Process
In our first attempts we used a 1 Ghz iMac and iMovie–Apple’s entry level movie editing application. We proceeded to hook our Mini-DV camera up to the Mac with a fire-wire cable and import footage using iMovie’s import feature. There was a lot of footage that was either poorly filmed, too long, or uninteresting in retrospect. That still left lots of film to work with. We began by getting an overview of what was available, and putting together a mental picture of the story we wanted to tell with the video. Then, by placing bits of video in the “timeline” of clips, the story we wanted to tell began to take shape.
To learn the best way to make a video that did not have the hallmarks of amateurism, a search on Google yielded gobs of tutorials, tips, and techniques for using iMovie, and video editing in general.
When the clips were arranged to our satisfaction in the timeline, we proceeded to add audio and music (using iTunes–iMovie is well integrated with this and other iLife applications) to supplement the audio on the clips so as to make for more continuity. Then we added transitions (which iMovie provides in abundance) between clips to give the video a more polished look. Then came the titles, subtitles, and effects, which began to turn what started as a mess of random footage into a cohesive, semi-professional looking (O.K., at least not totally amateurish) bit of video.
Then came the agonizing step of taking an objective look at the end results and pruning out footage to make it more succinct – footage which may have seemed wonderful to us might have bored our viewers to distraction! Then we tweaked features to give it the final finished look.
We were very happy with the results.
Making Music Videos with FCE
Later we bought a new Mac which came bundled with a copy of
Final Cut Express, Apple's mid-level video editing software. iMovie was powerful, and its simplicity and intuitive nature made it so easy to use that we were hesitant
to begin using the more complex and less intuitive FCE, though it was admittedly much more powerful than iMovie.
But we fortunately have a close friend, Sharon Janis, who happens to be an Emmy Award winning video editor! She tutored us on some of the basics of FCE, and we gained enough confidence to give it a try. Though the process of editing was similar in some respects to iMovie, we had much more in the way of control and options.
Plus it came with LiveType 2, a full-featured, professional-quality animated titling program, and Soundtrack, a full-featured music/audio application.
We had also previously burnt all of our mini-DV raw footage to DVDs, so rather than re-import the film and fill our already brimming hard-drives, we simply imported the desired sequences from the DVDs using Miraizon's Cinematize2. This yeilded video of somewhat degraded quality, as it had already been compressed when the DVD was burnt, but as it was only for a bit of fun to be placed on the web, that was OK.
The Music
After selecting the footage for some short music videos, we proceeded to put the clips together with the music. The first video footage was so striking in itself, that it only needed a suitable musical background. So we put the footage together first, then added the music as an embellishment.
The second video, however, needed something extra. This footage was more humorous than the first, and needed something to highlight its lighthearted
aspect. So we chose Scott Joplin's tune, The Entertainer, and fit the video to the audio track.
Preparing and Posting the
Video to the Web
We wanted to put the final product on our website, so we opened the footage in Apple's Quicktime Pro, and simply used the "share" command. It sent a compressed copy of the video to Apple's Mail program, using the "state-of-the-art video codec called H.264, which delivers stunning quality at remarkably low data rates" (to use Apple's words). We then uploaded the video to the web, and, Viola!–the final product. We could have used and .Mac account and iWeb, part of the iLife Suite, but we've become used to Dreamweaver. Sorry, Apple.
The end results surprised us and those we've showed it to. So our pleasant experience has solidified us as Mac addicts, though we needed no convincing as to the usefulness of Apple’s products.
See some of the Videos below:
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