Editing workshop №1

Today we had the first editing workshop, where we obtained the basic knowledge on operating in Adobe Premier Pro. The exciting fact about this software is that it is both straight forward for beginners to edit simplistic videos as well as extremely in-depth for creating more complicated projects ("Deadpool" was edited in Adobe!). This means that after gaining the core understanding of the main tools of this software we are free to explore it more in details in our free time and, therefore, create a high quality opening title sequence. 

I was absent for the previous workshop, which is why I joined one of the groups for the editing process of the footage they collected that last session. Prior to practice, the teacher provided us with the information about the key terms and tools in Adobe Premier:

1) The layout of this software consists of four quadrants with each of those having its own purpose. The bottom left quadrant displays all of the uploaded material (footage), which can and should be organised into separate files. One of those should be called "Rushers": all of the raw, unedited footage should be stored here. It is important to save the raw material in a separate file and keep it unedited just in case at one point during editing it is necessary (e.g. the video was cut too much and it's difficult to revert it back to the original - one can open the "Rushers" file and start the editing process of the raw video again). The second important file is suggested to be called the "Log Bin". This one should contain the roughly sorted footage from "Rushers" and each video should be named (not abstractly: it should be a concise and clear description of what's happening in the video). Obviously, one will probably have more files that this, as different people prefer to organise their footage differently, but the important tip we learned today is: "keep everything neat". Organisation is key for producing a good film and in general to not get frustrated with the amount of footage in the software. 

The top left quadrant displays the selected footage from the bottom left corner. By double clicking on a particular file one can have a look at the video and even make the initial alterations (e.g. cut it). The bottom right quadrant is the area, where one can actually edit the selected videos, audios, apply effects, transitions etc. Basically, it is the main working space. The top right quadrant displays the changes made and shows what the film looks like as you edit it. All four boxes can be changed in size, depending on the personal preferences.

2) Talking about the special symbols and tools, one of the most important ones is the playback head, which is the small blue shape, that helps one look through the video without actually playing it. The arrow is used most frequently as it is responsible for moving the footage around in the lower right quadrant, selecting effects and so on. The symbols can be studied in more detail by looking at the column in the lower part of the layout. We were taught that by pressing "C" on the keyboard, the arrow changes to a tool, which cuts the footage. In order to change it back to the arrow one just need to press "V". This is just a tip/shortcut, as one can aways complete the same actions by selecting the desired symbol/tool in the column between the two lower quadrants. 

3) Third, and most importantly we got to practice our skills and explore Adobe Premier by trying to edit the footage my classmates collected during the previous workshop. First, we had to double click on one of the files just to see what the contents of the video are. Then by dragging the bottom grey playback head we roughly cropped the part of the video we needed. After that we dragged the videos (after going through the same process with each one of them) from the top left quadrant to the bottom right in order to properly edit it. During the process we were also taught that videos+audios we place to that editing box should not overlap one another. If that happens, some bits of the video or audio get cropped out, which can be inconvenient and frustrating. Moreover, we learned how to cut videos (apart from pressing"C" for the cutting tool). If one places the arrow to one of the edges of the video line selected, it changes to a red symbol, which is supposed to be dragged in one of the directions, cutting that video. 

My group (me and Caitlin) created a short video by combining four pieces of footage (one long shot, that we divided into multiple parts and one close up that we also cut into two parts). This is what we managed to produce:

Finally, we were told to never forget to save all our work before shutting the programme not to loose any of the work. On our next editing workshop we will explore Adobe Premier more in depth and hopefully gain knowledge that will be useful for us when creating our own opening title sequence.