Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hello, my name is Gabriel Noguez, and I've been doing short films for the last ten years. Currently, I'm working for GoPro. I love working for GoPro because we do little stories that inspire other people to do their own stories. People now have access to cameras, because their neighbor has one, or their friend has one, or you can rent one for $20 a day. After realizing that, we are going back to the basics of, "What do we want to say with this medium?" This class is about capturing the cinematic moment. We're going to talk about different elements that constitute film making like the location, the subject, the wardrobe, the lighting. A cinematic moment is most likely achieved that when all the elements that you're working with are communicating with each other perfectly. Every element inside of a frame is one way or another like curated. So, each element means something. It's like life without the boring parts in it, like it's always like a curation of the best of life. So, for the final project, students are going to be doing a one-minute film, where they're going to take in consideration all of those elements. This is a perfect class for people that want to shoot an event, their mom cooking, baptism, or any moment has any significance to them. If they come in thinking about all the different elements that we're going to be discussing in this class, then people and students will become more aware of what to shoot. Only rarely it happens that a cinematic moment is achieved by accident.
2. Gabriel's Project: - Theo.
3. Introduction: This class is about capturing the cinematic moment. A cinematic moment is all the elements that you're using for the film are working well together. Meaning, like sound, everything that you curate, that are going to go inside of the frame, they're working well together. Like the location, the subject, the wardrobe, the lighting, everything conveys an emotion and also a message that you might not be aware of. It's very easy to make things look very nice when you photograph them but that doesn't mean that that it's a cinematic moment. A cinematic moment again is when all of the elements that you're using, they're communicating in a cohesive way. I think this is a perfect class for people that want to shoot an event or shoot their mom cooking or their baptism or any moment that has any significance to them. If they come in thinking about all the different elements that we're going to be discussing in this class, then people and students will become more aware of like what to shoot, and, we'll cover this whole class with a DSLR because a DSLR has the three elements that are basic to any photographic process which is an aperture, ISO and shutter speed. I think the best way to learn about film making is by doing it. And, so we want to hit this class running by making a film in the first milestone. So, the first assignment will be just to make a shot. In the first class we will talk about composition and lighting. So the first assignment will be to shoot something and then I will show you how to bring it into Premiere and how to export. So the first assignment, like in the first class you already have one project. In the second lesson, we're going to introduce a human being. This human being it could be introduced as a voice over or an interview or just covering someone's action. In the final lesson, we're going to use all the tools and elements that we've discuss in lessons one and two, but we're going to introduce also music, because sound is almost half a film. For this class we are going to be using Premiere but you can use iMovie, you can use GoPro Studio or you can use Final Cut, these are all concepts that are going to help you achieve your goals in editing. For the final project, we were going to end up with a one-minute short film and if all the elements are working well together, if you are being conscious of the framing, the lighting, the location, the scouting and wardrobe. Like at that one minute short film that you guys will be doing will become cinematic.
4. Equipment and Working a DSLR: DSLR's are great because you can exchange lenses. Usually, the quality of lenses is determined by how low can your F stop go. So, these are prime lenses that can go down to 1.5 F stop, but I have a 24 millimeter lens which is a wide angle lens, and if you remember that 24 is usually how human beings look like. People have said, already debated that 24 is like the most natural lens in relation to the human eye. Then we have a 35 that is just a little bit narrower, and then my favorite lens is the 50 millimeter lens. Akira Kurosawa had this whole period that he will only shoot with a 50 millimeter lens. Then 85, 85 is great for closeups because 85 is virtually long lens. It's going to compress all of your space and it's going to make your closeups look very up close. Then the other types of lenses are the zoom lenses, but zoom lenses are very expensive or they have an F stop that it's higher and you can't do anything with depth of field because you start off with an F stop of four. If I was walking around with just one lens, I think, personally, I would choose a 50 millimeter lens. You can buy a decent 50 millimeter lens for a $100, and that's why I like it so much. My personal take on lenses is I always want to have a regular 24 millimeter lens, a 50 one and also an 85 for closeups. We'll be talking about this with specific examples so you can see the differences. I can't stress enough how sound is important to achieve a cinematic moment. We often see videos online