Silent Film Director Review

As a fan of MacPhun's FX Photo Studio, I had rather high hopes for the developers' latest title, Silent Film Director. Essentially, Silent Film Director is a new and improved version of Vintage Video Maker and it shows. It builds upon these great foundations and becomes a pretty impressive video editing tool for the iPhone. Even better, Vintage Video Maker owners don't have to fork out twice as they get Silent Film Director as a free upgrade.

As previous users of both FX Photo Studio and Vintage Video Maker, it's very simple to figure out Silent Film Director. So simple in fact that I delegated to my 8 and 11 year old cousins as I'd just taken a video of them running around. Buttons are clear and precise so you always know what you're doing next.

Upon first downloading the app, you get the Standard version for $0.99 with the Pro version unlockable through a $0.99 in-app purchase. It's a neat system as I'm not convinced everyone would need the Pro version. However, if they do, it's very inexpensive to purchase.

Standard Mode enables you to take the video and add various visual effects as well as musical scores. You can create a 1920s marvel or you can go a bit more recent and create a 70s Home Video instead. Different sound effects enable you to add further ambience such as a piano playing akin to the 1920s or a movie projector reeling noise. Plus you can add other pieces of music at a later date if you want. For convenience, you can adjust the video quality to from low to HD, as you're not always going to need a high quality video.

Processing each of these video conversions does take a little while, especially the first time, but it's not annoyingly long and it's certainly understandable for such an involved process.

The Pro Version for an extra $0.99 offers further capabilities. You can create projects and trim a video as well as mix it with static pictures, as well as add title cards and transitional phases. The results are pretty impressive as the Show Time section also available demonstrates. Show Time allows you to browse other people's contributions and there are some pretty clever ideas out there.

Silent Film Director is a great video editing app. It's simple to use but offers some great results. It was immensely enjoyable to use my own and even more satisfying when I created a mini silent film with my young cousins. It's certainly well worth the asking price for both the Standard version and the Pro version, if you're after extra features.