Transcripts
1. Editing course intro: "I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set it free." Those were the words of Michelangelo when describing his sculpting process. When it comes to video editing, I feel it's the same thing. In this course, in 45 minutes, I am going to teach you all you need to know, step by step, how to edit your footage using Adobe Premiere Pro all the way until you can release your film and set it free. Bonus lessons are included in the end. By the end of this course, you will leave with a polished, edited video ready to post. Let's get started.
2. Class case study: Now I'm editing a video for small TOEFL company based in Maine for the Crowdfunding Campaign. When filming, I got two types of footage. A roll, which is the talking head footage of the company's founder Jeff. B roll, which are shots other than his interview that support the story. To prepare for the edit stage. I've written a transcript of Jeff's interview and created a paper edit, which is a story structure based on his talking points that I will use as a guide in the edit suite. I will be using this editing project as the example for the course.
3. Premiere pro interface: When you open up the Premiere Pro Interface, it should look something like this. This is your workspace, and it is comprised of four main areas. The first is a 'Window', where you can preview all of your video and audio files before deciding to drag them into your timeline. The second is the 'Timeline', and it is the place of action. Here is where you'll be placing your clips, making cuts, and dragging them back and forth. The third place is your 'Monitor', which plays back all of your sequences in the 'Timeline'. Then you have your 'Project Bin', which holds all of your project files. Then you have your 'Tool Bar', which contains all the tools you'll need to cut your clips and order them on the 'Timeline'. Finally, you have the 'Audio Meter' to your right. This will tell you the decibel levels of your audio.
4. Importing footage: Now that we know how the editing interface works, let's dive right in and input our footage. To do this, open up your app and create a new project. Then title the project. I will do Hayward tofu Kickstarter project and press Okay. Now, it will bring you to the project interface, which should look familiar to you and notice the project bin. Here, you want to start creating the folders for your inputs. So I will name one folder video, then I'll create one for audio, then I'll create a folder for assets, and I will create a new folder called slugs. These are basically the labels you will add to your clips just so you know what they are in the timeline, but we'll get into that later. Within these folders, then I'll create a sub-folders just like you did before. For video, I'll create one for interviews and create one for b-roll. For audio, I'll create one for the interview, and I'll create one for b-roll, and one for music. For assets, I'll create one for photos and titles. Next, I will then start importing my footage and I'll do step-by-step per category. First, I'll do the video and we have interview, so click that. Once I'm in the interview folder, then I will import my footage. Sometimes when you import your files, you'll get this box that says file import failure. Just click Okay and don't worry about it because it will actually be able to upload all of your files. We have uploaded our interview footage and you can see it in this bin. Now, I will upload the audio recorded during his interview, that was recorded on an extraordinary recorder connected to his staff mike. To do this, you do the same thing. You go to Import, then you find the file where they chose to save it, and total, you have all of the audio files in the spin. Go ahead and import all of the footage from your shoots into their respective folders here. I will meet you in the next lesson.
5. Setting up sequence: Now that we have imported our footage, it's time to drag our A roll onto the timeline to actually begin the edit. I'm so excited for you to discover this stage. First, you'll need to create a new sequence. Go to "file" and then click "new sequence" and title it "rough cut". For the settings, just check that they match your shooting settings in terms of the frame rate. Here we have 23.976 frames per second. The frame size, which should be 1920 by 1080 for most of you all. You can also drag one clip recorded on your camera directly onto the sequence. The sequence will automatically match your camera settings. Then click "OK". Notice how it puts a new timeline with a time code and channels for video and audio.
