So you want to be a movie director? You need a script to say which scenes come first, second, the duration of the scene, is there music to go with it? How about pictures, how many, which ones and at which point in the movie timeline?

In Movie maker lingo, that script is called a Project.

NOTES
Movie Maker project files have the file extension: .MSWMM. They are instructions (script) on how to assemble the movie.

Project files are totally separate files from the video clips, pictures and sounds files themselves.

Come up with an organization system for where to save your video clips, pictures and sound files and Movie Maker project files and stick with it. This is the Windows folder organization system I use:
- I save my video source files in subfolders under My Videos. (My Videos folder is already pre-set up on your PC Windows system).
- I save my source pictures and source sound files in subfolders under My Pictures and My Music respectively.
- Then I create 2 subfolders under My Videos: Working and Finished.
- I save all my working files including my Movie Maker project files in my My Videos/Working folder.
- When I’m done with my project, I save it into a movie in the My Videos/Finished folder.
- It’s simple and it works for me. Find something that will work for your. The important thing is to have a system or you won’t be able to find your stuff.

Homework

• Start a new Movie Maker project and name it First Project (or choose another descriptive name).
• Exit Movie Maker.
• Launch Movie Maker and open the project you saved earlier using the top menu bar: File -> Open Project
• Close the project.
• Now open it again by selecting it from the list of recent projects that shows up on the pop-down menu when you press File.