Creating a biography or book trailer with iMovie

Technology is the future. History is the past. Technology is an important and valuable skill to keep moving forward, and students must know history, because those who don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it.

Why not combine the two? I believe in teaching history the FUN way, and creating a biography or book trailer with technology is a great way to combine history with technology.

Getting Your iMovie Started

  1. Open up iMovie. Up top, you will see “File”, and underneath that “New Project”. Click that.
  2. Choose your theme. This is optional. I sometimes click “no theme”.

Putting Pictures On

  1. Find pictures on Google, or take pictures outside. (www.freerangestock.com, www.morguefile.com and www.sxc.hu are great free places to look). Right click and click “Add image to iPhoto library”.
  2. On the right side of iMovie, you will see a camera beside a music note and T. Click the camera. Find your picture, and drag it to the left side of the screen.

Adding Text

  1. To add text, click T and have fun from there!
  2. You can either drag the text to a picture from iPhoto or you can use one of the preset iMovie backgrounds.

Adding Music

  1. To make your iMovie better, add some music from your iTunes library! Click the music note, and drag the song you want.
  2. You can start and stop the music wherever you want (if the chorus is the part you want, use that) Click the settings button and then “Clip Trimmer”

Upload on YouTube

  1. Click “share” up top.
  2. Click “YouTube”.
YOU CAN SEE MY BOOK TRAILER HERE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX0yXqR16V0
Rules: HAVE FUN!!! Just play with it – iMovie gives you SO many options! Create a book trailer, a movie trailer, or a biography. Whatever you do, have fun with it!

8 COMMENTS

  1. […] Along with a new Unit, comes new fun! We are going to be working on two biographies this time around. Last unit we worked on a power point presentation of Abraham Lincoln. We found that this was a fun way to "write" a biography without actually writing it. This time I plan on letting Moe Man have just as much fun. We will be working on a biography lapbook of Teddy Roosevelt and after that we are going to work on a biography trailer of "Wild Bill" Hickok. I found this fun idea right here! […]

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