For many people, shooting a bunch of footage and figuring out how to cut it all up and assemble it afterward is a perfectly fine process. For others, it could seem incredibly chaotic and overwhelming. You have a plethora of choices in front of you and don’t really know where to start. It doesn’t have to be this way, and you can make your editing process far smoother with the work you do before you ever hit record on your camera.
When you open iMovie, you will see three options under the Start New Project tab. The first is Magic Movie, where you import a bunch of clips and pictures from your Photos library and have it randomly make a video. The third is Movie, which is your traditional editing software. The second is Storyboard, and this is where iMovie makes it very easy for you to keep a handy list of the shots you want to film before you film them.
Once you select Storyboard, you will be given a selection of options to choose from of what kind of video you are making, including a film, a makeup tutorial, a day in the life vlog, and more. Whichever you select, you will be given a list of shot types — like close-up, two-shot, and establishing shot — that you can rearrange and add to in order to work out the sequencing of shots in your video. You also can import reference material from your Photos library to correspond with the different shot types.
