How was this made?

I want my students to create a presentation and would like for it to be like the Shift Happens videos from youtube. My question is--what program was used to make this video? Is this just a power point? Is was this made via iphoto or imovie?

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Permalink Reply by Kev on October 10, 2009 at 8:19am

It would be an incredible pain to make such a thing in a video editor. The animations are far too advanced.

Powerpoint can definitely do it (and fairly easily) but getting it turned into video isn't easy. I use Wondershare PPTtoVideo and it works great but is not free. Flash would be another option but is quite complex to learn.

If you just wanted a simple text > picture > text > picture kind of thing then indigo's suggestions above would be perfect.

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Permalink Reply by Tammy Moore on October 10, 2009 at 6:35pm

Our vote (the kids crowded around screen to help out - so cute) is that it is Flash. This wouldn't be too hard to learn in Flash because it was mostly text effects. The animations in the video, in CS4, would be pretty easy to do once you have the basics of Flash figured out.

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Permalink Reply by Christy Tucker on October 11, 2009 at 9:10am

This version of the video wasn't created by students or teachers; the animations were done professionally by a company called XPLANE, who donated their time. I'm not sure what program it is, but it's certainly one of the professional ones (Flash, Blender, etc.).

As Kev noted, you could do a lot with PowerPoint. If you're going to post them online, check out Authorstream as one possibility; unlike Slideshare and many other tools, Authorstream seems to keep the animations and is able to convert to video.

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Permalink Reply by Nancy White on October 11, 2009 at 12:30pm

We were fortunate to have Karl Fisch, the original creator of Shift Happens, deliver a keynote address for teachers in my district Friday. He said the original version which he created for the staff in his school was done in PowerPoint, but then was professionally adapted into the movie format.

Here is a way to get PowerPoint into a simple movie format:

1. Save PowerPoint as a PDF. (Requires Adobe Professional/Writer Software)
2. Open the PDF. Save as .jpg file. This creates a .jpg for each of the slides in the presentation.
3. Use Microsoft Photostory (free download from Microsoft) to turn the slides into a movie. Animation is limited, but you will have the ability to zoom, pan, focus, use special effects on slides, select transitions, and add a soundtrack.