Chapter 4: Making Magic with iMovie

In This Chapter

Taking stock of the iMovie window

Importing and adding media content

Using transitions in your movie

Putting text titles to work

Adding animated maps

Creating a movie trailer

Sharing your movie with others

Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, George Lucas, and Ridley Scott — those guys are amateurs! Welcome to the exciting world of moviemaking on your Mac, where you call the shots. With iMovie, you can try your hand at all aspects of the movie-creating process, including editing and special effects. Built with ease-of-use in mind, iMovie lets you perform full-blown movie production on your Macintosh with a minimum of effort.

Don’t let iMovie’s fancy buttons and flashing lights fool you: This application is a feature-packed tool for serious movie production. The iMovie controls work the same as many top-notch, movie-editing tools that professionals use. From basic editing to audio and video effects, iMovie has everything that you need to get started creating high-quality movies.

The iMovie Window

If you’ve ever tried a professional-level video editing application, you probably felt as though you were suddenly dropped in the cockpit of a jumbo jet. In iMovie, though, all the controls you need are easy to use and logically placed.

To launch iMovie, click the iMovie icon on the Dock or from Launchpad. (It looks like a star from the Hollywood Walk of Fame.) You can also click the Application folder in any Finder window sidebar and then double-click the iMovie icon.

To follow the examples I show you here, follow these strenuous steps and create a new movie project:

1. Choose File⇒New Project or press +N.

iMovie displays the sheet you see in Figure 4-1.

2. Type a name for your project.

3. Select the aspect ratio (or screen dimensions) for your movie.

You can select a widescreen display (16:9) or a standard display (4:3). If compatibility with the familiar SDTV (standard definition) format is important, I always recommend that you choose standard (4:3) ratio. If you’re shooting in 16:9 format, choosing 16:9 for an SDTV set will result in those familiar black “letterbox” bars at the top and bottom of the screen, but you won’t lose any content from the sides of the frame if you use 16:9. On the other hand, choosing standard ratio for an HDTV results in black bars on the left and right sides of the screen.

4. Choose the frame rate.

The default frame rate is 30 frames per second (fps), which is normal for the North American NTSC video standard. However, you can choose a slower frame rate if necessary, like the 25 fps setting for the international PAL and SECAM video standards.

5. Click a Project Theme thumbnail to select a theme to apply to your finished movie.

• To theme: iMovie automatically adds the transitions and titles that correspond to that theme. Typically, this is what you want. However, if you want to add transitions and titles manually, select the Automatically Add Transitions and Titles check box.

• Or not to theme: If you decide not to use a theme — opting for the No Theme thumbnail — iMovie can still add an automatic effect between clips. Select the Automatically Add check box and use the pop-up menu to choose the desired effect.

You can also create movie trailers within iMovie, which I demonstrate later in this chapter. Generally, however, I recommend that you create your trailer project after your movie project is completed — unless, of course, you’re specifically creating just a trailer project. Why? For the same reason that studios create trailers after the filming is finished: After you complete your movie, you’ll have all the clips imported already, and you’ll have a better idea of what you want to include while “teasing” your audience!

6. Click Create.

iMovie adds the new project to the list in the Project Library pane, and you’re on your way. Check out Figure 4-2: This is the whole enchilada, in one window.

The controls and displays that you’ll use most often are

Monitor: Think of this as being just like your TV or computer monitor. Your video clips, still images, and finished movie play here.

Media Browser toolbar: This row of buttons allows you to add media content (video clips, photos, and audio). The selected items fill the right side of the browser pane below the monitor.

Event Library: This list (lower left) displays all the video clips you can add to your project, including video clips you’ve created within iPhoto. These clips are organized as events, which I’ll discuss later in this chapter.

Event pane: If you select a video clip in the Event Library list, iMovie displays a thumbnail of the content in the Event pane. If you decide to include it, you can add it to your project. I show you what each pane in the iMovie workspace looks like when you tackle different tasks in this chapter.

Project Library/Project/Trailer pane: iMovie displays the movie projects that you create in the Project Library pane. Note that when you double-click a project in the Project Library pane, it turns into the Project pane, which displays the elements you added to that specific project (such as video clips, still photos, and audio clips). If you drag an element into the Project Library pane, it turns into the Project pane for the selected project; if you’re working on a movie trailer, the Project Library pane turns into the Trailer pane.

