First Editing Lesson

On Friday, we were introduced to a programme used by all kinds of media artists, from amateur YouTubers to professional film makers: Adobe Premiere Pro. Personally, I had already worked with it a couple of times before, but this lesson helped me review the basic principles and I also took the opportunity to show friends in need how it worked. 

What we first did was learn the basic vocabulary essential for the utilisation of the programme. In the bottom left corner, we can find the folders, which are called "bins" in this case. The name is used since the birth of cinema, when the frames were so little that the crew had to hang them in the ceiling to be able to see them. They grouped each one of them according to the scenes they belonged to, placing a bin under each separate one. Moving on to the next word, "rushes" is used as a substitute of footage. The background story here is less original: the footage would be rushed off to be edited at night so next day the director could watch it. The equivalent in America is "dailies", if you are curious.

After getting to grips with these few terms, we started to figure out how Premiere worked by ourselves, carefully following Mark's instructions as to click twice in the squares which represented each short sequence. We were shown too the underlying controls to change from the regular clicking arrow (press B) to the razor blade to cut frames into segments (press C).

Having observed the mentioned details, we were ready to start editing our clips more or less properly —as effectively as we could do so—. Franek and I started dragging the frames to the grey espace where it is possible to set their In and Out (marking), cut them and mix them by moving their edges back and forth. We likewise changed the sound settings. The best time to jump from one frame to the next one is when the characters are in movement, as it makes the change less drastic. It is also relevant to know that the clip which is going to play once the editing is done is always the bit higher in the scale. 

I contemplated the entire lesson as extremely significant for the future tasks we will perform in order to carry out our thrillers. By all means, we will be able from now on, as a class, to work in the basics when we want to shoot our stories, with no technical restrictions and the opportunity to give free rain to our ambition —to a certain extent, of course—. In present day, we feel confident and able to make the most of the resources we have. And, more importantly, the issues we are learning about can prove useful beyond the classroom, when we are developing personal projects.

Letting my mind wonder about the Preliminary Task and the Thriller sequence that I start to foresee, I feel ready for both challenges after Matt's lessons' impact: he has made sure, within a few hours, that we can perfectly utilise a camera and a tripod, shoot a brief scene with creativity and dynamism and then edit it, three of the golden rules for a proficient media product. Undoubtedly, it is an impressive achievement what he has done during the last weeks, and I am glad that every student has collaborated sensibly throughout most of the process. I am really looking forward to getting started with the practical side of Media. I have started brainstorming already!

under these lines, the result of our edition can be viewed. Not very professional, but we did our best. I'm sure we will improve awfully through time.