Thursday 2 December 2010

Edit This!

Editing. One word guaranteed to strike fear into my heart right up until the end of last year. After spending an afternoon teaching myself Adobe Premier in college before editing our 5-minute, production-value-free film, I thought I'd be able to pick up new software in my stride. Dead easy, I thought. But nooooo. Last year I had migraines for the first time in 3 years- once after our question & answer editing assessment, and the second after our practical assessment. Then in the second term, our classes kind of... dried up. I sort of assumed that'd be it, as follow up classes never really happened and before long we were involved in other projects anyway.

I was quite happy to learn that Final Cut was getting launched in favour of Avid this year- for me, if I don't understand something, my preferred option is to start all over again and TRY not to fall behind in something new. We also had a new tutor, which was a double bonus because he wouldn't know how I was the last to leave on both nights we were editing our 'Home' films and it's STILL not finished.

The first two days of editing were a nightmare. I didn't 'get' anything, the 9am start was a sucker-punch to my insomniac system and trying to keep up I felt like I was running through mud. At the end of Monday and Tuesday I felt behind, which made me feel really horrible... like I was especially thick and couldn't understand something that no one else looked like they had a problem with.

By Wednesday however, things started to fall into place for me. I had tapes that needed captured and I was determined to learn how to do it on my own. I felt if I could do this for myself it would be a huge achievement for me. Cue inspirational montage music and images of me frantically pointing, clicking, nodding and taking notes.



After a most heinous start to the week, I finally started to keep up- or at least, I knew what to do a few seconds after it had been done on the big projector screen, rather than several minutes/weeks. It helped that Aldo seemed really enthusiastic about what he was talking about, and his knowledge on the subject was crazy. Plus he threw in a nice wee picture of Charlotte Gainsbourg in one of his slideshows- never a bad thing, IMHO. We also covered audio-editing a little bit, which was interesting for me. The Ross studied music technology at college and I think I may have bored the rear-end off him in trying to impress with my new-found knowledge.

On Friday, we had our third-ever sound class with Cammy. For this we were split into three groups, ours being the first up. After some confusion of time, my group (Me, Lucy, Meg, Dilara and Murray) finally got underway and we got to have a wee fondle of the equipment. Sadly because of time constraints we didn't have time to actually go out and practise with it, although the smaller class certainly made a difference. I felt as though it was easier to ask questions and I wasn't holding anyone back by doing so. I think sound is pretty interesting, if it involved getting to work on sound FX and things like that- but no way could I see myself being able to hold a boom-pole for lengthy periods of time. Unless I figured out some way to hold it underarm, thus freeing up my other hand for cigarettes and coffee. Despite our weeks of training in Delhi, sadly I have lost pretty much all the tone that tose three weeks of constant running about gave and I've gone back to being 'soft'... if we'd had sound on our first week back, I guarantee I'd have TOTALLY rocked it. Sadly, we'll never know...

As for those tapes I had to capture... Well, after a good 2 hours sitting in the DTU cringing at some shots. congratulating myself on others (although I'm sure our tutors would have other words to say about this... I hope not though!) and generally squinting until I could barely see in an effort to focus/concentrate, I managed to get them all logged! :D cue overly-enthusiastic victory dance and air-punching. Sadly since Gav was away that week, I couldn't get the external hard drive off of him to they're still not fully captured. For now though, I'm more than happy with myself for what I've done so far. And only a year behind everyone else!

2 comments:

  1. Not gonna lie, every time we talk about "montage" in class I think of that song.

    Glad you broke through with Avid, software's a bitch until you figure it out :D

    PS: IT'S A MOTHERFUCKING MONTAAAAGE

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  2. Yup, then when you learn the ins and outs you can totally make it your bitch. And totally wonder why you were ever stuck in the first place!

    ALWAYS FADE OUT IN AAAAA......

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