How to Make a Slideshow with Voiceover and Music in iMovie
First a shoutout: thanks to YouTuber Eric Timmer for making the lovely tutorial video that first taught me how to do this! Check his video out if you get stuck!
So, you want to make a slideshow with a voiceover and music? This tutorial describes how to do this with iMovie, and in addition you’ll need some digital photos and a microphone. Let’s go!
GETTING STARTED
The first thing you’ll need to do is open iMovie. If you’ve never been here before and you have a current Mac, you’ll see this:
The next step is to bring the photos you want to use into iMovie. If they’re already in your computer’s photo library, you can click that button in the left sidebar.
If you don’t have your photos in the Photos Library, you’re going to need to do a little more work. One way is to click the “Import Media” button (see first image) and search through the files on your computer to find the ones you want. You can use command+click to select multiple at once. Your other option is to first go through your files in another application like Finder, and stick all the ones you want to use into a new folder. Then you can use “Import Media” to bring the whole folder in at once.
ARRANGING THE PHOTOS IN YOUR SLIDESHOW
Once you have your photos available in iMovie, you need to find the one you want to be first and drag it down to the bottom half of the window.
Your picture will immediately stretch to look like a piece of film, as in my photo above. That’s showing how long the video will show.
If you want to adjust the length of time the video is displayed, carefully move your cursor over either end of the segment until it turns into a vertical bar with an arrow pointing to either side. Then, just click and drag.
Go ahead and choose another photo, and drag it down to the bottom half of the window, somewhere to the right of the clip you already have.
Now you have two pictures set to show one after another. I’ll note here that each photo will automatically have the Ken Burns effect turned on (which causes the photo to slowly zoom in or out, or to scroll from one area of the photo to another). This is fine occasionally, often depending on the picture. To change this, click on a clip, then in the top right display, click the “crop” button. You should see something like this:
CHANGING THE KEN BURNS EFFECT
“Ken Burns” is currently selected. If you want the Ken Burns effect but you want to control how the image changes, adjust the boxes labeled “Start” and “End” over the image; to get rid of the Ken Burns effect entirely and show the entire photo, select “Fit” from the styles options next to “Ken Burns”; if you want to get rid of the Ken Burns effect completely but crop the photo so it fills the screen, select “Crop to Fit” from the styles options.
From here, continue adding photos to the play order in the bottom half of the window — scroll as needed. Adjust the lengths of the clips to your liking, and adjust the Ken Burns effect as you feel appropriate. You can drag pictures into a different order if you change your mind, or delete them if you no longer want them in the slideshow.
TRANSITIONS
Once you have your pictures added, you have the option of changing the transition from one photo to the next. Click the “Transitions” tab in the top left toolbar. To preview a transition, run your cursor slowly over it. To add a transition, drag the one you want to the little black bar between the two photos the transition will be between. Don’t go crazy — too many fancy transitions can be really overwhelming.
PLAYING THE SLIDESHOW
Now, hopefully, you have your slideshow assembled the way you want. Hitting the space bar will start the slideshow playing from wherever you last clicked (marked by a light colored line across the “film” as seen in the above picture). Pushing / will play just the clip you are currently on. Pushing \ will play the slideshow from the beginning. Double check that you like how the slideshow is set up!
STARTING THE VOICEOVER
It’s finally time to start the voiceover! iMovie very conveniently lets you record directly through the program. You can push v to switch to recording mode, or you can click the microphone icon in the bottom left of the top right display box.
When you have your microphone set up (or are using the one built into your Mac), click where in the slideshow you want the voiceover to start, and then hit the red button under the photo showing in the top right. It will give you a 3 second countdown, and then you just start speaking! It is a good idea to prepare a script if you want your final product to be really polished.
You will get a bar underneath your photos that looks like this:
You can click and drag the line through the middle of the voice recording up or down to adjust the relative volume. If you have a lot of the soundprint turning red, though, you may want to lower your volume to avoid distortions.
You can click the voiceprint box and drag it if you didn’t start it in quite the place you wanted to. Feel free to make as many attempts as you like to record the perfect voiceover; simply delete any attempts you don’t want to keep.
NEXT: ADDING MUSIC
If you simply want some background music playing, I recommend you click the tab “Audio” in the top left area and experiment with the “Sound Effects.”
If you want to use a particular song, you need to get it into your iTunes account (if it isn’t already there) and select “iTunes” instead of “Sound Effects.” Once you find what you want, drag it into place below the voice clip. Adjust the volume by dragging the line down the middle higher or lower like you did with the voice clip. Give credit where credit is due for the music.
Make sure you play the video to determine if the audio levels are fitting together!
Keep polishing it, and you’ll eventually get something like this:
Make sure you watch it through at least once to confirm everything is how you like it.
I uploaded the above video to YouTube when it was complete; feel free to view it below!
