The Almost Impossible - teaching Book Trailers with Photo Story &

Movie Maker in 45 mins

By Anne Weaver http://readingpower.wordpress.com/

This is a copy of a presentation made at Marist Ashgrove on July 31, 2010, on basic skills for
using Photo Story and Movie Maker to create multi modal products, such as book trailers. The
presentation was made to 2 groups of about 30 teacher-librarians using wireless laptops.
Teachers do not need to be computer experts – strategies like; using video tutorials, using
google and youtube for assistance, and the software help tools, will aid in working out most
uncertainties. Some teachers recommend Atomic Learning tutorials. Asking people also works,
though it can be more efficient for “just in time” learning to be able to sort out problems
independently. In class situations, students can often assist when problems arise as well, so
there is no need to feel the need to be an expert. Teaching this software really needs twice this
amount of time to do properly, so this was very rushed, but it is designed to provide resources to
support further DIY learning.

We started at http://readingpower.wordpress.com/ and scrolled to the copy of the presentation

located at
http://readingpower.wordpress.com/2010/07/30/book-trailers-presentation/ Here there are also
evaluation rubrics, and 2 current Book Trailer competitions. Other teaching resources eg. story
board templates, can be found at links at http://readingpower.wordpress.com/2010/07/21/links-
on-book-trailers-this-year/ and planning sheets, task sheets, Essential Learning goals etc by
scrolling to the bottom of the page at http://www.learningplace.com.au/deliver/content.asp?
pid=41987

Goals of the session were to provide support for teaching this free software to staff and students,
model a method of teaching book trailers at a beginner level, and convey that the teacher does
not need to be the expert – learners can help each other through peer learning. We investigated
who had used Photo Story and Movie Maker before and about 30 per cent indicated they had
used these previously.

Step 1 Would usually be Copyright

Copyright was covered in in an earlier session, and there was not time to go over this but links
are provided here:
Copyright in school is dependent on the context of publication. A good clip for students that
explains publishing in the real world is: http://www.smartcopying.edu.au/scw/all-right-to-
copy/index.htm
An information pack on Creative Commons can be found here:
http://www.smartcopying.edu.au/scw/go/pid/956 eg. go to google images and click advanced
search: http://images.google.com.au/advanced_image_search?hl=en . Go to usage rights and
choose the bottom option, “labelled for commercial use with modification” as shown, then search
as normal -very easy! More here : http://search.creativecommons.org/# Photo Story contains 2
songs that can be mashed by students which provide an easy option. Jamendo
www.jamendo.com permits use of music, so long as credit is given. Jamstudio
http://www.jamstudio.com/Studio/index.htm (may no longer be free, there may be free grants
that teachers can apply for), but is easy for creating music. More relevant resources on copyright
for teaching are at: http://readingpower.wordpress.com/2010/07/22/book-trailers-music-images-
for-the-public-domain/ and:
http://readingpower.wordpress.com/2010/07/25/is-there-a-free-garageband-option-for-pcs/

Step 2 Examples
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 • Ghostgirl: Lovesick trailer – This was probably not made in Photo Story or Movie Maker, but
is very cool: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5RIBLJb5LA&feature=player_embedded
2.31mins long. The author explains how it was made at: http://tonyahurley.com/?p=70
• This book trailer shows how students can use their own artwork - Home and Away:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmLRFN4HPqQ 2.02mings long. Note how credit is
provided for use of images and music at the end.
• Example using largely text only for Tomorrow When the War Began:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17EkD2-w4a8

Step 3 Learning Photo Story

We watched the Bill Meyers tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtB6_D_toVQ . I use this
in class as it teaches PhotoStory in 6 minutes - very efficient. Where schools block youtube, this
tutorial is also available at:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/911959/creating_a_ken_burns_style_video_from_still_photograp
hs_using_fr/ or http://www.bmyers.com/public/1321.cfm We stopped the tutorial regularly, so
participants could do each step, checking everyone could do each section. People were asked to
check that those around them had mastered the step and if not to provide assistance. This
greatly helped me to assist others as I roamed around in a large group of this size, and speeded
the whole learning process, effectively creating many teachers in the class, instead of just one.
We used the sample pictures and music provided on computers in the My Pictures and My Music
folders in My Documents. Alternatively, teachers can provide a small selection of images, when
teaching the software. Otherwise, students will focus on searching for these, instead of learning
the software skill. Recording voices will need headphones with microphones for some PCs, while
other computers will have voice recording devices inbuilt. Photo Story allows only one audio
track to be created for each picture, not both voice narration and music. However, there can be
different audio for each image. Adding a newspaper image can be an interesting effect:
http://www.tech-archive.net/Archive/WinXP/microsoft.public.windowsxp.moviemaker/2005-
05/msg01175.html

