iLife® '09 Portable Genius

Chapter 5. How Do I Turn My Content into a Movie?

As most directors will be quick to tell you, shooting the film is only the first part of the long process of creating a movie. Once you've shot your footage, brought it into iMovie, and chosen favorite clips as described in the previous chapter, you're ready to edit your clips and put your movie together on the Storyboard. You can also add still photos to your movies and create custom Ken Burns Effects to bring them to life. First, though, you need to know how iMovie applies edits to your clips because you can edit clips either in the Event browser or on the Storyboard — and the effects are different.

• How Editing Affects Your Clips

• Arranging the Clips on the Storyboard

• Editing Your Clips

• Adding Still Photos to a Movie

How Editing Affects Your Clips

For most editing maneuvers, iMovie gives you the choice of editing a clip either in the Event browser or after you place it on the Storyboard. This may seem puzzling at first, but it makes good sense when you get used to it.

As you saw in Chapter 4, the Event Library is where you store all the footage you may want to use in your projects. All the clips you import from your DV camcorder or digital camera go into the Event Library, and you can use the clips for any project. You narrow down the amount of footage available by creating favorites, by rejecting clips and footage you don't want to keep, ...