Mozilla Popcorn Maker is a video-editing tool that allows you to bring in different online media elements, from social media to audio. This web package is completely free, and simple enough for everybody to achieve professional results after taking the easy tutorial.
This idea of media literacy is a passion of Mark Boas, 2012 OpenNews Fellow and media technologist at Happyworm.
Mark showcased a few of his favourite aspects of Popcorn Maker to delegates this afternoon:
- The Event Editor enables users to create and drag an ‘event’ onto the video timeline- including text, photo, pop-ups, audio, Twitter, Google Maps, loops, skips and pauses. These can be resized to fit your composition, adding a fun creative edge to the process.
- Within each ‘event’ different parameters can be searched for, such as hashtags in Twitter, and street view in Google Maps. Exciting, individual videos that look more complicated to produce than they are should appeal to deadline-laden journalists
- The interface is similar to that of other video-editing software, meaning amateurs are less likely to be intimidated.
- The best thing about the tool is the ease with which the finished product can be shared- that is, instantly.
Rounding off a demonstration of how Popcorn Maker works, Mark concluded:
Promoting a remix culture where users can build upon the work of others offers tremendous potential to get people into media. They can tweak things they like and make their own unique version of it.
Give it a go for yourself here.