Put Your Photos on TV, Part 1
Pages: 1, 2, 3

Also, music with a lot of dynamic range (variation between very loud and very soft) is not usually a good choice. Nor is music that has any samples or percussion that sound like noise. (In other words, material that has a "spray" or "water falling" or "wind" sound.) And music with very tinny or bright sounding percussion, especially cymbals (real or sampled) will usually compete with any talking on top of it.

A lot of techno and industrial is a bad choice for beds (the industry term for background music) because of the noise factor and/or bright percussion.

Basically, there's a big difference between good music and good background music. A lot of music I LOVE to listen to makes horrible background music to talk over. Conversely, a lot of music I wouldn't listen to on its own makes great background music.

I find the use of distracting beds is a mistake that's often made in independent filmmaking (and occasionally in pro filmmaking). Inexperienced directors will use music with vocals that sums up the mood of the film and then have people talk over it, and it's hard to hear the people talking. For instance, a punk rock track with shouted vocals or a hip hop track with rapping on it is great to set the mood for a film. (Or a podcast, or any audio media. I look at podcasts as "little movies without visuals," and approach my production with this in mind.)

Charlie Squitten, Jr. — the REAL star of the show.

But music with singing is not great background music for scenes in a drama where characters are talking, or in a documentary film under interviewees speaking. It's best to save vocal music for montages where there's no speaking, or use it to set a mood before or after actors (or interviewees) speak.

I don't listen to hip hop much in the course of my week, but I tend to use it (without the rapping) in films I make, and under talking in podcasts. Hip hop is made to talk over, ya know? Rapping is talking, albeit rhythmic talking.

Trip hop (mellower, spacey music made with similar production techniques to hip hop) makes even better background music under talking. It's got the level dynamics of hip hop, but is a little mellower and less obtrusive.

It's really easy to make great background music in Sony Acid, and they even offer a free version, Sony Acid Xpress. Mac users should check out GarageBand.

Here's a YouTube video that demonstrates types of background music that work, and ones that don't:

Making the Movie

And now, the fun part. After you've got all your stills and audio ready, open a new project in your video editing program. Specify standard NTSC-DV (720 x 480) resolution (Figures 2 and 3). [Ed. Note: Michael uses Sony Vegas and Adobe Premiere, but the techniques are similar in video editors like Apple iMovie and Windows Movie Maker, as well as in still-oriented programs like Boinx Fotomagico and LQ Graphics Photo To Movie.]

Fig. 2: The New DV Project menu in Vegas.

Fig. 3: The New DV Project menu in Premiere.

I'm assuming you have a basic understanding of video editing. If you don't, there are plenty of books that can help. (I wrote one called $30 Film School.)

First, import your image folder into your media pool (Figures 4 and 5).

Fig. 4: Selecting all files in a folder for importation into the Vegas media pool.

Fig. 5: Images and audio imported and available in Vegas media pool.

Then import a folder with all your audio into the media pool. Select all images and drag them into the timeline (Figures 6 and 7).

Fig. 6: Select all images and drag and drop them into the timeline.

Fig. 7: All images are in the timeline.

All the images will align in the timeline in alphabetical order by file name. The default in most programs is for each image to display for ten seconds and then change to the next image. You can drag the edges of the image in the timeline to get a longer or shorter duration, and you can select images or groups of images and move them around on the timeline. It sometimes helps to zoom in or out on the timeline.

For the most part, almost any image works over almost any music (given the tips above), but there are places where it just won't. For instance, you don't want an image of one person on the screen while you're talking about another person. That's just confusing.

Now drag your audio into the timeline. Put the music on one track and the speaking (if any) below that on another track. You can adjust the volume of each, at any point in the show, as needed.

Once your images and audio are in the timeline, place the cursor at the beginning (left) of the project and hit the spacebar. Your movie will begin to play in the little monitor window on your computer screen. (You may have to move things around and resize the monitor window in order to see everything clearly.)

You'll want to cut images and sections mostly on the beat of the music, though you may find artistic reasons to break this "rule" from time to time.

You'll get a feel for this whole process the more you do it, and will get better with each successive try. Making a movie from stills combines artistic talent in photography, video, and music, and the more you have a feel for each, the better you'll be at this.

In the second half of this feature, I explain exactly how to get your new movie onto cable TV.