Chapter 7

Shooting, Editing, and Sharing Movies

Movie production on an iPad? Yes, I was skeptical, too. Top of mind, the iPad seems to make more sense for still photography. It’s relatively easy to edit and move photos around. But video is an entirely different animal. Editing software seems, well, so complicated. Transferring big video files feels cumbersome. And overall, don’t you really need a computer for these tasks?

You don’t. In fact, I have more fun playing with video on the iPad than I ever did on a computer. Editing feels like work on my Mac. But on the iPad … well, it’s actually fun.

Let me tell you a story of an early movie experience I had with an iPad. I wanted to shoot a time-lapse video of people taking pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge. The movie, titled The Overlook, is published on YouTube at http://youtu.be/sw_vs8Py7ig. I recorded the footage with an iPad 2 clamped to a tripod using an app called iStopMotion (more on that software later).

I set up the iPad in the back of my VW Vanagon so the wind wouldn’t blow it away, as shown in Figure 7-1, and recorded from the afternoon to dusk. When I couldn’t take the cold anymore, I packed up and drove to a Denny’s coffee shop for a bite of dinner and editing on the iPad. I used iMovie for iOS and completed the project before my last bite. I then relocated to a Starbucks for an after-meal coffee while I uploaded the ...

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