Silent Film Director is a fun application with a very simple, but clever concept. Brought to you by MacPhun LLC, a company that specializes in photography applications, Silent Film Director lets you record videos from your iPhone and 4th gen iPod Touch videos that are later rendered with your choice of the available video effects (20’s movie, 60’s home video, 70’s home video, Black and White, Sepia and Vintage Sepia) and with one of the eight available built-in soundtracks. After making your selection and a few seconds of processing, you will be watching your own Silent Movie creation. Easy right?

Well, there is a little more to it than that. The standard version of the app, which you download from the App Store for $1.99, doesn’t include the aforementioned built-in soundtracks, but does let you select your own sound files either directly from your iPhone/iPod Touch, or from your computer via iTunes. To get the 8 built-in Silent Film-style soundtracks (and some additional features), you’ll have to purchase the additional 99&cent Silent Film Maker DLC.

The app also features a means for speeding up or slowing down your videos to help create the desired emotion for your film. Videos can be recorded directly from your device or existing videos can be imported into the app from your computer via iTunes. Personally I don’t see myself using the importing feature of the app, for me the point of doing this from an app, is to be able to record from the device and add effects to these videos. Uploading an existing video from my computer, just to get my hands on a basic editing tool like this doesn’t make sense for my workflow. I would much prefer to use an external video editing software on my computer such as Adobe Premiere, which offers even more filter options. Of course, Adobe Premiere could be well out of most users’ budgets, but just the plain and simple iMovie on your Mac will do the trick as well, so Silent Film Director is a bit of a one trick pony which serves a specialized niche market.

Unfortunately once you start playing with the app, you may quickly find, what many would consider standard features, are missing from the “Standard” version of the app. For instance, if you want to be able to do things like crop videos, add multiple fragments, combine video with photos, add transitions or title cards, you will have to open your wallet again and purchase the 99¢ Silent Film Maker DLC upgrade as an in app purchase. I must admit that I felt a bit cheated by this, as these features really should have been included in the standard version. That being said, the standard app should provide plenty of fun for the price.

MacPhun is currently running a marketing promotion to help spread the word about Silent Film Director to potential customers by allowing users to easily upload their creations to the Silent Film Director YouTube channel, where they are having a contest for different categories of videos where participants can win iTunes gift cards and iPads!

In Conclusion

Silent Film Director is an entertaining application that will allow you to explore your creativity and entertain your family and friends, but who’s longevity will depend on how long the novelty of the application takes to wear off. What it does do, it does very well, and I’m sure that you’ll be pleased with the effect. Just make sure to factor in the 99¢ DLC when making your purchasing decision.