that they look great, but the sound sucks. That usually just turns anybody off because we react viscerally to sound even more so than images. So, when I go out there in the field, I never leave without a hotshoe mic, like this one, that you can attach to a camera. So, there's no excuse to not have clean audio for your videos. In this class, I'll be doing handheld shots and also tripod shots. For the handheld shots, I'll be using a neck strap to connect it to the camera and that will keep me, the stabilization that I'm looking for without using a shoulder rig. The classic tripod, I will recommend a heavy, sturdy one, so when you're tilting or panning, your legs don't move. Now, they sell memory cards so you can shoot 64 or 120 gigabytes, but I usually like to keep it small because if one of your cards get corrupted or you lose one of the cards, then you don't use your whole footage. That's why I like carrying with myself just a little pouch with cards. I'll be using a DSLR camera for this class. There are five things to consider. Two of them are just settings and then three of them are variables. The two settings is a white balance and frame rate, and the three variables is shutter speed, aperture and ISO. Setting up the white balance in your camera is easy as setting to take care of. It's basically telling your camera what is true white. You can carry a piece of paper with you or you can find somewhere that you see, like a white T-shirt or a white curtain or something. So, you tell the camera, that's pure white. So the camera will configure the color scheme based on what's true white. Once you set it up, you only have to change it if the color temperature changes drastically. If you're going to walk into a building that is off-setting, it's going to be tungsten light. Frame rate is how many frames are shooting for each second. So let's say that our timeline is set up to 29.97. Don't worry, we'll going to be talking about this when we go into editing. But, if you set up your timeline in 29.97, meaning, for every second there's 30 frames being shot. At GoPro or at DSLR and even the new iPhones, you can shoot at a higher frame rate. You can shoot 60 frames per second or 120 frames per second. So, that means that for every second that you shot, there's now 120 frames. But your timeline that you're editing in is still 29.97 so that's why it becomes slow motion, because there's more frames for each second, but your timeline is still ingesting 30 frames. When I'm out there in the field, the first thing that I asked myself is do I want to shoot this in slow motion or not? Most often I'm not shooting in slow motion, so I choose 24 or 30 frames per second. Twenty-four gives you that cinematic look because it keeps you the motion blur that we're so used in seeing in cinema, and then 30 frames per second is what we are used to seeing in TV. The next thing will be is to check your shutter speed. In shutter speed, you can use the rule of thumb that whatever your frame rate is, you just double that and that will give you your shutter speed. So let's say we decided to shoot at 24 frames per second, we double that, it would put 54, our shutter speed. If we are shooting in slow motion at 120 frames per second, then we'll double that and it's 240 for your shutter speed. So, the two remaining variables is aperture and ISO. Aperture and ISO are the two variables that you're always interchanging depending on the lighting conditions or how much your subject is moving. Let's reference back to the film base because these three variables come from the film heritage. So, the ISO means how sensitive is your film to light. So, the greater the number is how much more sensitive the film is to being exposed to light. So, if it's very sunny outside, you will use an ISO of 100 and probably you remember going to the store and buying disposable cameras or film cameras and they have an ISO of 100, 200, 400, 800 and 1600. So, if I'm going to be indoors, I will use a more sensitive film and that will be like a 400. Four hundred is the most common film ISO, and then if I'm going to go to a concert or I'm going to be photographing the city at night, I will use a higher ISO that is 800 and 1600. Now, cameras can go up to 3200 or 6400 ISO but, making the film so sensitive, you can start seeing grain in your photograph. I personally like grain when it's black and white, but when the grain is in a color film, it just looks messy and it's distracting, and the grain doesn't have as much depth. But in black and white, the grain is more expressive and because it's directly addressing how light is hitting your subject. I think out of the three variables that a film camera has, aperture is the most important one. Aperture will give you the shallow depth of field that we are so enamored with, and also the deep focus that sometimes you need to convey a story, that you have something in the foreground but you want to juxtapose this subject with something that's happening in the background. For F stop, I always have three references. Something 2.8 or lower than 2.8 is going to give you a shallow depth of field. So whatever your focus, anything that is not in that plane, is going to be out of focus. Then, if I'm going to be shooting something that is journalistic or something that I'm moving the camera off thing and my subject is moving from planes, I'm going to keep the F stop at a four, and that's the F stop that most journalist will default to. Then, if I want to create a deep focus, meaning, like I want my foreground and my background to be in focus, I will go F stop eight or greater, 16.