6. Placing clips on timeline: So the first step is to cut together your "A roll" or your interview based on your paper at it. Let's go to our "Interview" footage in the project bin and click and drag all of the files onto your timeline just like this. Now if you scroll through this bar, you'll see that you'll have all of your footage located on your timeline.If you want to preview each clip, feel free to click on one and you'll see that it'll pop up on your preview window. You can use this little blue knob to scroll through the whole clip. If you just want to take one section of the clip, you can press these brackets. One that'll mark the beginning point of the clip, and one that will mark the end point of the clip. If you just click here, you'll drag both video and audio. If you just wanted to drag video, you click this scroll and it'll just drag the video on lanes so you see how there's no audio underneath. But if you just want to drag the audio, then you click this little funny shape here and you drag it onto your timeline. Now that we have the main interview on our timeline, let's also drag our audio footage. If you recorded audio separately during your interview like I did where I recorded his interview on an external recorder connected to AV mic, go to your interview audio file in your bin and drag it onto the timeline as well. Like this. You'll see that I can only drag the audio files onto the audio channels marked by an "A", and I cannot drag them onto the video channels because they're different. In the next lesson, we will learn how to sync your audio with your video and make cuts.
7. Syncing audio with video: If you record your audio externally outside of the camera, like on an external recorder, then you'll want to sync your camera with your audio. So to do this, please put clips on your timeline. So here I have my camera footage and here I have my audio recording. Then, it's simple. Drag and select all of the clips. Right click and hit synchronize. You want to click ''Audio'' and track channel, click mixed down and press ''OK''. Then it will do some processing. Your clip will be synchronized with your videos. If you want, you can delete the audio that was recorded in your camera and a move the higher audio file underneath. So now it should be very well synced. Because it's automatic sync sometimes isn't exactly precise. Magnify your timeline as far as it'll go by pressing the plus key on your keyboard or dragging the bottom scroll bar. So you zoom out. If you feel like something is off, feel free to move the audio clip forward or backward, one or two milliseconds until you feel like it's an exact match. Do this for all of your clips and you'll be ready to make some cuts. Happy syncing.
8. Making cuts: By now you should have your A role or all of your interview files, all synced and on the main sequence in the timeline called A role, like this. You can see I have my whole interview here, it's all synced. Now, it's time to make the rough draft of your video by picking up the talking points according to your paper edit and cutting them out onto a new sequence. Let me go to my paper edit. I see that the first talking point I have besides the hook is his personal introduction where he says, "My name is Jeff Wolowitz and my title at Heiwa is a supreme ruler of the tofu universe, pine intended and the tofu maker". My time code that happens at 21 seconds. What I will do is I will go back to my A role and find that talking point. "My name is Jeff Wolowitz", there it is. Once you identify the starting point of your clip, click on your razor tool and make the cut just by pressing along the blue line here. Then I will find the end of the clip, there it is. I will do the same thing, I will mark the end point of that clip by cutting it out. There we go. Now you can separate this clip apart from the main sequence, and we're going to put it on a new sequence. To do that, we're going to go to File, New, Sequence and call this the rough cut. It should show up on your timeline like this. We're going to copy and paste this clip onto the new sequence like this. Now we're going to create a slug or basically a label for this clip, just so we know what this clip is talking about when we are looking at the timeline. To do that, go back to your bin and click on your slug folder. Then, go to File, New, Title or you can also get this by pressing Command T and label the clip. Here, he's giving his personal intro. Click OK. You'll see this window pop up, but just ignore it for now. You'll see that there is a black screen with the label personal intro. Click on it and drag it over your clip so that when we look at the timeline, we see that this clip is labeled personal intro. Go back and forth between your paper edit and your A role sequence and find and cut out the main talking points. Then, copy and paste them into the rough cut, label them with a slug. I'll meet you in the next lesson after you have done this for all of your talking points.