The Project Library pane displays different content, depending on the action you’ve taken.

Playhead: The red vertical line that you see in the Event and Project Library panes is the playhead, which indicates the current editing point while you’re browsing your clips or creating your movie. When you’re playing your movie, the playhead moves to follow your progress through the movie.

Editing toolbar: This strip of buttons allows you to control editing functions such as cropping, audio and video adjustments, voiceovers, and selecting items.

Camera Import window: Click this switch to import DV clips from your DV camcorder or FaceTime HD camera.

Those are the major highlights of the iMovie window. A director’s chair and megaphone are optional, of course, but they do add to the mood.

A Bird’s-Eye View of Moviemaking

I don’t want to box in your creative skills here — after all, you can attack the moviemaking process from a number of angles (pun unfortunately intended). However, I’ve found that my movies turn out the best when I follow a linear process, so before I dive into specifics, allow me to provide you with an overview of moviemaking with iMovie.

Here’s my take on the process, reduced to seven steps:

1. Import your video clips directly from your DV camcorder, FaceTime HD camera, iPhoto, or your hard drive.

2. Drag your new selection of clips from the Event pane to the Project pane and arrange them in the desired order.

3. Import or record audio clips (from iTunes, GarageBand, or external sources, such as audio CDs or audio files that you’ve recorded yourself) and add them to your movie.

4. Import your photos (directly from iPhoto or from your hard drive) and place them where needed in your movie.

5. Add professional niceties, such as voiceovers, transitions, effects, and text to the project.

6. Preview your film and edit it further if necessary.

7. Share your finished film with others through the web, e-mail, your Apple TV, or an iOS device (an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch).

That’s the first step-by-step procedure in this chapter. I doubt that you’ll even need to refer to it, however, because you’ll soon see just how easy it is to use iMovie.

As you might imagine, this chapter simply can’t hold a description of all the settings and procedures within iMovie, but luckily, Tony Bove has done exactly that in his book iLife ’11 For Dummies. Tony will take you from basics to all the in-depth features of each iLife application.

Importing the Building Blocks

Sure, you need video clips to create a movie of your own, but don’t panic if you have but a short supply. You can certainly turn to the other iLife applications for additional raw material. (See, I told you that integration thing would come in handy.)

Along with video clips you import from your DV camcorder, FaceTime HD camera, and hard drive, you can also call on iPhoto for still images (think credits) and iTunes for background audio and effects. In this section, I show you how.

Pulling in video clips

Your Mac is probably equipped already with the extras that come in handy for video editing — namely, a large hard drive and both a USB and FireWire port. Most mini-DV camcorders today use a FireWire connection to transfer clips, while mass-storage camcorders use a USB connection. (Note that if your snazzy new DV camcorder uses a USB connection, you’ll need to modify the steps I provide in this section for your particular device. Only a couple of steps are different, and I cover them shortly.) Oh, and if your Mac has a FaceTime HD camera on board, you’re a self-contained movie studio!

Here’s the drill if your clips are on a FireWire mini-DV camcorder or a mass-storage USB camcorder:

1. Plug the proper cable into your Mac.

2. Set the camcorder to VTR (or VCR) mode.

Some camcorders call this Play mode.

3. Click the Camera Import button (labeled in Figure 4-2).

iMovie opens a new window.

4. Click the Camera pop-up menu (at the bottom of the Import window) and select your DV camcorder or FaceTime HD camera.

If you’re using a tape-based camcorder, playback controls appear under the Camera Import window, mirroring the controls on your DV camcorder. This allows you to control the unit from iMovie. Keen! If you’re using a mass- storage camcorder connected by USB, you instead get Import All and Import Checked buttons beneath the thumbnails of available clips.

