Film Editing Course Reviews

“Learning to cut for emotion changed the way I build a scene.”

“Color grading brought depth and polish I didn’t know my short could have.”

“Seeing how a bad edit kills momentum made me respect the process even more.”

“I now edit with story in mind — not just what looks cool.”

“For this past week I’ve learned how to color a video, meaning add color, and brightness effects to it. I colored the wedding video my mentor has me working on, so if it looks O.K. I should be done, or very close to done with it! It’s amazing to me how different, and brighter, or dimmer, you can make a video look, just by editing it. I didn’t know you could make coloring effects, before I learned this. I’m going to meet her today, and I’ll see what she thinks about what I’ve colored.”

“I learned to watch cuts emotionally, not just technically.”

“I learned how to create suspense with what I didn’t show.”

“On Tuesday, August 11th I met with my mentor Joe on a beautiful sunny day in Minnesota. We have both been crazy busy, me with my homework and him on some errands but we made the time to get together in spite of our schedules. That day we talked about my chapter 1 and 2 quizzes and also I had the chance to go to his studio to see where he does the editing for his projects. He uses the Apple program Final Cut and I find it similar to the Sony editing software I recently purchased. So we spent the majority of the time looking at and exploring the features of his editing software. It was eye opening to what you can do with the software. There are so many functions and even though he showed me a few of them such as putting footage on a timeline and then editing it by adding transition here and there and also looping the sound to match the footage made my mind swim. He made it look easy since he has been doing that for quite some time and I look forward to when I too can make it look easy…might take awhile but I will get there:). Joe also gave me a small project to work on with my new editing software – the footage we filmed at the White Bear Lake YMCA. He made a backup copy of some of the footage and tasked me with making a movie with the footage he gave me. It is quite the challenge but I feel I am up to the task. Like a rookie quarterback starting in place of an injured veteran player I must make my editing debut.Very excited to see what I can come up with! Stay tuned for more later…”

“I used to think editing was tech — now I see it as storytelling.”

“Learning continuity editing was like learning how to think clearly.”

“This week I got to sit behind the wheel and do some hands on editing all by myself! For the second of Holly’s film videos, Shane allowed me to sculpt the whole thing from start to finish. We laid down the film and I began cutting and dropping footage. Again, I could see that the editing process wouldn’t be too hard for me because of the organization of the footage. Everything was easily accessible and so I managed to make some pretty good progress before we called it a day. The first draft is not quite finished yet but Shane seemed very pleased with the progress I made. Its incredibly exciting to be behind the wheel and having a chance to creatively craft this narrative in whatever I see it with all the components made ready and available to me. As excited and proud as I am, I cannot help but think of the long hours Holly put in when she wrote the lyrics and the film and envisioned it herself, and I cannot help but think of the long hours Shane put it in to shoot it, and the long hours he put in to be able to afford the equipment we shot it with. Its a very awesome experience to work on something that is such a massive collaboration of talents and energy. I’m eager to see how Holly likes the videos we’ve prepared for her.”

“Cutting a documentary taught me to find a story in real footage.”