Ken Burns my ass!!!
Have you ever noticed that, whenever a producer hands you a drive full of photos they say something to the effect of “oh, this will be quick and easy, it’s all photos!”?
What they don’t seem to realize is that it takes even more time to put together a video consisting of nothing but photos that they will actually be happy with. Sure, I could just dump all their photos on the timeline, line them up with the VO and be done with it. But they wouldn’t like that. ”Not really what I was imagining. Could we do a move on them?”
Sure. We can do a move on them, but now you’re looking at a LOT longer than it would take to cut together video, which has the motion aspect built-in. Add to that the text and text motion that they will inevitably want over the photos and you’re looking at a pretty heavily involved job. A heavily involved job that I’m tempted to fire up iMovie for to use that whole auto-ken-burns-effect thingy.
I mean, with video, you really can just drop it in the timeline and line it up with the voiceover. With stills, you have to add life to them. You have to keep it interesting. Which is almost always going to involve keyframing. I thought about opening up Motion for this one, but, quite frankly, that would have taken even longer, and this project is on a budget (which is why we don’t have video to work with).
So producers, don’t assume that since you’re providing all the source material it will be an easier edit. Usually, the opposite is the case.
Love the post. Been there many times as well and you hit it on the head. I also love it when they insist you stay on a still for like 60 seconds to cover some specific piece of VO. I have also been tempted to use iMovie for the Ken Burns thingee, but last time I looked, it didn’t support a high enough res output for my projects (but that was some time ago). Nowadays, I just use CMD K to lay keyframes right in the timeline and then tweak from there in the canvas (at like 50%).
Have you tried using Templates within Motion? Open an example one like ‘Glass Panes’ – File / Open Template
this has drop zones in – animate the drop zones however you want, apply a ‘grow’ or a ‘motion path’ and a ‘fade in out’ then resave this as a new Template – File / Save As Template
Now open Final Cut and select Sequence / Add Master Template and select your new Template
This will pull the template into the timeline and load it into the viewer – see the drop zone boxes under the ‘Controls’ tab? Drag and drop any image onto these and they’ll animate in the same way that you animated the drop zones in Motion.
This might be a good way to get a quick ‘Ken Burns effect’ within Final Cut…
Paul
“This might be a good way to get a quick ‘Ken Burns effect’ within Final Cut…”
Let me clarify that, it might be a good way to set up an effect to reuse many many times, in order to quickly achieve the effect in future.
Have you tried using Templates within Motion? Open an example one like ‘Glass Panes’ – File / Open Template
this has drop zones in – animate the drop zones however you want, apply a ‘grow’ or a ‘motion path’ and a ‘fade in out’ then resave this as a new Template – File / Save As Template
Now open Final Cut and select Sequence / Add Master Template and select your new Template
This will pull the template into the timeline and load it into the viewer – see the drop zone boxes under the ‘Controls’ tab? Drag and drop any image onto these and they’ll animate in the same way that you animated the drop zones in Motion.
This might be a good way to get a quick ‘Ken Burns effect’ within Final Cut…
Paul
Love the post. Been there many times as well and you hit it on the head. I also love it when they insist you stay on a still for like 60 seconds to cover some specific piece of VO. I have also been tempted to use iMovie for the Ken Burns thingee, but last time I looked, it didn’t support a high enough res output for my projects (but that was some time ago). Nowadays, I just use CMD K to lay keyframes right in the timeline and then tweak from there in the canvas (at like 50%).
Love the post. Been there many times as well and you hit it on the head. I also love it when they insist you stay on a still for like 60 seconds to cover some specific piece of VO. I have also been tempted to use iMovie for the Ken Burns thingee, but last time I looked, it didn’t support a high enough res output for my projects (but that was some time ago). Nowadays, I just use CMD K to lay keyframes right in the timeline and then tweak from there in the canvas (at like 50%).
Have you tried using Templates within Motion? Open an example one like ‘Glass Panes’ – File / Open Template
this has drop zones in – animate the drop zones however you want, apply a ‘grow’ or a ‘motion path’ and a ‘fade in out’ then resave this as a new Template – File / Save As Template
Now open Final Cut and select Sequence / Add Master Template and select your new Template
This will pull the template into the timeline and load it into the viewer – see the drop zone boxes under the ‘Controls’ tab? Drag and drop any image onto these and they’ll animate in the same way that you animated the drop zones in Motion.
This might be a good way to get a quick ‘Ken Burns effect’ within Final Cut…
Paul
Speaking as a photographer, PLEASE NO DON’T. It kills me to flip to a documentary and see random pans and zooms on photographs. Maybe you could just remind your clients that all-at-once is the way photos are meant to be viewed, and this Ken Burns mania will all just go away?
Damn you Ken Burns…
Love the post. Been there many times as well and you hit it on the head. I also love it when they insist you stay on a still for like 60 seconds to cover some specific piece of VO. I have also been tempted to use iMovie for the Ken Burns thingee, but last time I looked, it didn’t support a high enough res output for my projects (but that was some time ago). Nowadays, I just use CMD K to lay keyframes right in the timeline and then tweak from there in the canvas (at like 50%).