To capture video from your FaceTime HD camera, open the Video Size pop-up menu to choose the dimensions of the clip; then click Capture. On the sheet that appears, choose the location where the video will be saved and also whether to add this video to an existing event or create a new event. Click Capture to start recording, and click Stop when your video is complete. (You can skip the rest of the steps in this section, which deal only with FireWire external camcorders.)

iMovie can analyze your incoming video for one of three different post-recording procedures. Select the After Import Analyze For check box, and then choose Stabilization (which helps smooth shaky camera work), People (which marks a clip as including people, making it easier to locate) or Stabilization and People (which, predictably, does both). The Stabilization option is especially good if your camcorder doesn’t have a built-in stabilization function (and you weren’t shooting with a tripod), but beware: Any of these settings will add significant time to the import process!

5. To import selected clips from your DV camcorder, set the Automatic/Manual switch to Manual and advance the video to a couple of seconds before the point where you want to start your capture, and then click Import.

To import all clips, set the Automatic/Manual switch to Automatic and then click Import.

6. (Optional) Clear the check boxes next to the clips that you don’t want to import (to deselect them) and then click the Import Checked button.

7. From the Save To pop-up menu, choose the drive that should store your clips.

You can choose to add the new clips to an existing Event or create a new Event. Heck, if the event spanned more than one day, you can create a new Event for each day. (How do they think up these things?)

8. Click OK and admire your handiwork.

iMovie begins transferring the footage to your Mac and automatically adds the imported clips to your Event Library.

If your clips are already on your hard drive, rest assured that iMovie can import them, including those in high-definition video (HDV) format. iMovie also recognizes a number of other video formats, as shown in Table 4-1.

Table 4-1 Video Formats Supported by iMovie

File Type	Description
DV	Standard 4:3 digital video
DV Widescreen	Widescreen 16:9 digital video
MOV	QuickTime movies
HDV, AVCHD	High-definition (popularly called widescreen) digital video, in 720p and 1080i
MPEG-2	Digital video format used for DVD movies
MPEG-4	A popular format for streaming Internet and wireless digital video, as well as handheld iOS devices like the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch

It’s easy to get lost in the morass of video formats and assorted standards in use today. Although I can’t cover them all in a single chapter, I can recommend the wonderful website — www.videohelp.com — which offers comprehensive information on video recording, optical hardware, and format-conversion software.

To import a movie file, follow this bouncing ball:

1. Choose File⇒Import⇒Movies.

iMovie displays the familiar File Open sheet.

2. If you’re importing 1080i video clips, open the Optimize Video pop-up menu and choose the Full quality setting and click OK.

If you’re not importing 1080i video, use the default Large setting and click OK.

The Large setting saves you a significant amount of hard drive space, but the Full setting preserves the original resolution and detail. The Full setting demands a significant chunk of the CPU and RAM resources from your Mac, though, so expect slower multitasking while importing.

3. In the File Open sheet sidebar, click the drive that stores your clips and then navigate to the desired location.

4. Specify whether you want to add the imported video to an existing Event or create a new Event.

If you choose to add the video to an existing Event, open the pop-up menu and choose an Event.

5. Specify whether you want to copy the video (leaving the original movie intact) or whether the original movie should be moved (the original is deleted after a successful import).

6. Click Import.

Alternatively, you can also drag a video clip from a Finder window and drop it in the Project pane.

Making use of still images

Still images come in handy as impressive-looking titles or as ending credits to your movie. (Make sure you list a gaffer and a best boy to be truly professional.) However, you can use still images also to introduce scenes or to separate clips according to your whim. For example, I use stills when delineating the days of a vacation within a movie or different Christmas celebrations over time.

Here are two methods of adding stills to your movie:

Adding images and video clips from iPhoto: Click the Photo Browser button on the Browser toolbar (or press +2) to experience the thrill that is your iPhoto Library, right from iMovie (as shown in Figure 4-3). You can elect to display your entire iPhoto Library or more selective picks, such as specific albums or Events. When you find the image you want to add, just drag it to the right spot in the Project pane. Videos from your iPhoto Library are automatically added to your iMovie Event Library — it doesn’t get much easier than that.

Importing images from your hard drive: If you’re a member of the International Drag-and-Drop Society, you can drag TIFF, JPEG, GIF, PICT, PNG, and PSD images directly from a Finder window and drop them into the Project pane as well.

Importing and adding audio from all sorts of places

You can pull in everything from Wagner to Weezer as both background music and sound effects for your movie. In this section, I focus on how to get those notes into iMovie and then how to add them to your movie by dragging them to the Project pane.

