Adobe Premiere Pro – The Process of Editing How to edit “well” is hard to explain. You obviously have the freedom to create “art” using video; think of Premiere as a blank canvas, a camera is a paintbrush, and the ideas and inspirations behind creating your “vision” suddenly seem very similar to that of an artist. That said, you’d notice watching an episode of Coronation St or Eastenders, that there are distinct similarities and styles in the way they are both put together. What makes Coronation St work, is that there are no random shots at random angles – this is true to a very specific style. Consider the following... Notice how the eye level across the picture is all in the upper half of the shot – but not framed right to the roof of the shot. This was done intentionally so that all the action remains in the middle, and so the characters are relatable on eye level with the viewer (as if you are stood in front of them).
Its rules like this you must bear in mind when you are shooting and editing – what type of product are you making? Are there conventions/rules/camera angles/editing styles that must be followed to make it typical of its genre? In this section are some of the basic editing skills you will need throughout video editing. But don’t be afraid to use more than one at once; combine them together, try different methods out, take influences from a variety of things.
A simple interview scene, involves cutting back and forth from the perspective of one person to another.
In Adobe Premiere, we would do this like so...
We would start by separating our clips using Bins or Folders (as mentioned in earlier tutorials). You can clearly see here how much easier it looks to find what you’re looking for with your clips split up. When you’ve done this doubleclick the clip you wish to start editing with, and it will come up in the Source Window.
Here you can use the Open & Close Bracket Tools to choose the start and beginning of the section of this clip you wish to use.
We then, by clicking and holding on the Source Window picture, drag and drop the clip from the Source Window onto the Timeline (Sequence Window).
Now you have a section of the interview, but from only one perspective. The next section shows how you can edit into this the reverse perspective (only if you shot it in the first place obviously).
In the picture above, we can see the candidate replying to the interviewer’s question. We do the same process again with the open and close bracket tools, and pick out the section or “take” that we like. Again we drag it down to the timeline, but this time we put it on the Video Channel above (so we can move it around and not touch the other clip). You will notice some overlap.
Now we will move the clip around into the right place so that they flow together, this could involve trimming it further using the Razor Tool to cut unwanted sections off the ends (or maybe even to cut out sections from the middle). Just highlight and “Delete” the parts you don’t want, which will leave you with a video that cuts to and from 2 characters on screen.
The way Premiere works, is the layer on top is the layer visible, which if you think logically is like a stack of postcards or pictures. You can never see the ones underneath through the one on the top layer. There are ways of changing how opaque/transparent the layers on top are but that comes later. Now you may notice, there are not only now 2 video clips on top of each-other – but there are also 2 audio clips underneath that are on top of each-other the opposite way. Audio is not prioritised the same way as Video. All of the Audio Tracks are audible/heard, the only difference being at what volume. So lets say in the first clip the Player-Head is hovering over, is just a clip of the candidate nodding in agreement (no sound or dialogue). It would be ok to delete that audio clip as the character on screen doesn’t speak, but don’t forget the audio and video are automatically grouped together. If we want to get rid of that audio track for this section, we must ungroup/unattach the audio from the video. To do this simply right-click on the clip you wish you to detach, and click “unlink”. Now we can select/highlight and Delete the audio track we don’t want/need.
NB: This also works the other way round if we need an audio track and not the video!