In the last 12 months there has been a burgeoning of services and tools exploring the challenge of drawing out a narrative from users’ recent and archived photo and video content. Many of these are single platform services, often developed by the platforms themselves.
Facebook LookBack Film
https://www.facebook.com/lookback / https://www.facebook.com/help/206982576163229/
A free automatically created 1 minute film, showing highlights from a user’s Facebook timeline. Uses chronology and number of likes to identify usable content. Only displays content uploaded by the user (not content that the user is tagged in). Latterly added a post-video manual editing function, which allowed users to swap photos in and out of the video within the existing structure.
Carousel by Dropbox
https://www.carousel.com/
Free display tool for Dropbox users to apply to their content on Dropbox.
Google+ Stories, Movies, and Auto Awesome
http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/google-stories-and-movies-memories-made.html
Free tools for Google+ users to apply to a user’s content on Google+. Auto Awesome automatically creates daily video edits of photos and videos shot that day, with customisable options.
The Wilderness Downtown
http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/
HTML5 video experience by Arcade Fire. The user enters the location of their childhood home or school, and the programme uses Google Maps and Streetview to customise a music video with this location.
Museum of Me
http://www.intel.com/museumofme/r/index.htm
HTML5 video experience by Intel that uses a Facebook App to create a virtual museum fly-through from your Facebook content.
Take this Lollipop
http://www.takethislollipop.com/
A ‘scare’ film in HTML5, highlighting the unexpected and unpleasant ways in which a Facebook user’s content may be viewed or used when they allow a Facebook App access to their account.
Animoto / Magisto
http://www.animoto.com / http://www.magisto.com
Cloud services that makes photos and video clips into rich videos. Magisto also auto-video edits.