Epic Movie FX
Easy-to-use but violent special-effects tool
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Epic Movie FX
Pros: Amateur filmmakers can add cinematic effects to their work.
Cons: All the effects focus on violence or disasters.
Bottom Line: These video special effects can wow viewers (at least for a moment), and the app's free.
Epic Movie FX could help teachers interest students in expanding video projects. It's certainly impressive in its ability to create quite realistic (if only for a moment) effects in video taken in a student's surroundings. However, you may want to discuss issues of violence in movies if you have students use this app at all.
Open Epic Movie FX, choose a special effect, point your mobile device, and tap where you want the effect to be seen on the video screen. Press Record. Press Stop. Playback is equally straightforward. Videos are stored in your device's image gallery.
At the time of this review, the special effects in this easy-to-use tool all included some sort of violence or natural disaster: Bazooka, Copter (a helicopter crash), Hell Fire (bombing), Missile, Plane (a crash), and Tornado.
Students who use it should be aware that including these kinds of special effects in videos depicting their everyday surroundings -- such as a video taken at their school -- could be disturbing to other students who have sensitivities to such violence, as well as students who have parents in the military.
Epic Movie FX can provide budding filmmakers with a bit of exposure to digital creation in movies and may help spark some good discussion about special effects and violence in movies. Ads appear on each page of this free app, which is definitely a distraction. Still, it allows teens who are interested in cinematic special effects to dip into the concept by superimposing action movie-style images onto video they take on a mobile device.
It would be much better for student video projects if the developers added some "epic" effects that didn't include real-life violent destruction. It doesn't really serve young moviemakers who don't want military or natural disaster violence in their films but who still want to add some special effects-style action. Other improvements would be an option to remove ads and more options for editing video.
Learning Rating
It is a great tool for any classroom.
This app has unlimited uses. It could be incorporated into any classroom. It gets students out of their seats and fosters creativity.