You can add audio from a number of sources:

Adding songs from iTunes: Click the Music and Sound Effects button on the Media Browser toolbar (or press +1) to display the contents of your iTunes Library. Click the desired playlist in the scrolling list box, such as the dynamite ABBA playlist I selected in Figure 4-4. (If you’ve exported any original music you’ve composed in GarageBand to your iTunes Library, you can use those songs in your own movie!) Add a track to your movie by dragging the song entry from the Music and Sound Effects list to the desired spot in the Project pane.

Adding sound effects: Yep, if you need the sound of a horse galloping for your Rocky Mountain vacation clips, click either iMovie Sound Effects or iLife Sound Effects in the scrolling list box. iMovie includes a number of top-shelf audio effects that you can use in the second audio track on the timeline viewer. This way, you can add sound effects even when you’ve already added a background song. Again, to add a sound effect, drag it to the perfect spot in the Project pane.

If you have several gigabytes of music in your iTunes Library, it may be more of a challenge to locate Janis Joplin’s rendition of “Me and Bobby McGee,” especially if she’s included in a compilation. Let your Mac do the digging for you! Click in the Search box below the track list and begin typing a song name. iMovie narrows down the song titles displayed to those that match the characters you type. To reset the search box and display all your songs in the Library or selected playlist, click the X icon that appears to the right of the box.

Ripping songs from an audio CD: Load an audio CD and then choose Audio CD from the scrolling list box. iMovie displays the tracks from the CD, and you can add them at the current playhead position the same way as iTunes songs.

Recording directly from a microphone: Yep, if you’re thinking voiceover narration, you’ve hit the nail on the head. Check out the sidebar, “Narration the easy way,” for the scoop.

You can fine-tune both the audio within a video clip or the audio clips that you add to your project. With the desired clip selected, click the Inspector button on the Editing toolbar (it bears a proud letter i) to display the Inspector window, and then click the Audio tab. The Audio Adjustments window that appears includes an array of audio controls that allow you to change the volume of the selected clip or to give that audio priority — or ducking — over other audio playing simultaneously (such as a sound effect that needs to be clearly heard over background music and the video clip).

If your clips dramatically vary in volume, click the Normalize Clip Volume button and then select each clip that you want to set to the same volume; click Normalize Clip Volume again for each clip. You can also set an automatic or manual Fade-in/Fade-out for the audio. When you’re done tweaking, click Done. (Oh, and don’t forget that you can always return the clip to its original volume; just open this window again and click Revert to Original.)

On the Video tab within the Inspector window, you can vary the exposure, brightness, contrast, and saturation of your clip. Click the Auto button, and iMovie will perform what it considers the best job of improving your video.

Building the Cinematic Basics

Time to dive in and add the building blocks you imported to create your movie. Along with video clips, audio tracks, and still images, you can add Hollywood-quality transitions, optical effects, and animated text titles. In this section, I demonstrate how to elevate your collection of video clips into a real-life, honest-to-goodness movie.

Adding clips to your movie

You add clips to your movie via the Project pane and the Event pane. The Dynamic Duo works like this:

Project pane: This displays the media you’ve added to your project so far, allowing you to rearrange the clips, titles, transitions, and still images in your movie. (If the pane is titled Project Library, remember that you have to double-click the desired project to select it. After you select a project, the Project Library pane turns into the Project pane.)

Event pane: This displays your video clips arranged by Event (the date they were shot or the date they were imported), acting as the source repository for all your clips. Movies pulled into iMovie, imported into iPhoto, or added manually from the Finder appear here.

To add a clip to your movie:

1. Move your mouse pointer across clips in the Event pane to watch a preview of the video.

2. After you decide what to add to your project, you can either add the entire clip or a selection.

• To select an entire clip: Right-click the clip’s thumbnail and choose Select Entire Clip from the menu that appears.

• To select a portion of a clip: Drag your mouse cursor across the thumbnail. A yellow frame appears around your selection. To change the length of the selected video, drag the handles that appear on either side. If you make a mistake while selecting video, just click any empty space within the Event pane to remove the selection frame and try again.

3. Drag the selection from the Event pane to where it belongs in the Project pane.

Alternatively, you can press the E key or click the Add to Project button (the first button on the Editing toolbar) to add the selection to the end of the current project.

Do this several times, and you have a movie, which you created just like the editors of old used to by working with actual film clips. This is a good point to mention a moviemaking Mark’s Maxim:

Preview your work — and often.

iMovie offers two Play Full Screen buttons: one under the Event Library and one under the Project Library. Select the project or Event you want to play and then click the corresponding button (or press +G). You can also choose View⇒Play Full Screen to watch the selection. Press the spacebar to pause, and press Esc to return to iMovie. You can also move your mouse to display a filmstrip that you can click to skip forward or backward in the project or Event.

To play a selection from the beginning, press (backslash). (If you’ve ever watched directors at work on today’s movie sets, you may have noticed that they’re constantly watching a monitor to see what things will look like for the audience. You have the same option in iMovie!)

While you’re watching video in the Event pane, you may decide that a certain clip has a favorite scene or that another clip has material you don’t want, such as Uncle Ed’s shadow puppets. (Shudder.) iMovie features Favorite and Rejected frames, allowing you to view and use your best camera work (and ignore the worst stuff). To mark video, select a range of frames or an entire clip and then click the Mark as Favorite button on the Editing toolbar. Click the Reject button to hide the selected video or frames from view. (You can always unmark a Favorite or Rejected scene by using the Unmark button in the Editing toolbar; click the Show pop-up menu at the bottom of the window if the scenes aren’t visible.)

Removing clips from your movie

Don’t like a clip? Bah. To banish a clip from your movie, follow these steps:

1. Click the offending clip in the Project pane to select it.

2. Press Delete.

Alternatively, you can right-click the clip (or a selection you’ve made by dragging) and choose either Delete Entire Clip or Delete Selection from the menu that appears. (Note that this deletes the clip from the Project, but the clip still remains in the Event library.)

If you remove the wrong clip, don’t panic. Instead, use iMovie’s Undo feature (press +Z) to restore it.

Reordering clips in your movie

If Day One of your vacation appears after Day Two, you can easily reorder your clips and stills by dragging them to the proper space in the Project pane. When you take your finger off the mouse (or trackpad), iMovie automatically moves the rest of your movie aside with a minimum of fuss and bother.

iMovie allows you to switch to the familiar Timeline view, which many users of previous versions of the application will recognize (and many prefer, including this particular moviemaker). Click the Swap Events and Projects button — it’s next to the Camera Import button, and it bears two arrows — to move the Project pane to the bottom of the window and the Event Library to the top, which switches you to Timeline view.

Editing clips in iMovie

If a clip has extra seconds of footage at the beginning or end (as it should to ensure you get all the action), you don’t want that superfluous stuff in your masterpiece. Our favorite video editor gives you the following functions:

Crop: Removes unwanted material from a video clip or still image, allowing you to change the aspect ratio of the media

Rotate: Rotates a clip or image on its center axis

Trim: Trims frames from a video clip

Before you can edit, however, you have to select a section of a clip:

1. Click a clip or image in either the Project pane (where changes you make are specific to this project) or the Event pane (where edits you make are reflected in any project using that footage).

iMovie displays the clip or image in the monitor.

2. To select the entire clip or image, simply click it.

3. Drag your mouse cursor across the thumbnail to select the section of the media you want to edit. (Note that some editing functions, such as Crop and Rotate, will automatically apply to the entire clip.)

The selected region is surrounded by a yellow frame. You’re ready to edit that selected part of the clip.

Drag the handles that appear at the beginning or ending of the selection to make fine changes to the selected section.

To crop: Click the Crop button on the Editing toolbar to display the frame in the Monitor pane and then click Crop at the top of the Monitor pane. Drag the edges of the frame and the handles to select the section you want to keep. To preview your selection, click the Play button at the top-right corner of the monitor. When you’re ready, click Done, and everything but the selected region is removed.

To rotate: Click the Crop button on the Edit toolbar and then click one of the two rotation buttons (which carry a curved arrow icon). Each click rotates the media 90 degrees in that direction. Click Done when the clip or image is properly oriented.