9. Adding b roll : I hope you're having a lot of fun with this process and that you feel like your video is literally forming before your eyes, now that you have all of your A roll cut together. To show you how to add B roll, I've taken a part of my A roll cut together, that covers the introduction of Jeff story, as you can see here. I've broken a part of the sections just to give room for the B roll. Let's go through a few clips and see where we could add B roll to enhance the story and to really make it visually engaging. Let's play. My name is Jeff Wolovitz , my title at Heiwa is the supreme ruler of the tofuniverse and the Tofu maker. Okay. I think I will leave this introduction as is because I like the idea that when he introduces himself to the audience, the audience members can see his face. Let's go on. Heiwa, Tofu is based in Rockport, Maine. We use mean grown organic soybeans to make our tofu. Paler means, peace in Japanese. Okay, I think it's a great opportunity to show viewers what the soybeans look like just so it would enhance the connection they have with their company's product and to their identity. I'm going to go into my B roll and find the clip of the soybeans. Let's look at it in our preview window. As you can see it is right here if you scroll through right here. I will pick the parts I like, which I've done already by pressing the in and the out keys. I will just drag the video over to the part where he mentions the soy beans. Heiwa Tofu is based in Rockport Maine. We use main grown organic soybeans to make our tofu. Paler means peace in Japanese. Fantastic. Now let's keep going and see where we could add value to our story with more people. We first formed the company, we came up with this idea that a local plant-based diet is the way to a more peaceful planet. Okay. I like the idea of just leaving as is where you can see him telling you about these core values. But I think I would like to show a little bit of how he puts these values into practice in the real world. After he says that, I think I'm going to add a little segment of B roll to show him at the farmers market where he's interacting with community members and providing this local sustainable food. I'm going to go back to my B roll and open the farmers market folder. Now I see I have an establishing shot of the farmer's market just to let viewers know where they are. I will choose a section which I've done already here by pressing the in and the out brackets and I want both video and audio this time. So I will click on the actual preview screen itself and drag it onto my timeline like this. Then I see that there's a shot of them working at the booth where you are closer to the action and so again, I will mark my end and I will mark my out points by using the brackets or pressing I and O on the keyboard and I will drag both. That I see I have some close ups of the actual produce found at the market, which I think will really enhance the feel of local sustainability, which is the value and the feeling we want to convey as we decided in our concept. I will drag a few of those as well. Now, I'd like to show the actual products as part of the sequence of sustainable ingredients. I'm also going to mark in and out and drag it onto the timeline. Now we have something that looks like this. The way to a more peaceful planet. Great. And this is a great time to introduce this new tool, which is the track select forward tool, which you can get by pressing A. This will move the clip that you click on, including all of the ones that come after it forward together. You don't need to move them individually one by one. when I'm adding these B-roll clips, I'm also keeping in mind that there will be music playing underneath. The music will give a nice rhythm and bind all of these B roll clips together. For now, I'm just going to pick the B roll clips that I like and refine them later on if necessary. I'm going to go ahead and keep adding B roll to my entire A roll sequence and I want you to do this as well. When adding B roll, first, listen through your A roll couple times and think about places where the story would really come alive with additional images. Also, don't be afraid to add a sequence of B roll to just add a breath or a pause to all of the interview talking and I will meet you at the next lesson.
