This assignment was incredibly daunting and difficult to start. I could have used some help figuring it out, so I figured it’d be most helpful to do a tutorial on this assignment. That being said, before you begin reading, I can only do a tutorial on how to do this assignment using iMovie! So if you don’t have iMovie, this may not be very helpful.

To start, definitely write a draft of the conversation you’ll have. Have person 1 and person 2 labeled so you know when to talk. Run through the script a few times, time yourself and see how long it takes all together. After that, get an idea of how many seconds it takes to say each line, that way you’ll know how long to pause when the “other person” is talking. I had a timer next to me as I recorded this which was helpful, so I had a place to go to if I lost track of time and wasn’t sure if I was talking too fast or going over time. If you do this like I did, make sure you have the timer in a spot that you won’t have to move it, because if you do it will mess with the green screen once you crop it.

Now, filming. Film the person who starts the conversation first, but make sure that the person who speaks second sits for a long enough amount of time for the first person to say everything they need to say. That means sitting for a few seconds once you start recording. After filming both people sitting on each side of the camera (tip: try not to move your camera. It will mess up with the final picture), uploaded both clips to iMovie.

Once they’re uploaded, go to the iMovie tab at the top of the screen, click “Preferences”, then check the box that says “Advanced Tools”. After that’s activated, drag the part you want to go first to the editing box. Then, when you drag the second clip (of person 2), make sure there’s no green line when you go to drag it. That means: drag it and place it directly over the first clip. Once you do that, a little box with pop up with some options, choose the green screen option. The video box will then give you a choice to crop, which you should do as accurately as possible. It won’t look perfect and there might be a few holes, but don’t worry about it! Just make sure both people are clear.

Following that, do some tweaking to make sure there’s no overlapping with speaking and that everything lines up correctly. Once all that’s done, export the video as you would normally and upload it to YouTube! Make sure to tag it with the correct tags. Your final iMovie screen should look something like this: