Section 9.3. The Ken Burns Effect


9.3. The Ken Burns Effect

The only problem with using still photos in a movie is that they're still . They just sit there without motion or sound, wasting much of the dynamic potential of video.

For years , professionals have addressed the problem using special sliding camera rigs that produce gradual zooming, panning, or both, to bring photographs to life.

But this smooth motion isn't just about adding animation to photos for its own sake. It also lets you draw the viewer's attention where you want it, when you want it. For example: "Little Harry graduated from junior high school in 1963"slow pan to someone else in the school photo, a little girl with a ribbon in her hair"little suspecting that the woman who would one day become his tormentor was standing only a few feet away."

Among the most famous practitioners of this art is Ken Burns, the creator of PBS documentaries like The Civil War and Baseball which is why Apple named the feature after him.

You can endow any still graphics file with this kind of motion, either at the moment when you place it or import it from your hard drive, or anytime thereafter.

9.3.1. Applying the Ken Burns Effect

In this example, you'll animate a photo that's in the Photos pane.

  1. Select the photo .

    Actually, you can select more than one, to process all of them in the same way.

  2. Open the Photo Settings palette (Section 9.1.1.1). Turn on the Ken Burns Effect checkbox, if necessary. Specify how long you want the picture to remain onscreen .

    Use the Duration controls, just as described in Section 9.1.1.1.

  3. Click Start. Use the Zoom controls until the photo is as big as you want it at the beginning of its time on screen. Drag inside the Preview screen to adjust the photo's position (Figure 9-5) .

    In other words, you're setting up the photo the way it appears at the beginning of the shot.

    Often, you won't want to do anything to it at all. You want it to start on the screen at its original sizeand then zoom in from there.

    But if you hope to create a zooming out effect, then drag the Zoom slider to the right (or type a larger number into the box), magnify the photo in the Preview screen, and finally drag the picture itself to center it properly.

    Figure 9-5. Top: To set up the Ken Burns effect, establish the position and zoom level of the Start and End points separately. (In this shot, you can see the little grabby hand cursor that lets you shift the photo within the frame.)
    Bottom: Here are three possibilities. The zoom-out pictured at left results from setting the top slider (Zoom) so that it starts at a high magnification and decreases to the End setting.
    The center example makes the camera appear to zoom in on the woman holding the pineapple, even as the photo shifts position to center the pineapple.
    At right, the Zoom setting was the same (2.0) for both the Start and End points. The only thing that changes over time is the left-to-right position of the photo in the frame.

    Tip: It's actually possible to drag the photo partially or completely out of the frame , leaving an empty black void in its place. If you've done this accidentally , drag the Zoom slider all the way to the left. The photo smartly snaps back into centered position. (This trick works only if the Ken Burns Effect checkbox is turned on.)On the other hand, there are certain creative possibilities here. You can make a photo begin offscreen and then slowly slide into place, for exampleor even exit the screen by sliding off the opposite side.
  4. Click End. Use the Zoom controls to set up the picture's final degree of magnification. Drag inside the Preview screen to specify the photo's final position .

    In short, you've set up the starting and ending conditions for the photo.

    Take a moment now to watch the live Preview, which has probably been cycling through the animation over and over again so that you can check the overall effect. Repeat steps 3 and 4 as necessary.


    Tip: At any time, you can click the Reverse button to swap the settings of the Start and End positions . What was once a slow zoom in, left to right, becomes a slow zoom out, right to left.Actually, here's an even better tip: Option-clicking the word Start copies the End position and zoom level into the Start position. The result is a clip that doesn't move or pan at all, but instead maintains the same zoom level and position for its entire duration. (Or vice-versa. You can Option-click the word End to copy the Start settings.)Suppose, for example, that you've spent some time on the Start point, carefully setting up the size and position of the photoand that you want only a very subtle change at the End point. Rather than trying to re-create all the work you did on the Start point, Option-click the word End, so that both points have the same size and position settings for the photo. Now you can change the End point by just a bit, content that it's based on the Start-point settings.
  5. Drag the thumbnail image out of the Photos palette and into the Movie Track .

    iMovie now begins rendering your photo effect. You specified the beginning and ending positions of the photo; now iMovie is interpolating, calculating each intermediate frame between the starting and ending points you've specified. The red progress bar crawls across the face of the clip, showing you how much longer you have to wait. (Of course, you're free to work on other aspects of your movie in the meantime, although you may notice a slowdown .)

After the rendering is complete, click the photo clip in the Movie Track and press the Space bar to play your Ken Burnsized "photo movie" in the Monitor window. You'll discover that in iMovie 6, the animation grinds softly to a halt at the end, decelerating into the final framean infinitely more useful effect than accelerating toward the end, as in previous versions.


Tip: If you drag a group of selected photos into the Movie Track all at once, press the Option key to make the Ken Burns effect alternate its zooming direction on successive photos: Zoom in, zoom out; zoom in, zoom out. Add a sweet little crossfade to all of them simultaneously (Section 6.3.2.1), and you've got a gorgeous little slideshow.

9.3.2. Editing, Adding, or Removing the Ken Burns Effect

If a photo clip requires adjustment, touching it up is easy enough. Select it in the Movie Track (or wherever it is). Open the Photos pane, and click Show Photo Settings to open the palette, if necessary. Now click Start or End, and reprogram the Ken Burns effect just as you did the first time around. (Feel free to edit the duration, too.) When you're finished, click Update. iMovie dutifully re- renders the clip with its new settings.

And what if you want the photo to return to its original, virginal condition? In that case, click the Start button. Drag the Zoom slider all the way to the left, which both re-centers the photo and restores it to its original size. Option-click the End button. Finally, click the Update button.

9.3.3. Cropping or Moving a Photo Without Animating It

Even when the Ken Burns effect is turned off, the Zoom slider, Duration slider, and the little "move my photo around the frame" cursor still work. In other words, you can use the Ken Burns control to enlarge, crop, or shift a still photo without animating ita very cool tool.

In other words, if you decide that a certain still photo really should be still, click the clip in the Movie Track, turn off the Ken Burns Effect checkbox, adjust the size slider, drag the photo in the Monitor window to position it, and then click Update. The photo is now frozen just the way you like it.

This is a great trick for dealing with a vertical photo that you want to use in the horizontal orientation of a standard television. By zooming in until the black bars disappear, you've chopped off some of the top and bottom of the picture.




iMovie 6 & iDVD
iMovie 6 & iDVD: The Missing Manual
ISBN: B003R4ZK42
EAN: N/A
Year: 2006
Pages: 203
Authors: David Pogue

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