Art is obviously subjective and open to interpretation, however if you want the absolute fastest (other than creating a free 30-second video from Animoto) way to create an artistic or at least art-like video, you only need three things:
- CreativeCommons
- Windows Movie Maker
- YouTube with AudioSwap
Here’s how it’s done and you will be amazed at the results.
Head over to http://search.creativecommons.org and click the Google Image button at top.
Search for something artsy-looking. I typed in "cityscape" and purposely selected "Large" on the left sidebar to get higher quality images:
I download ten images:
I fire up Windows Movie Maker. Since I’m using Windows 7, I use the old-style Movie Maker 2.6 which is similar to XP’s Movie Maker.
I drag-and-drop all the images into WMM, then select-all inside WMM and drag all those to the storyline:
WMM by default shows each image for 5 seconds, and that’s fine.
For each image, I right-click, select Video Effects and add the following effects:
After that I play back the video to make sure all the effects applied properly.
On save of the movie I purposely choose Video for local playback (1.5Mbps NTSC):
..and save the file.
Being there’s no audio in the file, it saves quickly even at this high-quality setting and it will be small (usually under 10MB).
Now it’s time to upload to YouTube. I sign in with my YouTube account and upload the video. Once the video is done uploading, I edit the video in YouTube and use the AudioSwap feature.
This is what I used for audio:
Note: It is highly suggested you check "Only show songs of similar length to my video", and if you really want to go for the thought-provoking style of music, always go with "Soundtrack" for the genre.
To the right of the list is a Preview button so you can preview the video with the audio.
Once I found one I liked, I mashed the Publish button in YouTube (it’s right below the Preview button). You get this notice:
Click OK.
Depending on YouTube’s traffic at the given moment, this can take from 2 to 5 minutes.
Once the conversion is complete, this was the end result video:
Here are the really nifty parts about this whole process:
- All the images are legal to use – as long as you don’t claim credit for them (and in fact, you should place image credits in the video description).
- The music is legal to use because it’s from YouTube itself, so there’s no reason to worry at all about copyright violation because they provided the music and not you.
- It actually looks half-way decent.
You probably won’t be able to get this all finished the first time in 20 minutes or less, but after a few times you will. And heck, you can substitute CreativeCommons photos with your own when you’re ready.
What makes the above video work?
Two things:
1. The soundtrack provokes thought. If you watch the video with the sound turned down, it’s not the same and looks absolutely boring.
2. There is actual motion in the video. Still images are, well, still. Using the "Ease In" along with simple and quick fade in/out transitions do liven it up without it being annoying or tacky.
Is it art?
Nah. "Artsy", yes, but not art.
If you’re going to make a slideshow, make it at least do something and sound good. Now you know how.
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