Link to Rockylou Productions Trailer

During week 2 the DS106 Daily Create TDC607 challenged us to create an exciting movie trailer for our DS106 website and use “the voice”.  Wanting to make the most efficient use of my creative time, I decided to modify the project so that I could use the art I created in real life.  So I made a more professional looking trailer to highlight Rockylou Productions as a whole and how it is actualizing our vision of cultivating creativity and raising visions.

I had started out contemplating how I could make the trailer with iMovie.  But the only semi-workable option was to use the version I had on my iPad. I skipped upgrading my desktop version to iMovie 11, which was supposed to have that functionality (I still have ’09) after reading the absolutely horrible reviews given by current users.  So I did a trusty Google search on creating movie trailers and found a YouTube video tutorial on “How to Create a Movie Trailer For Free“

That led me to a site called Flixpress.Com. There you could choose from a number of trailer templates.  I checked out the free ones and chose the Icy Spin T9 template which allowed me to have 8 images, and title text at the beginning and end of my trailer.  In theory this should have been a no-brainer. Just pop the pictures in and away you go.  But no…. that’s hardly ever the case.

Obruni Podcasts Link

Choosing my eight images was pretty easy.  I wanted to highlight the my Rockylou Productions projects that exemplified “Cultivating Creativity” and “Raising Visions”.  Once found I needed to format them to the requested 600 X 400 px within Photoshop CS5. But upon preview I found out the Icy Spin T9 template actually crops the images to 600 X 349 px.  Fortunately most of the images could be cropped without a problem.  Only one, Obruni, had to be modified significantly to make it fit correctly. I ended up creating quite a few draft versions before things clicked for me.  Maybe if I’d paid for the pro version I would have had more editing capabilities with my project, but for free I had to start over again from the beginning every time.  PAIN!!!

Saving your file puts it into the system for processes and in a minute or two they send you an e-mail that lets you know your video is ready for preview and downloading.  For free you get 640 X 480 SD resolution.  NOT IN MY WORLD! I ended up paying $2 to have an HD version made, since I wanted to import it into Adobe Premiere Elements 11 to add a music track and the Rockylou Productions animated Logo/ bumper at the end.  (I actually spent $4 because the photo order mysteriously shifted with the first purchase.) I made a conscious decision to not add “the voice” as I felt it would have been a distraction.  It reminds me of an anecdote I heard recently from a DS106 talk (sorry I can’t remember which one, either Gardner Campbell or Jim Groom) about a kindergarten teacher whose students always had the best art projects in school. When asked how she did it, she said she knew when to take it away.

If you’re interested I’ve included below an overview from previous post on how the animated logo was made.

I’m pleased with the final product and have already posted it on my Rockylou Productions page on Facebook.

Music: “Find Your Style”, Newline variation, by John Defaria
Smart Sound Personal Use License purchased from the Vimeo Music Store for $1.99

=>Rockylou Productions Animated Logo

The Rockylou Productions animated logo at the very end of the video was created by incorporating a dissolve transition between two logo images designed by Amber Lockridge.  Transitioning from b&w to color with a slight increase in the size of the color graphic by 1%  is meant to give the illusion of growth and expansion, an important value statement for Rockylou Productions.

The audio logo for Rockylou Productions was made with GarageBand and a simple “D” chord that I played on my 12-string guitar.  I took the original recording and added a Bright Guitar effect to the basic track.  I then duplicated the original track four times, and added dimensionality to the chord by adding a Lunar Bounce to two (panning each slightly left and right) and a Swirling Echo effect to the two remaining tracks, also panning them slightly left and right. With the addition of the Ambient – Wide Spaces effect to the master track the memorable audio logo for Rockylou Productions was born.