To trim: Right-click the selection and choose Trim to Selection from the contextual menu. iMovie removes the frames from around the selected video.

Edits that you make to one clip or still image can actually be copied to multiple items! Select the edited clip and choose Edit⇒Copy from the iMovie menu. Now you can select one or more clips and choose Edit⇒Paste Adjustments to apply Video, Audio, or Crop edits. (To apply all three types of edits, just choose All.)

Transitions for the masses

Many iMovie owners approach transitions as visual bookends: They merely act as placeholders that appear between video clips. Nothing could be farther from the truth because judicious use of transitions can make or break a scene. For example, which would you prefer after a wedding ceremony — an abrupt, jarring cut to the reception or a gradual fadeout to the reception?

Today’s audiences are sensitive to transitions between scenes. Try not to overuse the same transition — pick two or three that match the mood of your film. Also, weigh the visual impact of a transition carefully. You may even decide that no transition is most effective; directors call this deliberate lack of a transition a jump cut.

iMovie includes a surprising array of transitions, including old favorites (such as Fade In and Dissolve) and some nifty stuff that you may not be familiar with (such as Cube and Page Curl). To display your transition collection (see Figure 4-5), click the Show Transitions button on the Media Browser toolbar (or press +4).

To see what a particular transition looks like, move your mouse pointer over the thumbnail to display the transition in miniature.

Adding a transition couldn’t be easier: Drag the transition from the list in the Transitions Browser pane and drop it between clips or between a clip and a still image in the Project pane. In iMovie, transitions are applied in real time.

Even Gone with the Wind had titles

The next stop on our iMovie Hollywood Features Tour is the Titles Browser, shown in Figure 4-6. You’ll find it by clicking the Title button (which bears a big capital T) on the Media Browser toolbar, or by pressing +3. You can add a title with a still image, but iMovie also includes everything you need to add basic animated text to your movie.

Most of the controls you can adjust are the same for each animation style. You can change the font, the size of the text, and the color of the text.

To add a title manually

1. Select an animation thumbnail from the Titles Browser pane and drag it to the desired spot in the Project pane.

2. Click a background thumbnail to select a background for your title.

These are the same backgrounds you’ll see in the Map, Background, and Animatic Browser, which I discuss in the next section.

3. Press +T (or choose Text⇒Show Fonts) to make any changes to the fonts or text attributes.

4. Click in a text box to type your own line of text.

5. Click the Play button to preview your title.

iMovie displays a preview of the effect in the monitor with the settings that you choose.

6. Click Done.

The title appears in the Project pane.

Adding Maps and Backgrounds

iMovie includes easy-to-use animated maps — think Indiana Jones traveling by airplane from place to place — and static backgrounds that can be used with your titles. To display them, click the Map, Background, and Animatic Browser button on the Media Browser toolbar, or press +5.

To use an animated map, drag one of the globe or map thumbnails to the Project pane. After the globe or map is created, click it to display the Inspector window, and now you can click the Start Location button (and optionally, the End Location button) to enter the start and stop points for the animation. Type a city or place name to see your choices. (Heck, you can even type in an airport code or decimal coordinates to specify the spot.) After you’re done, click OK, and then click Done within the Inspector window. Now play the clip, and watch as iMovie animates your location (or your trip) in seconds!

To add a static background from the browser, drag it to the desired spot within the Project pane.

Creating an Honest-to-Goodness Movie Trailer

Yes, friends, you read that correctly! As I mention at the beginning of the chapter, iMovie includes a Movie Trailer feature that can actually turn your film clips into a Hollywood-class preview, complete with genre transitions and background music.

To create a trailer project, follow these steps:

1. Choose File⇒New Project or press +N.

2. Type a name for your project.

3. Select the aspect ratio for your movie.

See the earlier section “The iMovie Window” for a discussion of standard (4:3) and widescreen (16:9) aspect ratios.

4. Choose the frame rate.

5. Click a Movie Trailer thumbnail to select it.

iMovie displays a nifty preview of the trailer style that you selected. Click the thumbnails to preview their look before you make your decision. Naturally, you’ll want to choose a trailer style that most closely matches the mood you want to project with your movie.

