At the beginning of my second week I started to learn how to edit video using Final Cut Pro, a software I have never used before. I was taught how to “scrub through” (look through) video and mark the sections that I thought were useful for the project. This was interesting and I enjoyed it. I scrubbed through somewhere between 75 and 125 video clips I think, I do not remember exactly how many there were. I worked directly off of an external hard drive, so I no longer have direct access to the files. I chose the segments of the video clips that I thought would work well and where the people looked good, and marked them. I think the longest video clip I was given to work with was two minutes long. I thought that I would be putting the video together the next day under Anthony’s guidance and instruction, but there were more pressing matters for the agency to complete so I was put on another task.
I’ve edited my first video. Anthony put me back on the project I’d started earlier in the internship. This was a fun project and I learned a lot, and I can now add programs to and skills to my resume. In all the video took me about two and a half to three days to create my first video. I chose which clips whet in and which order they went in. I edited the video to go with the music, and after a while, I got tired of the music, but it was a great experience.
I dragged the markers from the video clips that I had chosen earlier onto the timeline, and imported an audio file that was given to me. The clips were added based on the time codes of when they were taken and the labels I had given them when I originally marked the clips. I started editing the video with the keyboard shortcut commands that Anthony taught me. He told me to render out the video at the end of each day so that I could keep track of its progress; I like this idea, and did so each day.
The following day I continued editing the video using some of the keyboard shortcuts Anthony showed me as well as figuring some out on my own and Googled a shortcuts cheat sheet. I needed to edit down over 14 minutes of footage to just 2 minutes. Throughout the process of editing in Final Cut Pro, I had to solve problems that came up and figure things out on my own, as I was often alone in the office. I determined that I could cut the audio track in the same manner as I cut the video, and finally cut the audio at the 2-minute mark.
Anthony had me convert it to an MP4 file format using MPEG Streamclip (I followed a tutorial on Vimeo to do this). Full video is over 6.5 minutes long as Anthony told me to keep the extra footage in case the client wanted to see different shots. He said that it was very good for a first-ever video edit. His advice was that in the future I should keep the clips shorter and he’ll show me how to speed up the time on some of the clips.
The intent was to make it 2 minutes long, and because the audio track was much longer than that, both the video and audio end abruptly. The entire video is 6.5 minutes long, though the intended time was 2 minutes. I had moved the “extra” footage to the end, “off to the side” so there is about a 20 second break between the video and the extra footage. Then when the extra footage ends there is about two minutes of audio without video. I was told to leave this extra footage in in case the client wants to choose from these other clips. He will be showing this video to the client as a sample of what Bridge Agency can do for them.
Vimeo will not allow the video to be shown because it detected that the song used in the video is copyrighted.
As of July 22nd, I am working on another video, this one is for a real estate company to showcase the sale of a $4M house on Long Island.
