Learn iMovie Week: Amazing interview editing techniques

To make your interviewee appear more eloquent and interesting you need to cut out the boring or irrelevant sections of the interview. By filming a mix of close-ups and mid-shots you can cut between the interviewee’s two shot sizes without creating a jarring jump cut. If you do need to remove part of an interview you can hide the edit with a cutaway shot of your subject at work. Cutaway shots also add visual variety to the programme and stop it from being a dull ‘talking head’. We’ve popped a series of interview shots and cutaways on your disc for you to experiment with. Read on for some slick interview editing tips and techniques to get you started.

Step 1: Add clips

Create a new project and import the eight clips from the Interview Source Files folder on your disc. Drag the mid-shot and close-up clips to the project window.

Step 2: Remove a section

Go to View>Playhead Info. Place the Playhead at 17:02 and right click. Chose Split Clip. Scrub to 23:29 and split the clip again. Delete the middle section.

Step 3: Add cutaway 1

Drag Cutaway01 onto the interview clip at 4:04. Choose Cutaway from the pop-up menu. Drag the cutaway’s horizontal audio line down to 25%.

Step 4: Hide a cut

Add Cutaway02 at 12:14. Drag Cutaway03 to 16:06 and insert it as a cutaway. This shot bridges the jump cut and illustrates the interviewee’s story.

Step 5: Reduce sound levels

Reduce the audio level of Cutaway03 to 22% so that it doesn’t distract too much from the interview. Place Cutaway04 at 19:16.

Step 6: Final cutaway

Add the last section of the interview to the project. Insert Cutaway05 at the end to show the interviewee’s family enjoying the local scenery.

Step 7: Add a caption

Go to the Titles browser and drag Lower Third onto the beginning of the interview. Type the interviewee’s name and role in the main viewer’s text fields.

Step 8: Add music

To complement the final scene go to the Music Browser’s Jingles folder and drag Curtain Call Short into the project window. Reduce the volume to 13%.

Step 9: Publish it!

Don’t let your tightly edited interviews languish unseen. Go to File>Share and export them to Facebook, YouTube or your MobileMe gallery.

Click on the image below to zoom in and view the annotations

To complete this tutorial, you’ll need to download the Issue 99 tutorial files.

This tutorial is the sixth in our Learn iMovie Week series; for more articles just like this, visit the Learn iMovie Week tag. At the end of the week, we’ll be giving away a prize to one lucky person who gets in touch with a question or problem related to iMovie on Mac or iOS. To get involved, simply tweet your question, plus the hashtag #LearniMovieWeek, to @iCreateMagazine or post on our Facebook wall.