Chapter 9. Adding Pizzazz to Movie Maker Movies

IN THIS CHAPTER

65 Add a Special Effect to a Clip

66 Manage and Delete Special Effects

67 Put Your Video in Slow Motion

68 Make Your Movie Look Vintage

69 Transition from Clip to Clip

70 Convert from Color to Black and White

71 Copy Effects from One Place to Another

Movie Maker enables you to spruce up your videos by adding special effects. You can add special effects to single or multiple clips. To compound the excitement, you can add more than one special effect to the same set of clips, and Movie Maker applies each effect sequentially as the movie plays.

TIP

Too many special effects distract an audience from the movie. Your content is far more important than the special effects you add to the content. That's why special effects are called "special"; use them to accent the content and to bring an audience more into your movie.

Movie Maker's special effects include transitions . Transitions can help move your audience from clip to clip. The tone of the underlying movie determines what kind of transition is best at the time. Actually, all clips transition from one clip to the next, but unless you specify a transition effect, the first clip's final frame ends and the next clip's earliest frame begins playing without any visual effect occurring, except for the clip change.

KEY TERM

Transition ” The way a movie moves from one clip to another, with the tail of the earlier clip twirling, folding, exploding, fading, or in some manner changing into the next clip.

In addition to transitions, Movie Maker's special effects will change the way single clips or the entire movie plays. You can make your movie look old, turn gray, fade to white, fade from white, play upside down, and a host of other effects. The truly amazing thing about Movie Maker's special effects is how easy they are to apply. You simply drag a special effect from the Contents pane to whatever clip (or clips) you want to apply the special effects to and Movie Maker does the rest.