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Adobe Premiere 6 Tutorial-Review Part Three: Editing

©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.