iMovie: advanced editing techniques
Enhance your productions with precision editing and video overlay effects
REQUIRES
iMovie, some fun and active clips
you will learn
How to add cutaways, split screen and picture-inpicture effects
IT WILL TAKE
15 minutes
When using iMovie on an iPad it’s a simple matter to drag-and-drop the best parts of your raw footage into the timeline and then trim them for a tighter cut. You can easily swap the running order of each clip in the non-linear timeline to tell a story more clearly. This results in a series of consecutive clips that you can share easily with family and friends to a range of social media sites.
By deploying iMovie’s more advanced editing features you can make your iPad-edited movie stand out from the crowd. Here we’ll demonstrate how iMovie’s advanced editing tools and techniques enable you to apply more professional-looking production values to your programmes.
When filming repetitive activities (such as a man juggling) you can make your movie look more engaging by varying the shot sizes and camera angles that you use. With careful editing you can then cut from a wide shot to a close up and the action will flow seamlessly (despite the fact that the two clips were shot at different times). This makes it look like you were filming the action using two cameras instead of one. iMovie’s Precision Editor enables you to fine-tune the in and out points of consecutive shots to ensure continuity of movement – we’ll show you how.
Add video layers
Next, we’ll move on to demonstrate other advanced features, such as combining video clips in layers. This enables you to add cutaway clips. Professional editors use cutaways to illustrate a point being made or hide jump cuts in interviews. Cutaways also add texture and variety to your programmes.
By editing in layers you can also display two clips at the same time. This adds more visual variety and enables you to tell a story more creatively. By splitting the screen to show sections of two clips you can create a title sequence montage, for example. Alternatively, you can place one picture inside another to add extra information to your project’s narrative.