5. Capturing the Establishing Shot: For this first milestone, I want you to capture an establishing shot. An establishing shot could be with a long lens, a medium or a wide angle lens. It would just be an establishing shot to set up the mood. So, we came here right next to the Brooklyn Bridge because tomorrow we're going to go to a party, to a social event where you see the same bridge on the background. So, we just wanted to capture the ambience, the lighting and also get some ideas for tomorrow's shooting. We're shooting right now with the 24 millimeter lens. The lens is right behind our skyline. The light looks really nice reflected on the water because it's coming through the buildings. It's a really nice shot. I think, we're going to do a pan. We can follow the motion of the water. We can reveal the bridge. Light looks really nice on the bridge right now, nice and steady. When I'm panning or tilting the camera, my last mark is the most comfortable position. So, right here, I'm the most comfortable shooting forward, but I'm going to start over here. So, my body is naturally going to turn like this and the movement is going to translate on the image like that. It's going to feel very natural because it's just my body trying to go to the most comfortable. So, here, we're going to take advantage of that sunlight shining through and then we're going to start panning. So, we have that ray of light there and then we're going to pan to the right. There we go. This is just my body going to the most comfortable position. It's really nice to pan to the right because you're going with the waves and the lighting is beautiful right now. Nice. Okay. So, once again, when you want to pan, your last marks should be the most comfortable one. So, this is where I start and naturally my body is going to pan to the right to get into the most comfortable position right there. If I was to shoot the skyline, then I'll start over here and then move my camera to the most comfortable position right there. All right, let's follow that boat. I'm going to move over here, and let's follow that boat. Keeping it in the middle, nice sunlight over there. Still in the middle. Great background. I'm reaching my most comfortable position. I'm going to open up the space for that boat to take off, boom. Your camera movements should be always very confident. If you're going to pan, just pan and don't worry of where you're going to end up. Just if you end up there, don't try to readjust the camera. So, if you end up right, if your end mark is right here, just end right there and don't move the camera. If you try to readjust, I think you will ruin the whole shot. When you're panning or tilting the camera, it's good to follow a subject alone because that motivates your movement, otherwise it's like you're causing too much attention to the movement because it's just not been motivated by something, but this feels pretty nice.There you go. Awesome. This is a really nice tripod. It's only a $100. But it's nice and steady, also the fluid head is pretty cool because you can adjust really easily. There's a bubble right there that you can adjust in a few seconds and then you have nice fluid head and that's what essentially what you're looking for on a tripod. So, now, instead of panning, I'm going to tilt up. Let's see, I just release. Really nice. Get the full skyline. There we go. Now, we're going to do the opposite. We're going to tilt down. So, now, that we finished shooting our establishing shot, we're going to go back to the editing room and I will show you how to import properly all of this footage, organize it well, and then we can do some magic in the editing room.
6. Editing the Establishing Shot: We're going to start the editing process with a single shot, the establishing shot. Establishing shot is to set up the mood for the video that you're going for. This one, because we're using a longer lens, the boat looks as if it's going even faster. I like that ray of light. The foreground is interesting. NYPD looks dramatic and then probably we can crop the shot right there. Right? Okay, we're going to use this shot. So now, what I need to do, I have Premier open on this side. I can start a new project and for that, we shot with a DSLR. So, I'm going to go Digital SLR. I'm going to go 1080p and then I want my timeline to be 24 frames per second. Just press 'OK'. Let me just organize my workspace, make sure everything okay, here we go. There right now, I have it in the view mode, but I want it on list sequence. Okay. So, this is the screen that I'm going to drop all my footage. In this case, it's just going to be one shot for this first assignment. This is my timeline. This is my media browser. This is where I'm going to find stuff, and also I can go in and apply effects or markers. This one, this screen is to preview stuff and this screen over here is whatever it's on my timeline, is going to play right here. Okay. So, this is a sequence that I just prepared. I'm going to call it something else, I'm going to call it Establishing Shot. Then, I'm going to import my footage. You see Establishing Shot, the name changed dropped down here as well. Now, I'm going to import my footage. I'm just going to import this shot right here. All I have to do is drag and drop. Okay. So, this is my shot and I can bring it into the timeline. Now, I can play it. If I double-click on the clip, I also get it right here. I can see my Effects Control, just making sure scales at a 100 percent, it's not being cropped in. In your Effects Control is where you can go in and check if your shot is cropped in or anything. Then, once you start applying effects, this is where you're going to find all your effects. I can play it like this or I can press spacebar just to play it naturally. Then, I can press on my keyboard down and I can go to the end of the frame. You can see this black bar on the side of the screen, that means that you're on the edge of that frame. Okay. So, here I'm going to put an Outpoint. In an Outpoint, you can press on your keyboard O, that's an Outpoint. So, all of this that it's highlighted is going to be included on my final export. I could just export this and call it a day, but I think it's a nice chance to try on some little bit of effects, just a couple. Let's see. So, I can go to this window, click on Effects, and I can go just type, I don't know, Brightness and Contrast. Just the first three letters gives me this, and then this, I can grab and drag it on the clip. Now, see over here in this window, in my Effects Control something was just added, the Brightness and Contrast. So, I'm going to add a little bit of more contrast. I'm just eyeing it. I'm just seeing whatever looks good and then I can press this Effects button to turn it off, turn it on. So, without it, it looks a little bit milky and it's because the Sun is hitting the lens directly. So, I just add a little bit of contrast, take out a little bit of brightness, and I like that frame, how it looks like. Let's see, maybe this starts to look a little bit artificial. So, maybe a little bit of more brightness there. Starts to look really nice with the brightness and contrast. We can have that ray of light shining through the buildings. It looks like a really solid shot now. Really nice. Here you go. Boom. We're going to end right there actually, because we don't like the last frame of the pan. So, we're going to take away this, I press I for Inpoint, and then I press down on my keyboard to go to the end, O for Outpoint. So, I made an Inpoint and an Outpoint and I'm going to just press single quote, and whatever I have highlighted on my timeline is going to go away. Look, single quote, boom. So, all that stuff that I didn't like just went away with a single stroke, and that's pretty cool. So, now I have a 35-second shot that I'm pretty much ready to export. You can apply more effects if you want to, but I'm just going to keep it simple for now because it doesn't really need it. Okay. So, for that, press Outpoint. If you wanted to render this, because right now, it's not playing that full quality, and that's why you have this red highlight. So, if you want to preview this in full quality, you will have to create an Outpoint there and just go up here to Sequence, Render in and out, and it's just going to render it real quick. Okay. So, now we are all rendered. If I want to look at this shot full screen, I can click on my canvas and press tilde on your keyboard. So, there it is. Let's look at this up. Here comes the boat, here comes the movement. If this shot was needed to be stable, you can go into your Effects window and just type Stabilizer. We have here Warp Stabilizer and the same thing you just apply an Effect to your clip, drag and drop, and then it appears right here. Right now, it's analyzing the footage. We're going to smooth it out. We're going to start off at 10 percent because I don't need any. I don't think it needs it that much. So, we're just going to keep it at 10 percent. There you go. It has some more fluid movement going across the screen. Okay. So, I think we're ready to export. Okay. So, to export this clip on the timeline, I'm just going to need this clip and not this one. So, at the end of the first clip, I'm going to press O for Outpoint. Anything that's highlighted is going to get exported. So, I go File, Export, Media, and then here Formats, I'm going to use H.264 because it's going to go on the web. Then here, I don't need to move. I don't need to change that Establishing Shot here when I click. I wanted to go specifically to this Exports Folder on my desktop. So, I'm going to say Establishing Shot, I'm going to put number two here, Save. Then, I'm just going to review all these things, Effects, I don't want any, the Size, okay, Audio, there's no audio, so, I'm going to unclick this one, Captions, and that's it. Really simple. Don't be intimidated by this screen, and just hit Export. Boom.
7. Capturing a Subject: I think before you're going to interview someone, or you're going to feature someone in your video, you should have lunch with that person first, and you should have a moment. If you can't have lunch, maybe share a cigarette, it's good that they see that you are equally nervous, or you have as much at stake as they have. So, you guys will connect in this vulnerable state. So, if you present yourself as a human being in that level, instead of, "I'm going to be behind camera judging you," and when you put the camera away for the first encounter, I think that person will start trusting you. Hey, it's 5:30. This is second lesson. We're going to shoot right next to the Brooklyn Bridge because there's a nice shadow, and then we're going to try to capture magic hour after this. Today, we're going to demo four different shots: a long shot, a medium, a close-up, and an extreme close-up. We're going to be using three different kinds of lens: a wide angle, a medium, and a long lens. I didn't bring a tripod for this lesson, but we're going to be using the strap to stabilize the shot. Like this, we're using the hot shoe mic to record just ambient noise, and we can use this in post-production or not. My white balance is set up for daylight, 24 frames per second. My ISO is 100, and so, I think I'm going to compensate with the f-stop. We're going to start with our long shot. So for that, I'm using a 24 millimeter lens, so I can get a wide angle. Because for right now it's a long shot, and we see our subject from head to toes, and I'm also using the strap to stabilize the shot because I'm shooting video. It's also pretty nice when you frame from the waist up, meaning the camera is not on my eye's level, is close to my waist, and this gives it a nice shape to your subject, I feel. Here, we're using a long lens, for this long shot. We have her head to toes, and we're far from our subject. This barricade that we see on this side, ten feet away from her, but with this lens, it seems that they're standing right next to her. It's because with the 85 millimeter lens, the space gets compressed. We'll do a medium shot now. This is a 50 millimeter lens, it's medium lens, my personal favorite. I'm using the strap to stabilize my shot, and then we frame from the waist up, and leaving a little bit of headroom. This is a medium close-up, using up 24 millimeter lens. We can see the edges stretching out a little bit. So, now we're going to do a close-up. Every time that I have at the task of shooting a close-up or someone's portrait, after I frame it, I take a step forward, and that step forward makes a huge difference because, once you think you have the shot, if you take a picture, and then tell your subject, "Hold on one second," and take a step further, the picture changes radically. The best thing about cinema is a close-ups, is a conquering of the human face. That's the best thing that cinema has to offer us, the closeup. If you always keep that in mind, that a close-up could be subjective and very powerful, we can achieve great cinematic moments. Now, this is a close-up with a 24. I'm shooting it now at eye level. When we shot the long-shot, we shot a waist level but now, so you can get a close-up of her face, we need to put it at eye level. Okay, this is a close-up with the 85, and I think a lot of people really prefer this lens, because it just looks amazing. The background gets compressed with the foreground. But with 85 it's really hard to stabilize the shot, I can notice my hand is shaking a little bit, and I'm still using the strap. Maybe I can fix this in post. Always put the lens cap with me. Here for this detail, I'll call this an extreme close-up of details of the hands. It's pretty nice because we can see stuff going on in the background as well with the wind. Here you go, cool. So, we've been walking around looking for places to shoot, and we saw this awesome place because that light is coming through the plants. We'll be shooting here for a little bit. So this is a straight-on close-up. The lighting is really nice because it's lighting the background, and it's giving a lot of shape to our subject because the lighting is giving her a really nice edge light. If we were in the studio this will be called a kicker light. I think with a kicker light, it puts the subject forward and it just highlights what we should be looking at. So, this is pretty cool because the light is still very harsh but because it's coming through the trees, and the plants in the background, we can use that to our advantage to frame our subject and have a nice edge light. Everything that is in front of her is going to be just fill light. Bending my knees a little bit back and forth, just to give it a little bit of movement. If I move just my hands, the movement will look strange. If I go like this, if I go like that, movement is not as smooth. But if I apply tension to the strap and the camera, and just move my knees back and forth, that gives me a more natural movement, almost like a rowing boat. So, now we're going to shoot from below and the side. Still framing her in the middle, and look at that light, it's just really awesome. The 50 millimeter is my favorite lens. Just configures the space really nicely. Now we're going to be framing basically the same shot, but looking from above looking down. So, it's a totally different feeling for this shot. Still a nice shot. Let's make sure we frame her hand. Still a really nice shot. Look at the curves, and the background. Everything is interesting in this shot, lighting, subject, that bird that just flew out. One more time, this is from below looking up. It's pretty cool. This is from her eye height, and then this is from above. We're switching to a 24 millimeter lens because we're going to go handheld behind our subject and we're going to still be using the strap for stabilization. I'm changing to 24, just so we have a wider angle, and you'll notice less the shake. I'm going to be walking with my knees bent so I can be walking and absorbing the shock of each step. So, I call it the crab walk. It's just, we walk like this. All right, let's try it. Just walk behind him. Okay.
