A few people have asked me how I made the Hitler bunker parody movie, so promised to write a blog post to detail it. It's actually astonishingly easy - which is probably why so many variations exist! The first thing you have to do is to get a copy of the appropriate part of the movie, it's fairly easily to obtain. It's worth saying right at the outset that this is probably breaking copyright, even taking into account fair use and parody. The company that owns the film did issue a huge number of take down notices to YouTube, but I think after a while they got bored with doing so. However, shortly after I put the clip online YouTube did send me an email saying that it might be infringing copyright, but that I didn't need to do anything - the implication being that they would pull it if necessary. I wasn't issued with any dire threats though.
Once you have your movie you need to import it into a video editing package, and we're fortunate in that Windows Movie Maker does the job very well - I don't know about the Mac, but there are doing to be plenty of packages that do that. Then watch the clip, over and over again. Make a note of what you want to say, and if you can, write your script before you do anything else.
When you're ready to start the editing process your Movie Maker screen should look something like this:
Click on the magnifying glass to get the sequence stretched right out across the screen. When you're happy with that, click on Edit/Titles Credits:
Next click on Title on the selected clip. You'll get this screen popping up:
If you type in the top box your titles will be towards the top of the screen, in the bottom box on the bottom of the screen. If necessary, chose the options to change the colour of the characters and font, and also the title animation - how it appears on the screen.
When you've typed it in, go back to the bottom part of the screen and play. You'll see the movie clip start to play, with your titles on top.
If you need to make the title last longer or shorter you can pull/drag the bottom dialogue box as appropriate, then run the movie again.
And again and again and again until you're thoroughly sick of it. When you reach the point of screaming profanities you're probably done. You can then save it, and put it online.
Very easy indeed, as I said. Surprisingly satisfying though. You can of course watch it by following the link at the top, but it's also here:
Links to the various things Hitler and his generals mention are listed here:
http://is.gd/hitler
Posted by: John Kirriemuir | February 12, 2011 at 02:51 PM