Improving Your Editing Skills

 Going into editing I wasn't overly confident as I'm used to final cut x not the version that is used in the university computer laboratories. Thankfully, we went over the basics in class, which refreshed my memory on how to do basic cutting and moving around. Doing this assignment though helped me understand how to change colour. Our footage we filmed for our PR interview with the representative from the red cross was quite dark as it was filmed inside a dark office and I was having lighting issues with the camera (mentioned in my previous post about improving camera skills). So we had to brighten up the footage so that it didn't look like a silhouette of someone, like those people dishing the dirt on their bosses on programs like A Current Affair. Colour correction is also an extremely important tool for creating a polished finish product. It creates a high-quality finishing product that is good enough for broadcasting (Van Hurkman & DigitalFilm Tree 2006).

I started to improve on my colour corrector skills, mainly through practice and a little bit of trial and error. I found that desaturating the image a little helped match some of the clips. Something new I had never tried before was adding in writing or a title into the clip. It was frustrating at first trying to get the hang of it but after a while I found it easier to do and extremely effective. Even some of the basic things like cutting clips and sticking them into the time line without putting everything out of sync was a big step for me. I honestly found that mastering the more basic tools made it easier to learn some more advanced tools and manipulators. It also made the experience more enjoyable.

References

 

Van Hurkman, A & DigitalFilm Tree 2006, Advanced Color Correction and Effects in Final Cut Pro 5, Peachpit Press, California.