Learning About Editing

Hey Blog!

We've been talking a lot about production and pre-production planning in this blog, but something else that is very important to this entire process of creating a piece of media, such as this film opening, is the editing. There is no movie, short film, or anything that will feel or be in anyway complete without even a simple editing technique. Whether it be putting smaller clips together, adding music, transitions, color tones or effects. Without editing, the video looks incomplete and lacks depth of meaning. Editing allows a piece to look complete and demonstrates how much thought and intention was put into giving the film a meaning or purpose.

Editing this portfolio project is going to be very important to ensure that our idea that we want to create is thoroughly expressing the story, the emotions, and the idea that we want it to. So, before we even began to film, I wanted to make sure that I knew how to edit with more intention that simply putting clips together and calling it a day. Throughout this school year, when we've worked on other projects, I've edited with different editing platforms to see what I found was best to work with. I tried Adobe Express, Microsoft's Clipchamp, and even Apple's iMovie, but I wasn't a big fan of any of these when working on them. I mean, don't get me wrong, they get the job done fine, but I just kept thinking back to my 8th grade Film Class where I learned the basics of Adobe's Premiere Pro and how much I loved working on it due to how much you can achieve with it in a fairly easy way (unlike DaVinci Resolve which I found to be egregiously difficult to work with, though maybe that was my fault also, oh well). Premiere Pro had such a wide variety of options available to apply to your film, and they were all so easy to find and manipulate to my liking that I think it is one of the best editing software I've used. However, it has been almost 5 years since I first learned how to use it, and it has changed a lot since then, so I decided to go on a Premiere Pro journey to re-learn how to use it (and hopefully learn more and better) so that we can edit our film opening on this program.

I started off by watching 2 YouTube videos that showed a tutorial on how to use Premiere Pro. One was a quick 10 minute intro that talked about the very basics of the program, but I already knew about most of what it talked about. Then, I watched a longer, more in depth video tutorial while simultaneously following along editing a video of my own. This video I followed is Gavin Herman's Premiere Pro Tutorial for Beginners and it is very thorough in teaching the basics of what is needed to use Premiere Pro.. I think that I really benefitted from following it because I had forgotten too many things from last time I learned to use it and he explained every function in great detail, which makes my life so much easier. The video covers how to add transitions, text, sound, how to work with green screens, manipulate color, key frames, and so much more that I won't even use in this project, but it's useful to learn anyhow. 

Watching this video showed me my struggles with audio editing and ways that I can fix any issues I may encounter while editing this portfolio project. I'm glad that I was patient enough to watch the entirety of the hour long video thoroughly rewinding and replaying the parts where I was confused or stumped. I think that I understand how to edit better now, but I will edit mini videos I find on my phone as practice until it is the time to finally edit this film opening.

Gavin Herman's video, which I may turn to for further reference when I get stuck on something specific: