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Monday, January 30, 2012

Prunis Persica: The Movie

Here's a new movie I recently made of "Prunis Persica," a poem from my book, Temptation by Water. Poet Julie Moore read the poem a few months ago for a radio program called "Conrad's Corner." Unfortunately, the station does not archive the poems, but Julie sent me the mp3. I liked her reading so much that I wanted to make a video and use her recording as the soundtrack.

First, I gathered a bunch of photos of peaches, all from Photoxpress. Some of them had white backgrounds and I wanted black, so I used instant alpha in Keynote to get rid of the background color. That took several days. I decided to make this entire video using Keynote, something I hadn't done before. There are many more options for transitions than in iMovie. You can also add a soundtrack to an individual slide and / or to the entire show. You can't, however, add a second full-length soundtrack unless you record it there. But if you want to do that, you could just download your finished product, add it to iMovie, and then add another track.

I had to do some tweaking with timing when I wanted to convert the video to Quick Time. That should be easier and faster next time. So take a look. I hope this makes you hungry for a peach.


8 comments:

  1. Fantastic idea! Thanks for sharing. I am starving for a peach now. ;)

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  2. I wish the wait weren't so long. Canned peaches just aren't the same.

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  3. Well-done. Your decision to use the black background made the peaches stand out beautifully. Really enjoyed hearing the reading.

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  4. Thanks. And that's exactly why I wanted the black background. I thought it made the peaches pop out more and look more tantalizingly delicious.

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  5. Beautiful job, Diane! Love the poem and am definitely starving for a fresh, late summer peach. :)

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  6. Thanks, Jama. I bet you could come up with some wonderful peach recipes!

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  7. As always, great work, Diane! (I love the last effect -- how did you do that?)

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  8. I did the whole thing In Keynote which you should have on your Mac. There's a huge selection of effects. I don't remember what this one was called, but you can go through them. As you do, each is displayed in a window with your photo. Many, many options for timing and direction.

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