The third in my series of posts on using video to promote your art practice.

Editing can be optional. If your video is short, you may not need to edit it at all. But when I do interviews, I don’t like to have my voice on the piece asking questions, I like to cut that part out. Because I don’t have any footage of me asking the questions, I don’t like the idea of having a disembodied voice off camera, so I have been replacing me asking questions with title frames. You could also use voice over to do this.

This post is focused on using IMovie to edit, as I am currently on a Mac, but I will devote a future post to editing on a PC.

Step 1: Dump your raw footage from your camera into IMovie. Do this by plugging the camera in, and opening up IMovie. Once in IMovie, go to File–>Import from Camera. Slide the toggle switch to “Manual.” Now you can check which videos you want to import.

Step 2: Organize your clips. Go to File–>New Project. This will create a place for you to drag all the clips that you are going to use for that video into. You can copy the clips from the place that you imported them into, and then paste them into your new project. Don’t forget to give it a name!

Step 3: Edit. Watch all of the raw footage and make notes. If the subject is fumbling for words, not-so-compelling, swears, or gets lost in a story, make a note of that, as you may want to cut it out. When I get to a place where I think there needs to be a cut, I simply right-click on it and select “Split Clip.” You can also do this using Edit–>Split Clip. When I have the piece all carved up, I then drag-and-drop them into the order I want them to appear.

Step 4: Titles. Make sure you put the person’s name at the beginning (and spell it right–not like me!). IMovie has some great title choices, from Star Wars to very simple ones, which are the ones I inevitably go for. There’s lots of room for creativity here, so play around and have fun. This is where I add in my questions (as text) as well. Make sure you include a URL so that people can find out more information on you.

Step 5: Voice over and sound. IMovie allows you to record voice over if you want to, or import sounds or songs (to play underneath) directly from ITunes.

Step 6: Export. When you are done and happy with the final product, you need to export your movie. If you go to the Share menu, you will see all your options. I tend to export mine as Quicktime, but you can do it as an M4V file, or directly to YouTube.

The first time you do this, just know that it’ll probably take you some time to learn the intricacies of the interface. Plus you might lose yourself in it for a while as you fool around with options. Have fun!

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