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Adobe
Premiere 6 Tutorial-Review Part Three: Editing
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©6-22-01 Michael Tate
Jones
Welcome back! Last time we covered the
process of importing or capturing all of the media
elements necessary to begin making a movie. These
included video, audio/music and graphics. Now, it's
on to the next step of the process; editing.
Editors are Artists
Editing is by far my most favorite part
of the process. This is where you get to cut loose
and let creativity fly. However, as much fun as it
is there are some general rules to follow when editing.
Generally, you don't want any one shot to last for
more than 5 seconds, especially if it's a static shot
with no action. Shot's longer than 5 seconds should
be action oriented. If they're REALLY long shots,
10 seconds or more, try to use what is called in editing
terms, a cutaway. A cutaway is usually a close up
shot on the subject in frame. Wide shots generally
should be used to establish your location at the beginning
of your movie and subsequent scene changes. Cutaways
are also good for eliminating jump cuts. A jump cut
is when you cut to a shot that is identical to the
previous shot. Keep in mind these rules aren't carved
in stone, just a general guideline to follow when
editing your movie. If there's a certain effect or
mood you're attempting to create and you feel like
breaking a rule, by all means do it! This is why editing
is fun. After you've been editing for a while you'll
start to think about the way you shoot your footage
and get new ideas based on your style of editing.
Eventually, you'll start thinking about the editing
process while you're shooting your footage. To get
some really good ideas watch some of your favorite
movies, but this time pay attention to see how shots
are pieced together. Don't' be afraid to use some
of these ideas. Because, as the great Pablo Picasso
once said "Bad artists copy. Good artists steal."
Granted, Picasso was a painter, but making movies
is really just painting with moving images if you
think about it. Of Course, Picasso also said "Computers
are useless, they can only give you answers."
I wonder what Picasso would think of computers now?
Let's get on with our masterpiece.
The Cutting Room Floor
The editing process begins with selecting
your clips, trimming your clips and assembling them
in the order you choose. It's easy to get excited
and start throwing in effects right away, but you'll
first want to get a basic outline of what your movie
will look like. First, you'll want to select which
clips you'll actually use. You may find that you didn't
use some of the clips you captured. This is OK, it's
part of the editing process. Once you've decided which
clips to use, you'll need to trim the in and out points
of your clips. As I mentioned in the previous review,
it's best to capture a few seconds before and after
each of your video clips. This allows you to create
dissolves and effects between each of your clips.
You can't create a dissolve or effect if there is
no overlap between your clips. To create this overlapping
media you trim your clips so they have extra footage
at the head end and tail end. To trim a video clip,
double click on it in your bin and it will load into
the source monitor.
You should see two black markers just
below the source window. These are the in and out
point markers. When you pass your mouse over them
your cursor will change to a red bracket with an arrow
attached to it. Simply drag the in point and out point
markers until you've got the desired length of your
clip. The length and total clip time shows just below
the in and out markers. The head frame (beginning)
of your clip looks like 00;00;00;00, which represents
0 hours, 0 minutes, 0 seconds and 0 frames. In video
editing, length of time is represented by hours, minutes,
seconds and frames. Each second of your video clip
is made of 30 individual frames. So, 5 seconds is
equal to 150 frames of video. If this is confusing
(don't get me started on the difference between drop
frame and non-drop frame) just think of it in terms
of a stopwatch. The small blue triangle with a red
line is your current time indicator or CTI. Move it
from left to right and it takes you through each frame
of your clip. Continue trimming each of your clips
in this manner. If you come across a single clip that
has two different shots, but you'd like to use them
separately, just select the clip in your bin, mark
your in and out points then go to the Edit menu and
select Duplicate. Simply rename the duplicated clip
in the dialog box that appears.
Once all of your clips are trimmed,
it's just a matter of dragging them to the Video 1
track in the timeline. Rough out the basic outline
(or order) in which your clips are placed and lay
them in the timeline. Keep in mind, this is Non-Linear
editing; if you change your mind you can always reorder
your clips later on. When dragging clips to the time
line you'll notice that they snap to the nearest clip.
