iMovie '09 & iDVD: The Missing Manual

Phase 3: Build the Storyboard

The project storyboard is the large work area that starts out at the top of the screen, as shown in Figure 3-6. The key to building a movie is moving your selected video bits from the Event Browser into this storyboard.

Figure 3-6. When the storyboard area is fresh and new, the message "Drag media here to create a new project" appears. (It means "drag movies here," of course.) But clicking the Add Selection button, or pressing the letter E, works just as well.

Adding to the End of the Storyboard

Most people, most of the time, build a movie by reviewing the raw footage from left to right—from beginning to end—and choosing bits, in sequence, to include in the edited masterpiece. In such cases, you'll want to add your selected clip or clips to the end of your storyboard.

iMovie offers two ways to do that. Select some video in the Event Browser, and then do one of these things:

• Press the letter E key.

• Click the Add Selection button (identified in Figure 3-6).

• If you have a Mac laptop with a multitouch trackpad (for example, a recent MacBook or MacBook Pro), swipe upward on your trackpad with three fingers.

In any case, you'll see the selected chunk(s) of video fly from the Event Browser to the end of your storyboard.

Tip

It's perfectly legal to add multiple clips to the storyboard at once; just Shift-click to select several filmstrips in the Event Browser first. But ...