Video editing
Saturday, October 18th, 2008
at 2:39pm
Image by Dan Kennedy's Pix via Flickr
Yesterday, i was supposed to be off from college as it was an open day. But i went in for the day as did my ‘team’ to try and get filming for our project complete.
Although we didn’t get it all done, we got through a lot of work and this time next week i should be in a position to start some proper editing. I have a week off starting this Friday 24th until Monday November 3rd. Over that week, i’ll aim to finish this project or if not finish it, have the bulk of the work done.
This will be by far and away the most polished and professional video i’ve produced with some pretty amazing special effects.
I’ve probably spent about 70/80 hours so far just messing about with Premier Pro and After Effects and testing sound and special effects but at least from now on, i’ll be able to produce quality videos and understand how video editing really works.
For anyone starting out in Premier Pro after using ‘Windows Movie Maker’ or something like that, it’s a bit like going from microsoft paint to photoshop - there’s so many different options and effects that you don’t know where to start 
Basic editing (adding titles, cutting clips and adding audio) is relatively simple, don’t get me wrong, i’m not a complete idiot 
but when it comes to having people getting hit by a car or getting shot or adding 3d type text, it’s a completely different kettle of fish.
Anyway, i’ve now completed 4 exams/assignments in college at got the results of 3 back. 80, 80, 82. That’ll do nicely… i thought things were supposed to be getting harder, not easier 
I’ll be aiming for 100% in this video project. I might actually throw up a poll on this blog and ask you guys to rate it once it’s complete!
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Sunday, October 12th, 2008
at 5:27pm
Image via Wikipedia
Now that i’m beginning to find myself with a bit more ‘free’ time, i can focus more on video editing. I have about 6 weeks to complete a 20 minute production as part of a college project and so far, i have 10 seconds of it complete and what i’d call ‘world class’.
It took me about 5 hours to create those 10 seconds, so this is slow work, but the end product is worth it. I spent those 5 hours messing around in Adobe After Effects today and learning how it works and all the different shortcuts and tricks you can add to get that ‘word class’ look.
The end product is 10 seconds of extremely high quality editing that wouldn’t look out of place in a Blockbuster movie There’s no way i can sustain that level of perfection of course, but the introduction is definitely going to blow people away and you know what people say about first impressions 
Once i’m finished this masterpiece, i’ll be creating a fancy introduction and ending to ‘official’ smemon.com videos and you’ll probably see me create more and more videos from now on. It requires patience, artistic flair, technical know how and of course a pretty high end PC.
I won’t reveal the work i’ve done today or most of the work i do from now until the end of this project as i think it’s better if you’re just blown away by the end product rather than bits and pieces of 10-20 second clips scattered all over the place.
Monday, September 29th, 2008
at 9:31pm
Image via Wikipedia
My first ever ’semi-professional’ video was created last March sometime. It was a college trip to microsoft. Although it was by no means ‘professional’ in the ‘polished’ sense of the word, it was professional in that it took hours and hours on end plus a hell of a lot of filtering through rubbish and overlaying tracks to music, getting titles right etc…
I created that using Ulead Video Studio on my 3 year old laptop. 1gig RAM, single core processor etc… so you can imagine the pain i had to go through
This time around, things are different. I’ve got two dual 20″ monitors, high end graphics card, quad core processor, 4 gigs of RAM etc… so things will be much easier for me. I also have Adobe Premier Pro Cs3 & After Effects Cs3 which open up a whole new world to me in terms of video editing.
We’re filming a Dragon’s Den parody as part of a college project and although the main aim of the project is to work in a team, we’ve got other ideas and hope to turn this in to a real masterpiece 
I am of course a Dragon’s Den fan along with the others, which makes it all the more interesting for us… it WILL be hilarious - that i guarantee you but a lot of it comes down to the editing and how well i do it. Hopefully i’ll have something to show you guys within a month… an unpolished version… i might ask for some feedback and then react to that as this will be presented in front of a few lecturers and students, possibly more so it’s important we get it right!
It’ll be a lot of work for me in particular…. i’ve no doubt i’ll be the one spending the most amount of time on this but i’ve no problem with that as it’ll help to get used to premier pro & video editing in general. Although some will see it as the worst possible / most demanding role, i’ll enjoy that as i’ll be learning as i go along and picking up some valuable tips and tricks when it comes to video editing. Bring it on