This snap to feature prevents any unwanted black frames
(or gaps) between clips. To delete a clip, simply
select it and press the delete key on your keyboard.
To move clips once they're in the timeline, just click
and hold with your mouse and drag it to the left or
right. When you pass your mouse over the head and
tail of each clip you'll see the familiar trim icon
mentioned above. Clips may be trimmed in the timeline
as well for perfecting the timing from clip to clip.
However, this is where the Snap to Edges feature becomes
an annoyance if you're looking to fine tune your edit
points. Once you have all your clips in the timeline
it's best to turn this feature off in the Timeline
menu. If you've imported any music, go ahead and lay
it down in an audio track. Sometimes you may want
to lay your music in first so you can edit to the
beats of the music. It makes for a much more dramatic
movie experience. Clicking on the small triangle in
the music track reveals the volume level and pan 'rubber
bands'.
They're called rubber bands because
you can add points to adjust the volume levels over
time. This is especially useful for fading up or fading
down your music track. Zooming in on the timeline
with your + and - keys allows you to see the audio
waveform of your music, natural sound and narration.
This helps to fine tune your rubber band points to
compensate for large changes in music volume. Once
all of your clips and music are laid down your timeline
will look something like this.
The video clips I used had no natural
sound so I'm not using audio track 1 for this. In
this example I'm using track 1 just for music. Now,
we get to add some transitions and effects.
Finishing your Movie
As a rule of thumb, transitions and
effects should help move your story along and not
distract the viewer with needless flips, twirls and
doozies. These can be fun, but try to use them in
a way that makes sense with the current action taking
place in your movie. For instance, if you've got footage
of your kid doing cartwheels it might be fun to spin
this shot in from the left or right instead of just
a simple cut. This could easily be done with the Motion
Effect in the 3D Motion folder under transitions.
To add transitions and effects, make sure your transitions
window is open then simply select an effect from one
of the folders and drag it to the timeline.
Transitions will always occur between
two adjoining clips while video effects are dropped
directly onto the clip itself. The fun of it is just
playing around until you find something you like.
Experiment with different transitions and try changing
the length of your transitions to see what affect
it has. Remember, you can't make your transition longer
than the amount of available media at the end of your
first clip and the beginning of the next. You will
know this by visually examining your clips. If you
see a corner marked at the beginning or end of any
clips this means there is no more media available.
You will need to adjust (shorten) the length of these
clips to allow for transitions. Keep in mind; if the
clip is already in the time line and you shorten it,
this will change the timing of your whole movie. So
be careful and make necessary adjustments. Dissolves
usually should last between 15 frames to 1 second.
Any flips or motion oriented effects you should lengthen
so you can actually see the effect happening. Anything
shorter than 1 second will be hard to comprehend.
In my example movie, I've added a few
simple transitions and a video effect to add a sepia
tone to the first clip. To add the sepia tone I selected
an After Effects plug-in called Tint from the Image
Control folder under the Video tab in the effect pallet.
Once the effect is added the Effect Control window
pops up and a blue bar appears across the top of the
clip. The Effect Control palette is where you can
make adjustments to attain the effect your after.
To apply the sepia tone to the entire clip make sure
the effect is enabled but keyframing is turned off
(this is in the Effect Controls palette next to the
Enable Effect box). This way the effect is applied
to the entire clip instead of a keyframe by keyframe
basis. If your desire is to change the color of the
clip over time, then turn keyframing on, select the
first or last keyframe (the diamond/triangular shaped
icons) and make your adjustments. If your saying to
yourself, what the heck is a keyframe, then please
read my first installment of Premiere 6 or refer to
your Premiere 6 User Guide.
I've also applied a speed effect to
one of my clips. Premiere can speed up (reduce clip
time) or slow down (increase clip time) video clips.
This can be used to create dramatic effects or to
lengthen a shot that just wasn't long enough. You
can also create an elapsed time effect by speeding
up an extremely long clip. To adjust the speed of
your clips either select it in the bin or in the timeline
then go to the Clip menu and select Speed. The dialogue
that appears gives you the option of adjusting for
time or a percentage.) Higher percentages speed up
your clip and lower percentages slow it down.
