Evaluation of editing skills

At the start of the year I was only familiar with the Premier pro and Photoshop editing softwares, and still I was only able to use their basic settings, as being able to simply put together a sequence  in premier pro from a crated 'bin' and then cut it to appropriate  times and lengths. However as the year progressed the tasks became more complicated  and would involve me getting more creative with my ideas and editing techniques and using different softwares. The first challenge I faced was when we had to, as a group, film a series of short clips (a couple seconds each) and then assemble  a stop motion short film. We had to not only film more than 50 separate short sequences, but then after I also had to edit each sequence to match the beat of the music (wii theme ringtone).

Another example was when we were given the task to create a New Wave film. I had to not only become familiar with the era of filmmaking but also all the techniques used at the time. I had to make sure my final product had the same aesthetic as the films I had researched, and to do so I had to research editing techniques which i haven’t previously used. An example is learning how to use split screen as well as layering clips on top of each other creating a new interesting effect, whilst again using the beat of the song to cut.

I also had to work predominantly with the Premier Pro and Photoshop editing softwares, however as the year progressed, I learned to get out of my comfort zone of what I already knew and discovered different settings such as the colour wheels and being able to edit the cinematic feel of every one of my short films, and got a better insight into both. For my project on film studies, creating a short film while also applying the relevant theory, in Premier Pro I had to learn how to film and then edit a green screen sequence. As this was something I’ve never attempted before I did my research before hand, watching different videos and reading blogposts on different ways of editing on a green screen. After I had the needed information I attempted a couple different methods of editing such as using the chrome key and using the ultra key, of which i preferred  using the chroma key as I found the settings after easier to adjust and edit to my liking.

In both Premier pro and Photoshop, something I had to learn how to do for my music video project was cloning. My idea was  to clone myself to essentially create a 'band', playing on air instruments. At the start it took a few trials and errors, and I also had to adjust my filming plan and ideas to fit the cloning as I found, for example, that the same subject can’t be too close to its clone/each other on screen as it blurs the lines and creates glitching where they touch,  therefore when filming the person has to have as much space as possible between the 'other person' that I would position on the screen when editing.
In the same project I also had to learn to use adobe After effects for the first time to create different animations in my music video. After learning the basics of how to create different animations I realised how time consuming is for editors to create whole short films fully based on animations, as if i wanted the animations to work and be interactive i had to draw on each frame per second rather than seconds, so to create even a second worth of footage it took a longer time than expected.

In the future I would like to improve my skills by working with different softwares in the Adobe cloud to further improve my skillset. I would also like to work on my editing of still photography.

Overall I can confidently say, and justify that I have improved my editing skills in the past year and feel a lot more confident in the use of different softwares as well as in working with more advanced editing techniques.