By now you've probably seen the movie Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol or at least the trailer. In one of the scenes Tom Cruise seeming barely escapes death by a flying car that crashes to the ground right behind him. We all know that these effects are often done with green screen and CGI, but what if you could do these kind of effects right on your iPhone with a few taps of your finger. That's exactly what Action Movie FX allows you to do. You fire up the App, choose your effect, record your scene in the App and then choose where in your clip's timeline you want the effect to happen. Tap a button to process the video and you're done! The saved movie will be 720p resolution even on an iPhone 4s that can record in 1080p.
Here's one that I did last night while setting up for my event
I was blown away by the quality of the overlay considering that I had to do absolutely no keying on my own. What's even more amazing is that the App is FREE! Once you have your processed video you can save it to your Camera Roll, Send it via email or post it on Facebook right from the App. Of course once it's on your Camera Roll you can upload it to just about any other service or App such as YouTube. The App comes with three scenes, "Missile Attack", "Car Smash" and "Demolition Rock". There is an option to do an in-app purchase to buy more effects. However, to date I've not been able to get the store to load in the App. Once it does I'll gladly buy some more effects at $0.99 each.
UPDATE: The FX store finally loaded in the App and there are 4 more "2 Packs" of effects to choose from (8 total effects) at $0.99 per 2 pack.
You can get Action Movie FX for FREE here from the 
Action Movie FX
Action Movie FX allows you to record video right into the App from your iDevice's camera and then apply Hollywood Style special effects right over your clip. No keying or masking required on your part.
- Bad Robot Interactive LLC
- Get on App Store
- Free
All info was collected on 18th January, 2012 when the app was reviewed.
About Terry White
Terry is the co-author of The Best Selling "The iPhone Book" 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th editions. He has been active in the industry for over 25 years and is the founder and president of MacGroup-Detroit, Inc., Michigan's largest Macintosh Users Group, host of the Adobe Creative Suite Podcast and a technology writer - Terry White Tech Blog.
This is sooo cool, Terry, thanks!
Having lots of fun with my iPhone right now =)
If that is do then i must say that Action Movie FX rocks..! Go on and thrill your iphone with action effects.
Great App Terry! Upon inspection of the compositing work, I can definitely say that’s the work of Andrew Kramer from Video Copilot.
Can you believe that Apple will not make an app for the store that is not just for the Ipad?
Come on Apple, we want to browse and purchase from the Apple store with a app that is made for the Ipad.
This is fun but almost everytime I tried to use it on my iPhone, it crashed.