10. Adding music magic to video: When it comes to looking for music, I think there are two important things. The first is the emotion the music evokes, and second, the rhythm as well. I really like to match my rhythms with the pace of the video. If I'm showing a frenetic process, that's about creative spontaneity, for example, I'll look for something fast pace. But if I'm looking for a piece of music to go along with reflection, then I will choose a slower rhythm. One of the biggest mistakes I've seen in crowdfunding videos is people putting just one track throughout the whole piece, and I feel like this really drowns out the story. Instead, you want to be very selective and only put music where it enhances the melody and the flow of the story. Don't worry, you do not actually have to compose your song. There are many music banks online, but I will show you a few of my favorites. The first one is called the Audio Network, and this is the one I use the most because I think it gives great value for the price of the music. You'll see that when you open up the page, you can browse by all of these categories, musical styles. Then you can also browse by mood and emotion. I typically filter by this one the most, and for a lot of Kickstarter videos, I like ambient sounds that are not so overwhelming, but just give a nice background feel. I'm now looking for a piece of music for my hook, where I'm imagining a series of beautiful macro shots of the tofu making process, that will pull you in by the poetry. I wanted to sound a little bit mysterious, a little bit whimsical, and a little bit Japanese to go with the company's name and their product. Japanese ambient bells, and you have all of these, come on. I'll look at Reiki Zen Meditation. Press play, and while it plays you can also see that there is the waveform of the audio on the bottom, and this will give you a sense of the pace and the intensity of the music before you even play through the whole thing. Here the waveforms are not as spiky. I know that sounds a bit rounded and not as intense. But it's a little bit too strong for what I'm looking for. Let's look at these one, Eyes In The Sky, because I see that it says gently pulsing harp and Japanese koto with light bells and wistful string bass. Just by hearing the first ten seconds of the song, I can already imagine my footage, so I know it'll be a good match. What I love about Audio Network is that the music has different mixes of the same song. For example, if I didn't want the string bass, then there is a version without a string bass. I will start this to keep it in mind, and I will continue looking until I have a short list of a few songs. One thing you want to keep in mind is that, you want to make sure you buy the right license for your songs. Every music bank will have a few, and they'll have different conditions for each. For example, the creator license only allows you to use some music for your own personal needs, like a family video.
11. Cutting music: Now that we're back in our editing home, I am going to add the song I just found in the music bank to my B-roll, which forms the hook of my video. As you can see here on my timeline, I created a new sequence for my hook, and without any music, it looks like this. It starts with an opening shot of the factory at sunrise. Then it goes into a series of close-up shots of the tofu making process in the factory. Let's put in our music in the second audio track, and just listen to the music to see whether it complements our B-roll. I think the spirit of the music really matches the spirit of the B-roll, but we're going to have to do some work in terms of cutting the B-roll so that it matches the music even more. [inaudible] by half to make sure your cuts flow smoothly in your item is to match the cuts of your clips to the beat of the music. For example, with this song, I see that there is an entrance of a bell which marks a new beat. I think this would be a great time to transition the B-roll from this outside shot to an inside shot of the factory. I will find that bell again and mark where the bell enters. Just right there. What I'll do is I will shorten the clip of the establishing shot and move the shot of the bowl, which takes you right inside at that bell, so it looks like this. Now I'm going to listen to the next cue and it seems like there is an entrance of a long withdrawn cello. I'm going to stop at the cello's entrance and add another clip. Just about there. I will add my next clip and review it. Fantastic, and I will move his talking point because I find that if it's placed over the cello point, it really drowns out what he's saying, so I will put it in the beginning where there are lighter plucks. With this last bell, I really like using that as another cue to put in just personal introduction, so it's like the bell comes and then you see Jeff.
12. Adding transitions: At this point, your video may seem a little bit choppy. So let's smooth it out by adding a few video and audio transitions. To do that, open up the effects panel by going to Window and clicking Effects. Then you should have something like this pop up, and you'll notice that you have audio transitions and video transitions. I'll first do the video transitions. If you open it up, you'll find that you have all of these transitions available. My favorite ones are in the dissolve main folder. I like these because I find they are more subtle and I especially use the cross dissolve and the dip to black function. While I'm looking through my clips, I see that I have an establishing shot and I think I would like it to fade in just to give a sense of a beginning to my video. To do that, I will add the cross dissolve and you add an effect by clicking on it and dragging it to your clip and if you zoom in, you'll see that you'll have a bar that says crosses off and you can affect the length of it by dragging it back and forth. I think I want this to have a longer cross dissolve and if you could play it, you'll see that it's slowly emerges on the screen. The next part I would like to soften is the entrance of Jeff, when he's introducing himself. Right now, it looks like this, where it goes from the macro shop and just jumps into his interview. But let's add a little bit of magic by adding in a dip to black effect to the beginning of the interview. As you can see here, you can see the bar and you can adjust it back and forth. Now looks like that. Now, I will look at the audio transitions, and here there are three. There's constant gain, constant power, and exponential fade. The ones that I use the most are the constant power and the exponential fade. Let's start with the exponential fade. I typically like to use this to fade my music in and out. For example, as the interview will begin, I will also fade the music out. I will apply an exponential fade here and lengthen it. Beautiful. Now, we'll look at constant power. So I use this to smooth out talking points. If I had cut something out of the interview and joined two parts together, I will also use them to smooth out the music. If I had cut out a section of the music and joined two segments to make it shorter. For example, when I go to Jeff's interview, you can see here that while he was talking, I also cut something out in the middle, so I have two segments. I find in those places it's also really helpful to add a constant power. So you covered the audio jumps. Play around with these transitions, add them to smooth out your video, and I will meet you in the next lesson.
