Have you watched a movie or a video in which two different scenes were played side-by-side on the same screen and wondered, “How’d they do that?” Well, it’s actually easier than you might think, especially if you use movie-editing software for non-professionals such as iMovie.

Split screen is a filmmaking technique that first was used in the movies to allow an actor to appear twice on screen….perhaps playing twins. Before digital technology, split screen was somewhat challenging to accomplish—even for professional filmmakers. But today it’s fairly straightforward with movie-editing software.

In the following video tutorial, I’ll show you step-by-step how to create a split-screen effect using iMovie (Version 10.1.1). There are limitations with iMovie, however. So I additionally show how to use the screen casting software, Screenflow, to edit imported video clips to create a split-screen effect. There are professional editing applications such as Premier Pro and Final Cut Pro that can also be used for this, but these programs have a much steeper learning curve. By comparison, user-friendly editing applications such as iMovie will let you do some pretty sophisticated effects in your video but don’t require advanced editing skills. Even a beginner can learn this editing technique in iMovie with just a bit of training.

If you already have iMovie or Screenflow, then this tutorial will help you learn how to do a split-screen effect. However, you do need to be familiar with the basics of editing with one or both of these applications before trying to apply the split-screen effect. You don’t have to be an expert, but you should at least know how to start a project in the application and import media. Direct link to video in case player window is not visible.

So there you have it. Really easy, right? Try using split screen in your next video and let me know how it worked out.