Mobile Video editing tips - How to use green screen in iMovie for iOS
And now for something completely different…
This post is going to be a little outside my normal wheelhouse, but with good reason. A couple of weeks back I posted a test video of me with… Well… Me, a trick I accomplished using a green screen. It was a silly screen test, more a proof of concept to show that I could do it and not anything of substance. But it resulted in a bunch of people asking me “how the heck did you do that?”
It wasn’t hard, I told them. In fact I had done the whole thing using iMovie on my iPhone.
Some of the reactions were mystified.
It turns out, I stumbled across the feature in iMovie completely on accident–apparently it was something that Apple had added earlier this year in an update, but when I ran some polls as to whether or not people knew it was an option, 100% of my iPhone using audience who were familiar with the iOS version of iMovie was unaware of the feature, which most people associate with higher end desktop applications like Adobe Premiere.
The power of visual effects in the palm of your hand…
It’s crazy to think about how much you’re able to do with your phone nowadays–my iPhone 7 plus has more power to it than the first PC I ever built, and does way more than the Windows Movie Maker I cut my teeth in editing videos with.
If you’d told me ten years ago I’d be able to stitch together green screen shots on my phone, I probably would’ve thought you were crazy. I don’t think I’d even upgraded to an iPhone at that time, so such capabilities would have seemed foreign.
If you want to know how you can do it, I put together a quick walk-through of it. It’s really not as hard as you might expect.
What you’ll need
Disclosure:Material and tools links listed below are affiliate links.Learn more about how we utilize affiliate links to keep our content free on our Disclosures page under “Affiliate Links”. We appreciate your support!
- An iPhone with iMovie installed, as well as the 2.2.7 update release from June 2019 and basic working knowledge of iMovie (how to add/edit clips, etc)
- A green/blue screen
- Good lighting (I cannot stress this enough–I tried with mediocre lighting and it wasn’t pretty)
- A video/photo background shot
- A video shot against the green screen
How to do it
Step one – add the background shot
With your video project open, you’ll add the background shot to the timeline first. If you’re familiar with iMovie, this isn’t rocket science–find your clip/photo, select it, and hit + to add it to the timeline.
Step two – add the green screen shot
Similar to the background shot, you’ll find your clip and select it, but don’t start mashing that + button–that’s just going to drop the clip into the timeline and that’s not what you want to do. Instead, hit the … To the right of the plus and it will give you a whole slew of new options (cutaway? Picture in picture? Split screen? I mean, clearly these were announced at some point, but I hadn’t been paying attention to enough Apple keynotes, I guess). Select Green/Blue screen (yes, this works with blue screen, too!) And watch the magic happen!
A couple of side notes
- Make sure you’re not wearing a shirt that matches your screen. Part of the magic here is that the iMovie program will eliminate all of the blue/green that’s similar to your background within the green screen layer. As I demonstrated in the video, this makes you look like a disembodied head. Always wear something that contrasts with the background.
- Good lighting is key. When you’re shooting against a green screen, any shadows or wringles in the green will likely reflect on the combined shot, making it pretty obvious it’s a green screen shot. You’ll want to make sure you’ve got a well lit green screen and that visible shadows are minimal.
- There are limited fine tuning controls. While this isn’t as advanced as, say, Premiere’s chroma-key adjustments (which can be a little overwhelming to someone new to video editing), there are some limited settings you can fine tune, specifically theres a 4 point mask that allows you to apply the effect to a more limited area (though be careful you don’t cut it off somewhere where you’re moving around–it will cut off your finger or other assorted parts and just look weird) and a strength slider, which let’s you tune how similar the color has to be (see the short clip I used).
I hope you’re able to use this in your own world–it’s definitely different from my usual content, but it’s a trick you’ll be seeing more of in future videos. If you’ve not subscribed to my YouTube channel, make sure you swing by to keep up on the latest videos!