13. Level your audio: Ladies and gentlemen, there's just one last essential thing you will have to do before exporting your video, and that is tweaking your audio levels so that they remain consistent and within the right range throughout your video. Audio engineering is one complex field. But for the purposes of this video, I want you to keep one thing in mind, and that is to keep your audio levels bouncing between negative 12 and negative six decibels on your audio meter to the right. If your audio meter is too small to see, you can adjust the size of the area, including all the other areas of your editing interface by going to the edge of the section, and dragging it to make it bigger or smaller like this. This is my rough cut so far, and I've started to level the audio. I actually duplicated the interview audio just to make it stronger. But I will zoom in on one, by dragging down the audio track, and now you can see your wave forms more clearly. You'll notice that it has this bar, and you can move it up and down to adjust the levels. I will move it up until I see that his talking is bouncing between negative 12 and negative six decibels. My name is Jeff [inaudible] My title in [inaudible] is the supreme ruler of the Tofu universe. Next, you may be wondering what to do when you have music and talking and playing at the same time, and you want to stick to the basic rule of thumb, which is to keep the overall audio levels between negative 12 and negative six decibels. Here I have a section where music is playing while Jeff is talking, and now it sounds like this. As you can hear, the music is overpowering just interview a little bit. So what I will do is I will open up my music track and I will drag the audio bar down, until Jeff's voice stands out and the overall levels bounce between negative 12 and negative six. I think it can go down a little bit more. Hawaii Tofu is based in Rappaport name. We use maize grown organic solvents to make the Tofu. Okay, great. One last thing I want to show, if you want to have more control over your audio levels, is a new tool called the Pen tool, which you can get by pressing "P." This allows you to add specific points to the audio like this, so that you can control individual sections just like this. If you want the music to start off more loudly, but then decrease its volume when the interview comes in, then you can use a Pen tool to decrease the volume gradually like that. Go ahead and level your audio, and I will see you in the next lesson, for export.
14. Export your video!: Congratulations. I'm so proud of you for making it this far, and I hope you're proud of yourself as well. Now, it's time to set your video free by exporting it. To do it, first move your playhead to the beginning of your video and press i to mark the beginning of your video. Then move your playhead to the end of your video, and mark o to tell where you want the export to stop. Then go to File, Export, Media. If you're just posting this online, I recommend keeping the format to H.264 and changing the preset to YouTube 1080p HD. Then for the output name, write the name of your video. I will write Heiwa Indiegogo video and choose a place you'd like to save it and click Save. Make sure that export video and export audio are both checked. Then scroll down and check use maximum render quality. Then click Export and watch the magic happen as an exports into a quick time file. Grab a bowl of popcorn and share with your friends and family to celebrate the hard work and the artistry that you put into this video.
15. Bonus! The Ken burns effect: If you want to add photos to your video, I'm now going to show you a neat little trick that will bring them to life. Here in my timeline, I've added a few photos that look like this. We started off as a raw market member. You can see how this first photo was dynamic because it has a little movement inside. This is named the Ken Burns effect and I find the subtle movement really helps transform the photo into film. To do that, I'm going to delete this photo and start from scratch. I'm going to open my bin with my photos and I'm going to open the photo app like this. Then I'm going to drag it and shorten it so it'll fit right into my timeline. Now it will look like this. When you place your photos into your timeline, you'll find that it will look enlarged. To make it smaller, go to effect controls and look at scale. Make sure your clip is highlighted and reduce the size of it so it fits nicely within the frame like this. To animate it, you can add subtle movement by either changing the position of the photo, like making it move from left to right or you can make it increase or decrease in size. The important thing to keep in mind is that it has to be subtle, otherwise it will look very cheesy. I'm going to animate this photo by moving the position of it from left to right. To do that, I'm going to scroll to the beginning of the photo and I'm going to add some key frames just to mark the position of where it is now. Then I'm going to scroll through to the end of the video and I'm going to add different key frames this time by clicking this Add or Remove Key frame button. I think I want it to expand a little bit and move to the right. To do that, I'm going to change the scale to 47, we'll see what that looks like and I'm going to choose a new horizontal position for its ending point so I'm going to move it a little bit here. Now it'll look like this. We started off as a raw market. Magic. Thank you Ken Burns.
16. Bonus! Adding titles: This is how you add text or subtitles to your video. Go to Title and click New Title and name it, so I will name it Jeff's intro and it'll pop up a window with the current shot of your video based on where your placeholder is. What I'm going to do, is I'm going to click this type tool and I'm going to click and drag and write just the name, Jeff Wolovitz. King of the Tofuniverse. Then you can choose your fonts here and I'm a big fan of Sans-serif fonts but just choose the one that you like the most. You can adjust the width here and you can adjust the size of the text here, for example. Then place it where you think it looks good and then if you exited out, this is a great time to save it into your Assets folder, where you have a special folder for titles. So all of your titles will be there and drag the title over the part where you would like it. So now you have a title. I actually don't really like the way that looks, I'm going to play around with the fonts and the format but just notice that the title card becomes like a new video clip. If you wanted to add credits, you would just write your text on a new title card and then place them as if it was a clip in the beginning or the end of your timeline.
17. Bonus! Warp stabilizer: If you find that your footage turned out a little shaky, have no fear because there is a cool tool that will help smooth out the shake. For example, when I took a shot at the farmers market, it was handheld and it turned out a little shaky like this. To smooth out the shake, there is a cool effect in Premier Pro called Warp Distort, which you can access by going to Window and clicking Effects. A new window should pop up and you might find this actually nestled within your bin section. Then go to Video Effects and you'll have a list of all of these cool effects. Go to Distort and if you scroll down, you'll find something called Warp Stabilizer. If you click on it and drag it onto the clip that needs a little help, it'll start analyzing and figuring out best ways to smooth out the shake. If you go to your Effect Controls panel here, you'll find that the effect is recorded here and sometimes you'll have to click the Analyze button to initiate the fixing process. But when I play it back, you can see that it's a lot more smooth. Now, this won't work for all of the clips, but give it a try and see what it will do.
18. Thank you!: I hope that this course has shown you that you have what it takes to edit your footage and sculpt it until you can release and set free an amazing story. If you have any suggestions for how I can improve this course, or any questions that you feel are unanswered, feel free to send me a message and I will get back to you. Thank you so much for taking your time with me and I send you all the best for editing. See you next time. Bye.
19. Check out this class!: Now, that you know the mechanics of editing in Premier, checkout the follow-up course to this one, which presents five essential principles for powerful storytelling in the edit. Class post it on my profile. See you there.
20. Exciting Updates: If you like this course, I invite you to sign up for my newsletter where I share exciting updates, high-value insights, and curated inspiration. Link, on my course instructor page.
Dandan Liu, Filmmaker | Contemplative Creative