The final step in completing our movie
is adding the imported graphic element to the last
shot. Unlike the other video clips that were all place
in the Video 1 track, our graphic element is placed
over top of our final clip on the Video 2 track. This
will allow you to 'Key' the graphic over top of the
video using the graphics Alpha Channel (see previous
review for a description). To make the graphic stand
out I've added a number of effects to the graphic
element and a single blur effect to the video underneath.
I've also added a Motion path to the
graphic to make it zoom in from infinity to full size.
Once you've dragged the graphic element into place,
you'll then need to adjust the transparency settings
to use the Alpha Channel. With the graphic element
selected, navigate to the menu item Clip>Video
Options>Transparency. The Transparency Settings
dialog box appears.
From the drop down menu box select Alpha
Channel as the interpretation method. The thumbnail
to the right will show you the effect this has. The
three square boxes just below the thumbnail image
switch your viewing modes. The first shows the graphic
before interpretation, the second after interpretation
and the last shows interpretation with the actual
video sources. Experiment switching between each of
these modes. When finished select OK and you're returned
to the timeline. You may not see your graphic element
initially because it needs rendering. This is OK because
were going to add some more effects to it anyway.
As shown in the Effect Controls box,
I've added the Bevel Alpha and Drop Shadow effects
to the graphic. Bevel Alpha adds a chiseled look to
the graphic. Just play around with the settings until
you like what you see. The Drop Shadow effect adds
another layer of depth to the graphic. To make the
graphic stand out even more, I added a Gaussian Blur
to the clip in Video Track 1. You may also need to
adjust the length of the graphic elements in and out
points so they line up with the video clip just below
it. Now, we need to add some motion to the graphic
element to draw attention to it.
The Motion Settings allow you adjust
the position, scale and even rotation of your graphics.
The Motion Settings dialog box seems a little daunting
at first, but once you get used to it it's not to
bad. It uses the same keyframe concept introduced
to you earlier. What you see is a representation of
your graphic moving from left to right across the
screen (the default motion setting). To the right
of this is your visible work area. This is where you
manually drag your graphic at certain keyframe markers.
In between these are play and pause controls for the
motion preview. Unlike the diamond shape in the timeline,
keyframes appear as a thin vertical line in the Time
section of the Motion Settings box. To add keyframes
just click above the thin horizontal time 'line' (not
to be confused with Premieres editing Timeline). The
length of time is identical to the length of your
graphic element. To make my graphic element zoom in,
I readjusted the position of the first and last keyframes
to the center of the work area. I then added a keyframe
roughly one second after the first keyframe and adjusted
zoom to about 65%. I then went back to the first keyframe
and adjusted zoom to 0% and then adjusted the last
keyframe to 65% also. This causes the graphic to zoom
in from infinity over 1 second and then sit motionless
for the remaining 3 seconds. There are many, many
more fun things you can do with some of the other
options in the Motion Settings. The ability to distort
your graphic elements over time is just one of these
features. As I've said many times throughout this
tutorial, just play around with these settings to
see what they do and have fun with it!
That about does it for our movie. The
image below shows the final result of the tutorial.
You may continue to refine and reorganize
clips until your satisfied with the final outcome.
This is the beauty of Nonlinear editing. The creative
process is never ending. Even George Lucas returned
to his classic movie Star Wars and used a bunch of
new digital toys to reedit the film to his original
vision. Lucas likens movie making to painting on a
digital canvas, continually adding layers and layers
to achieve the equivalent of an artistic masterpiece.
Like Lucas, you too can create digital masterpieces
with a camera and your computer.
Next time I'll be finishing the last
component of our movie making adventure; the method
of delivery. I'll cover the process of putting your
movie back to tape and preparing it for delivery to
the Internet and e-mail. I also be giving my final
thoughts on Adobe Premiere 6.0 and assign it a rating.
Until next time, have fun editing!
Michael
Tate Jones
See also Part
One and Part
Two of this series. Part Four is forth coming.