Hollywood, here we come

By ADAM GIFFORD

"Your invitation to be a Digital Director," said the note from Apple.

It sounded tempting, to be let loose with an Apple iBook and a digital video camera for half a day. Maybe it was a chance to scope out a career change.

The format was simple: throw together small teams of IT hacks, Apple staffers and minor television celebrities, give them the gear, a few props and a location and turn them loose.

The aim was to create a two-minute movie incorporating music and a keyword - one of the Apple product lines or applications.

First, some instruction. A television director ran through some handy tips. When to use closeups. When to go wide. The importance of sorting out a storyline first. The importance of getting enough footage to work with, but not so much we would be bogged down editing it.

The tip that stuck in my head was: if something was worth shooting, it was worth shooting for 10 seconds. I knew from radio experience the frustration of coming back to the studio thinking I had the story, but not being able to find enough usable tape to tell it simply.

Now to decide on a story. The group I was assigned to had no celebrities, minor or otherwise, just three journos, Apple's Jim Ferguson and little inspiration.

Our keyword was iChat, Apple's instant messaging product. Our props, including a cowboy suit, a sailor suit and lots of hats, would have been rejected by any happening children's party. No one volunteered a coherent storyline. No one had any obvious acting talent.

The clock was ticking, and the best thing to do seemed to be to map out some achievable shots on the storyboard and hope something came out at the end.

In the taxi on the way to our location, Myers Park, I suggested going to the Karangahape Rd end of the park and throwing a hat in the air - that would allow us to get a shot of the city below to start things off.

One of the props was a set of juggling balls, and since one of our number confessed to juggling ability it was decided there would be a juggling scene.

The rest was to be made up on our way through the park, a narrow gully winding down parallel to Queen St. There was some broad theme of a quest to hang things together, sort of.

Fortunately the camera was relatively idiot proof. Most of the footage was usable, the exception being when we filmed under trees and failed to take into account the camera automatically compensating for the sunlight behind our target.

Back at base, we imported our 15 minutes of footage from the camera into the iBook. (Tip. Stop every couple of minutes and save. Don't wait for the whole job to fall over a minute from the end.)

What I didn't expect was quite how easy it was to edit using the iMovie 2 software which comes bundled on Macs. Each shot sits on a shelf. Click on a shot and it plays in a larger panel. A quick click-and-drag operation with the mouse along the monitor bar allows you to define the footage you want to use and crop the rest. The finished shot can then be dropped on to the movie timeline.

It was similarly easy to add music.

Now the moment of truth. How did we measure up against the other teams, some of which included people with on-camera experience?

To our relief, not too badly. The scene where the cowboy walked behind a large palm tree and the sailor walked out the other side (that's where the tripod comes in handy) went down well,though people did notice the lackof a coherent story. To make up for the fact our lead "actor" didn't speak above a whisper, we used the subtitling feature.

Other teams found the controls which let them create some nifty titles. One team went wild with Photoshop to burgle the America's Cup from its armoured case in the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron headquarters.

The verdict: Apple has made home movies easy and fun. The Film Commission should hand out iBooks as a way of identifying nascent talent.

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