Learning Editing Software

Adobe Premiere Rush

The editing software I will be using for majority of the film's editing and sound components is Adobe Premiere Rush. In a previous film I worked on, I familiarized myself with its software as far as filming directly on it goes and reordering clips to better implement my ideas as director. But now working as this film's editor and sound designer, I wanted to understand the software's capabilities more in-depth.

After downloading the application onto my MacBook computer, Adobe had its editing workshop for beginners; The Getting Started Series on Adobe Premiere Rush CC. I watched all the videos included in the series, teaching me the shortcuts to editing faster, smoother, and smarter.

A screenshot from the video tutorial showing the advanced sound features available on Adobe Premiere Rush.

Considering that the film will be shot at home and will likely have background noise of pets and other people, the "balance sound" and "reduce background noise" feature will definitely be used to isolate the audio in parts. The film is going to convey dramatic tension involving addiction issues, which my film partner agreed that the sound dynamic would be unsettlingly quiet, therefore these features would help grow the sound quality to reach this impression. I would have to check the buttons I want and then drag a slider to choose the intensity of the sound edit, whether it be to enhance the speech of dialogue to sound more crisp or minimize echos in clips – I have the capability of manipulating the sound to better suit the narrative being told in the scenes. 

A screenshot showing how when starting a project, adding clips is numbered and can be easily rearranged and viewed in the project tab for revision.

This is good to know going into filming days so that I can number takes in the order they were taken to choose the final takes easier when comparing them side by side. Although very basic, understanding the platform I will be working on for the weeks ahead will help me get ahead in my editing skills and organize scenes. There is also a way to collaborate on the same edits on multiple devices and see the changes you make reflect all devices it is connected to, so when choosing final takes, I can have my cinematographer review them with me and overall be closer to my part of the process so we can share ideas to improve aspects as we go along.

Predicting Edits

Knowing how the film's storyline is headed, especially with such a long-take for the first scene, I want the transition between the first and second scene to be dramatic. I talked with my film partner on creating almost a 'pause' effect that appears on the screen to create a trippy feeling for audiences to witness; past to present time jump. The idea is that the camera would cut to the other friend 'watching' the video of her and her friend, indicating that it was from the past and is nostalgic to her. This would require a 'pause effect' to take place, which required me to do more research on to find out if I could mimic the effect we had in mind. 

A concise video I watched demonstrating how you can insert a frame hold segment to symbolize the pausing of a video.

This video showed the ease it is to induce this 'freeze effect.' It allowed me to assure my cinematographer that we could transition between the two scenes using this kind of editing. Making sure I know what I am able to do for the film before incorporating the vision into our storyline will help us make a realistic planning to shoot to reality for us to follow!