Look at any movie or television show, from any period, and you’ll see that the editing never stays on the same shot for too long. In fact, you may feel that some do overstay their welcome and you get impatient for the camera to move on to something else. Changing shots doesn’t mean changing scenes: when done right, cutting to different angles keeps the story interesting and the pace flowing. It also makes it easier to use a better take, or to cut to the scenery that is being described in the current shot, while still hearing the narrator talk about the location.
Using cutaways is a very flexible way of editing a project to suit your needs.
The official term for this is creating “cutaways.” Although iMovie appears to only handle a single layer of video (meaning you can’t stack clips on top of each other, as you can with Final Cut Pro for instance) there is support for an additional layer when the need arises, and when the Advanced Tools have been turned on. Just like you can do with the Split Screen effect, you can add a clip on top of another, but instead of seeing both at the same time, it’s a straight cut: the clip above completely replaces the one below for the length of its duration.
iMovie Quick Tip: To mute the cutaway’s sound track, double-click on it and then simply drag its volume slider to the left.
Why would you do this instead of cutting the clip and inserting the other in between? For flexibility. That way you can move the cutaway clip over the narrating one until you find the perfect spot. Also, the narrating clip’s audio track is uninterrupted so you can see a shot and listen to another clip’s audio at the same time.
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