Additional resources
Customizing motion This James Blunt video shows great alignment of motion, using a focus on
eyes, and matching images and motion to the words. It is rather gruesome, so it may be best to
only play a small part, and may not be suitable for younger students:
http://nobravery.cf.huffingtonpost.com/ . Rovinsky shows how effective panning can be to make
still images feel like video. Download and play the Photo Story project file at:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory/tips/create.mspx

Creating title slides Simple instructions to do this can be found at:

http://readingpower.wordpress.com/2010/07/22/creating-title-slides-in-photostory/

Students need to be aware that the quality of the image will affect the final product eg.
thumbnails will appear grainy. Huge image file sizes may cause problems as well if the final
product is very large. For my personal use, I use a free image resizer found at: http://www.vso-
software.fr/products/image_resizer/ which reduces the file size of images, but not greatly the
appearance.

Step 4 Learning Moviemaker

The following are useful tutorials for moviemaker. We did not have time to watch them in our
session, but they can be used in a similar manner to the Photo Story tutorial. We went step by
step through the basics of Movie Maker, importing sound and images, changing the time length
of music and images using handles, adding titles, effects and transitions, swapping between
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timeline and storyboard view, and using the preview function. Importing video is a similar
process, but we did not have time to do this. We again used sample music and images from My
Documents.

Moviemaker in just over 9 minutes can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=6DHFKVzG8Zw or also at: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3aon9_how-to-use-windows-
movie-maker-basi
or 6 mins: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrFJLeF0tA0&feature=related A more advanced
tutorial is at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWtXaSpUx4U .

Moviemaker can only have one audio track. To create more you would have to finish the movie
and reimport it to moviemaker as a video and then add another audio track.

It is very important to be aware of saving in Movie Maker. If you click the save icon, it saves it as
a project file. In project files, the images, sound and animation are still separate. A project file
of Movie Maker is a MSWMM file. Project files can still be edited. Project files are like the
raw batter for a cake - you can still add ingredients. Once it is baked, it is “finished” and you
can’t add ingredients. However, the cake can now be eaten. Similarly, the Movie Maker file needs
to be saved in a format such a WMV to be published, watched or transferred easily, on different
devices. To complete, you have to open this file in Moviemaker and save the movie to
your computer. So, if you’ve finished your movie, choose the 'Publish Movie' or 'Save Movie
File' or ‘Finish Movie’ option (depending on your version of Movie Maker) under the 'File' menu,
or from the menu on the left hand side of the screen, and create a movie file such as .avi or
.wmv. Then, your file eg. WMV can be converted to another video format or burned to
DVD.

To check if it is a project file either:

• Check the file icon- if it looks like an old fashioned, but colourful movie reel – it is a project file.
If it is WMV, it will have these letters.
• Check file extension to see if it wmv or mswmm. To do this, click View up the top of your
screen, then Details. If you cannot see the file extensions, do the following in Windows XP.
Open up Windows Explorer by right-clicking on the Start button (usually bottom left of your
screen). Then, left-click on Explore. Click on Tools, Folder Options, View. Then, uncheck "Hide
extensions for known file types." This will then show the full file name and type.

Movie Maker has a built in effects editor. Some participants said they use Picasa to alter or mash
their images. There are many other free and easy to use image editors, such as:
http://editor.pho.to/ .

Step 5 Publishing
There are a variety of commercial products for converting computer files to CD or DVD as
required by some of the book trailer competitions, such as Nero or Power DVD. If you need a free
one, try DVD Flick http://www.dvdflick.net/ . This is a free DVD authoring program that takes a
video file saved on your computer and converts it into a DVD that can play back in a DVD player,
computer, or Home Cinema set. The software allows adding audio tracks and subtitles to a DVD.
The program is open source. Instructions can be found here http://dottech.org/freeware-
reviews/9708 . You may also need to convert files from cameras to put into your book trailers.
Prism is a free tool for changing formats: http://www.nchsoftware.com/prism/ . Students may
also want to publish to online at sites like youtube and this is easy to do as explained at:
http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=57924 . Parent
permission is likely to be needed to publish student work to sites like youtube from school.
Copyright compliance is important for publishing in the public domain.

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These skills can be used for many projects, other than book trailers, and students generally find
using these tools fun and engaging. In the 45 minutes of this session, most of the time was taken
with going through the basic steps of Photo Story and Moviemaker and this would have taken 35-
40 minutes of our time, for those thinking of doing this with classes.