moviemaking

As a parent, there's nothing quite so satisfying as watching your kids express their creativity. Doesn't matter if it's with a set of blocks, a box of crayons, or an app that turns long sequences of still photos into superhero-themed movies -- it's just thrilling.

On Saturday, I gave my 9-year-old son a five-minute tutorial on using Lego Super Hero Movie Maker, a new app that lets Lego fans create nifty stop-motion animations using their own minifigs (i.e. little Lego people).

By Sunday, he'd already created several hilarious movies, the best of which involved a giant praying mantis catching and devouring several minifigs (hey, who says the good guys always get to win?). And he was just getting started -- Super Hero Movie Maker was an instant hit.… Read more

I love making movies. If I could have a do-over, career-wise, you'd see my name in film credits instead of on blog posts (not that I don't have equal love for the latter, of course).

That's why I've always been drawn to camcorders, which let me indulge my inner Spielberg--even if it's just to create music video-style family montages. I've purchased several over the years, always relishing the improvements in resolution and image quality.

But, let's face it, things have changed. Now that most smartphones and many tablets can shoot video--in some cases … Read more

You know the old saying: necessity is the mother of invention. The necessity? film two sides of a conversation with one iPhone.

The invention: the Love Box video mixer, a wood contraption that looks like it was born in shop class.

The result: documentary filmmakers were able to record a real-time conversation between two people, one on either side of the iPhone, without a special app or any kind of post-production editing. Neat!

The unfortunately named Love Box is little more than a wood stand with an angled mirror that can slide back and forth. Positioned properly, it focuses half the iPhone's lens on what's in front of it and half on what's behind. The result is a split-screen view, not unlike what you'd see during a TV-news interview.… Read more

You've probably seen some of the video masterpieces filmmakers have created using nothing more than an iPhone. Of course, most of those clips, commercials, and shorts were shot with a single camera. Impressive as the results can be, aspiring videographers would no doubt appreciate the option of multiple cameras shooting at multiple angles.

CollabraCam is a potentially game-changing app that turns your iPhone into a multicamera control center, one that's linked in real-time to as many as four other iOS devices. This is better seen than described, so check out this info vid:

Cool, right? What's really … Read more

Windows Movie Maker 2 is so easy a child could use it--an incredibly patient child born to filmmaker parents who didn't mind restarting this application every few minutes. From the get-go, you get the feeling that this isn't going to be an easy program to like; Microsoft's installer doesn't play nice. It gives the user no input on program location or other options. The plain interface promises simplicity with drag-and-drop storyboard options, though during testing, it was more like drag and freeze. The program typically froze while importing MPG video files. If importing worked, Movie Maker … Read more

Intel and DreamWorks Animation on Tuesday announced a strategic alliance designed to power up the movie studio's 3D authoring tools.

Faced with increasing demand for 3D animated feature films, DreamWorks will receive access to Intel's latest and future high-performance chips, including those with multiple processing cores. Intel's software engineers will also work with DreamWorks to tweak the studio's applications to run on an Intel-based computing infrastructure.

"Technology plays a significant role in enabling our artists to tell great stories. By utilizing Intel's industry-leading computing products, we will create a new and innovative way for … Read more