Customer Reviews

Making iMovies

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I'm sure you've seen the Apple TV commercials: make digital home movies, including professional-standard fades, cuts and credits, on your iMac DV! Enticed by these dramatic TV commercials, I bought an iMac DV, but of course there was no iMovie instruction manual included. One of the only laments I have about Apple these days is the lack of documentation and instruction books included with their new computers (and their online help features are frequently confusing, anemic, and infuriating to use), but luckily a whole new range of books are being published to cope with this lack. This is one of the first iMovie instruction manuals published, and though I can't make any comparisons yet with the many that will likely follow, this is a great instruction and idea manual. This largish-format paperback (9 x 9 inches) takes you step-by-step through planning your iMovie, storyboarding, filming on your digital camera, editing, scoring, and adding sound and credits. Lots of color illustrations show you examples as well as screen-shot menus that make the process clear and easy-to-follow. There's an excellent general theory section on storytelling on film, many examples of how to make your shots more dramatic, how to get around the basic limitations of shooting digitally or showing your iMovies on a computer screen, troubleshooting, things to avoid, and much more. Among the great tips it offered that I didn't know and *needed* to know is how to convert Quicktime files into iMovie format. Most important, this book contains a DVD-ROM with all the files you need for three separate project exercises in editing, scoring, adding sound and credits. Most "exercises" provided with computer manuals are usually pretty lame, but *not* these...they're entertaining, well-shot short-short film segments (you put `em together into three films), with a tongue-in-cheek quality and twist endings that make them fun to work on, *not* laborious. So, in short, this a great introduction and beginner's manual to a user-friendly but very detailed Macintosh program in specific and novice filmmaking in general. While the page count (138 pages) may seem anemic for $39.95, the large amount of color and the DVD-ROM featuring imaginative projects to use as exercises and source material go a long way to making this a good buy. I'm eagerly awaiting a competing book: David Pogue's "iMovie: The Missing Manual" (ISBN 1565928598)--Pogue is one of the recognized experts on all things Mac and *always* entertaining to read--but *this* book is a great way to start out making your own iMovies. Narration by Jeff Goldblum not included.

This book should not be on the market in its present error-filled state. Apparently the other reviewers who rate it so highly are looking at the book's pretty pictures. They surely have not tried to use the book as a new learner, as the book intends.

The book fails utterly as a tutorial. It has numerous factual errors, mismatches between book and actual experience, misleading language, etc. etc.

This book needs an overall edit in the worst way. At the very least someone should have gone through the tutorials (to make sure they worked!) before putting them into print.

The file for the very first lesson has a different name on the CD than the one given for it in the book, and does not start up with images already imported, as it should. And the web site they refer you to for enhanced coverage is a complete bust.

But that's just the start of your troubles if you're trying to use this book to learn iMovie. Go for David Pogue's Missing Manual. Infinitely superior, and half the price.

(...) If you're interested in shooting and editing fictional stories using iMovie, Smith's book is very useful--even though it's outdated (it covers iMovie1, not 2). What I appreciated about the book is that Smith takes digital editing seriously. He explains, somewhat, the art of it, which is evident in both the book and the attached DVD.

This book, however, would be a waste of money for those seeking to shoot home, small business, or community outreach videos. If you're shooting and editing for these reasons, I highly recommend David Pogue's "iMovie 2," Rory O'Neill and Eden Muir's "Movie Making with iMovie," or Todd Stauffer's iMovie 2 for Dummies"--the latter includes a good CD Rom with Quicktime movie examples of the strategies and techniques explained in Stauffer's book. Stauffer also goes into advance video editing techniques not clearly explained in Neill or Smith's book.(...)

Scott Smith's "Making iMovies" is terrific. It contains specific tutorials and instructions, enjoyable movies made by the author and is easy to follow. I have not read the other books on the subject (indeed, they have not yet been published), but, for my money, it would be hard to beat this excellent, extremely informative and enjoyable book.

This is one of the worst 'how to' books that I have ever read. I bought it on the assumption that it would take me a little further than the David Pogue's "Missing Manual" (which is an excellent book). However, it most certainly does not, in fact it is badly written, full or errors, and actually has some genuinely dubious advice regarding technique. I have no idea why the people that gave this book a good review did so. I can only assume that they are friends of the author, and didn't actually read the book.

All those 'how to edit video' books out there are great, but they all start out assuming you have video! Scott Smith takes you by the hand with a DVD full of pre-shot footage, so you can test out iMovie and use it to tell real stories, not just your cousin's wedding video. Unlike most books that tell you to buy lots of expensive equipment, he tells you how to create real mini-movies on a budget, complete with special effects, like recording bacon frying to get a 'sizzling in the sun' sound! This book is visually appealing and approachable. I learned a lot from it.