Editing Lesson Blog

Today in Media Studies (October 15, 2019) we learned about the editing process and the camera that we are going to sue to film our first project, the commercial. The cameras we're using are Cannon brand camera that are hand-held. We are also getting a tripod to hold the camera during shots to get more stable shots. an SD card to hold our content, and an SD card reader that transfers our SD card content to the computer which is a process called dumping. We use dumping to easily transfer the content to a folder on our desktop. It's a key part in the film making process because if we transfer the content directly into the editing software it can get lost and possibly corrupted. After we made a folder for our project and dumped the footage into the folder, we begin the editing process by importing the footage into Pinnacle Studios. This is a editing software provided to us by the school computers and works well. Importing is another key part of the editing process because it gets our content from the folder on the desktop to the editing software. On the editing software we can alter our footage in many different ways to adjust the commercial to the way we see best fit. This includes stuff like changing brightness, adding text that overlays the video, adding sound or music to the video to enhance the meaning of the scene, we can also add voice-overs which is going to be very common for this project considering it's a commercial.

Without importing the project cannot be edited and this can result in a choppy and overall unappealing result. Continuing on, after completing all you editing you need to then make sure that the result that you have is the one you want. You need to re-watch what you made and make sure that every edit and every scene is done correctly and up to the place where you want it. If you look at the product and don't like it or think something can be added you can bring the film back up on the editing software. You can either start from scratch by making a new Pinnacle Studios tab and re-importing the raw footage that you have from your folder again. If you want to make a change to the product you can just go back into the editing software with the same scene and make the minor adjustments that you may want to make. After you import, editing it the most important process of all of film making because this is what makes or breaks your film. Adding texts where their supposed to be or cutting scenes to make them look cleaner are an essential part ion making sure your product appeals to your audience. As mentioned earlier, a film without editing won't play smoothly and will be very unappealing to your audience. One key part of editing is also the order in which the content has to be. If you want to have title scenes or have text pop up over the film you go put that in AV track 1, the actual raw or edited footage goes into AV track 2, and any sound that you may want to add like a voice-over or music goes into AV track 3. After adding everything, if you feel that you need more music or different sound in your commercial than you can add more tracks.

Last but definitely not least is the exporting process. You press the exporting button after you feel that everything that you have done to make you footage better is complete. After making any necessary adjustments, you press the exporting button and save it into your file. This is your final result so after pressing this button, let the program render the movie and let it smooth out and choppy parts that the film may have. After rendering the film, save into the film file that you made, in this case the commercial file, and re-watch your film in the movie player program on your computer. After watching the film make sure that this is the final product that you want and if it is go ahead and submit it to your grader. If this product is not up to par with your expectations just import it back in to the editing software and make any adjustments that you may need.