Each trailer has a suggested number of cast members, and this number reflects the number of people that will appear in the clip “placeholders” during the editing process. (More on this in a page or two.)

6. Click Create.

iMovie replaces the Project Library pane with the Trailer pane, as shown in Figure 4-7. On the Outline tab, you can edit the titles used in the trailer, as well as pop-up lists for information like the gender of the star(s) and the logo style you want for your “studio” at the beginning of the trailer. To change a text field, click in it and type the new text. You’ll see the changes you make in the Trailer display appear in the monitor in real time.

After you complete your edits to the titles, click the Storyboard tab. There, you can edit the text for each transition; simply click the text to display the edit box and type. You can also drag clips from your Event Library (or from a Finder window) to fill the storyboard’s placeholders for video clips. To delete a clip from the storyboard, click it to select it and then press Delete.

To preserve the “look and feel” of the trailer storyboard, try to match your clips with the description and suggested activity indicated by the placeholder. (In other words, don’t stick a wide-angle video clip of the family dog cavorting in the yard in a placeholder marked “Closeup” — you get the idea.)

The Storyboard tab might not look like an editing timeline, but you can move the cursor anywhere within the storyboard to preview your trailer. The playhead indicator appears wherever the cursor appears, allowing you to watch the clip or transition that it’s resting upon. You’ll soon be sweeping your mouse to the left or right to move through each section of your trailer.

For an overall listing of each clip required for the full trailer, click the Shot List tab. On this tab, clips are organized by type. For example, all the action clips appear in one section, and all the landscape and closeup clips are grouped together as well. If necessary, you can also add, delete, or swap video clips from the Shot List.

To preview your trailer in its entirety, click the Play Full-Screen button at the top-right corner of the Trailer pane. (Naturally, any storyboard placeholder that you haven’t filled with a clip will display just the placeholder.)

After you’re satisfied with your finished trailer — or if you’d like to work on another project — click the Project Library button at the top of the Trailer pane, and you’ll see that iMovie has added your trailer as a new project in the Library list.

I bet all those hard-working Hollywood video editors are fuming at how easy it is to create a trailer in iMovie!

Sharing Your Finished Classic with Others

Your movie or trailer is complete, you’ve saved it to your hard drive, and now you’re wondering where to go from here. Click Share on the application menu bar, and you’ll see that iMovie can unleash your movie upon your unsuspecting family and friends (and even the entire world) in a number of ways:

iTunes: Send your movie to your iTunes Library as a movie.

Media Browser: Make your iMovie project available within other iLife applications, in five different sizes suited to different display devices. Note that the Media Browser is also available for other Apple applications, like Final Cut Pro X, and to third-party applications like Toast Titanium.

Podcast Producer: You can send your movie to Apple’s Podcast Producer application for incorporation into your newest podcasting epic.

YouTube/Facebook/Vimeo/CNN iReport: Yep, you read right, you can send your iMovie directly to any of these websites! Can it get more convenient than that? (I think not.)

Export Movie: Create a copy of your movie on your hard drive in one of five different sizes.

Export using QuickTime: Create a QuickTime movie with your project using the QuickTime encoding engine (allowing greater control over the export process and the attributes of the finished movie file).

If you use this option, any computer with an installed copy of QuickTime can display your movies, and you can use QuickTime movies in Keynote presentations as well.

Export to Final Cut XML: If you’d like to transfer your iMovie project to Final Cut Pro X, use this option to create a compatible XML file.

When you choose a sharing option, iMovie displays the video quality for the option and makes automatic changes to the movie attributes. (For example, choosing Tiny reduces the finished movie as far as possible in file size, and the audio is reduced to mono instead of stereo.)

Need to take a movie offline or stop sharing it? You can remove a project from iTunes, your iLife Media Browser, or the YouTube website from the Sharing menu as well. Just click the corresponding Remove From menu item. (Of course, you can share the project again at any time.)

If you’re worried about permanently reducing the quality of your project by sharing it in a smaller size, fear not! When you choose a sharing option to export your movie, your original project remains on your hard drive, unchanged, so you can share a better-quality version at any time in the future!

After you adjust any settings specific to the desired sharing option, click Publish (or Save) to start the ball rolling.