8. Organizing Files for Editing: Okay. So, for this third class, we're going to look at the footage that we shot at the party, that we went this social event, and let's see where they'd modified. Started here at 06:57 p.m. There's a lot of light here. This I shot at 24 frames per second, that's my frame rate. Same. Same. Nice. Okay. I'm just going to see at what point I started shooting 60 frames per second. Maybe here starts looking like 60 frames per second. The way to look is you can open this on QuickTime, and then press command I for info, and you can see is 23 frames per second. Okay. So, I know that shot is still 23. What about this one? This one is 59.94. Okay. So for this, we're going to, I know all of the shots are going to be 60 frames, I'm just going to color it yellow. From here to here, it's going to be 24 frames per second. So, I'm going to a new folder, and say 24 frames per second, and then another folder, 60 frames per second. So from here to here, going to grab this and put it on the 60 frames per second. Our organization is really important guys because that's basically the first step to edit stuff. Otherwise, you're going to be overwhelmed with so much footage and trying to find shots and stuff like that. Okay. So, now we're back here. We have two folders in the main party folder, but this file name comes straight from the camera, and I don't know what it means. So, once I start editing and dropping this into my timeline, it's going to be really difficult to know which shots are 60 frames per second and which shots are 24 frames per second. I'm also interested in knowing which shots I shot first, and which shots I shot later. At the beginning, there's a lot of light, and towards the end, it starts being the evening. So, I like to use this free software that comes with every Mac, that it's called Automator. Okay. Let's bring that up. Here I just go New Document, and then some new workflow, press Choose, and then go into Files and Folder, here I'm going to go Get Select Finder Items, and I'm going to grab and drag on my canvas here and then you're going to also select Rename Finder Items. Here I'm going to say No because I want the original names to change and I don't want any duplicates. So I'm going to go Don't Add. So what I need to do is select these clips that I want to affect, and then I go here, and then I'm going to do a sequence. Make sequential, and then I'm going to do a new name, and I'm going to call it party at 24 frames per second. Then after this name, I'm going to do dash or an underscore. I like underscores personally but you could do whatever you want. So, this is how it will start to look like. So number one for the first clip, and then they will go on a sequence. Let's see if this works. You press run, look over here. The 24 frames per second folder changed all of the names of the clips that were inside of that folder and made a sequence. I think that's pretty cool because once we go into Premiere and we start laying stuff on our timeline, this is going to be a very useful. So, I can know exactly where each clip is coming from. Also, if you start having a lot of projects, this is something way easier to find than just like this camera default naming system. So, let's do that now for the 60 frames per second. I'm going to copy this just to have as a reference, I press enter, and then I press command C for copy, and then I'm going to select all of this because these are all the items that I want to affect. So, I just selected, make a sequence, and then now I'm going to change this name to 60 frames per second, and then underscore, and then start making a sequence. I'm going to press run, and I'm going to see over here, boom. Changed. So now, this is my party 60 frames per second clip number 1, clip number 2, clip number 3, and I know that clip number 43 is going to be darker, and it's just going to keep going that way. Cool, you can just delete this Automator file. Okay, so we're back here. Now, I'm going to open a new bin. For that, I can do command B for Bin or I can press this icon down here. Okay, this I want to rename to Party Class numbers 3, there you go. I can change the label if I don't like that color. Let's say Forest, for now. Then I can import my two folders with footage. There you go.
9. Choosing "Selects": Now, we have a new project file, and it's called Class 3, but we need a new sequence. To do a new sequence, you go Command N, and it's already set up to what I set up my last sequence to, so it's 1080 24, comes from a DSLR. This is really nice setting, there's already a preset. I'm going to call my sequence Selects1. So, I'm going to press Okay. Now, there's a sequence here called Selects1. It's right here too. Now, I can start dragging my footage. I'm going to start with this folder, the 24 frames per second. So, I'm going to grab that, select all, and I'm going to bring it into my sequence. Notice that everything looks according to the canvas size and everything. So now, let's start editing this stuff. If I press on my keyboard the Negative sign, I can make in my sequence smaller and I can look at the whole sequence. If I press Plus, I can zoom in. So right now, I'm going to see how much footage I have. I have almost nine minutes of just 24 frames per second footage. When I start editing, the first thing that I do is take out all the stuff that you don't need. That's when you're rocking focus, when you are setting up the shot, or looking for an interesting frame, or there's probably just something not interesting in your frame. All of that, and I like taking it out from the beginning so I only get to work with the best. So, let's just go along with this party footage. I'm just going to put it in mute because I'm not looking for audio right now, because later on, I'm just going to lay a track. To move on your sequence, you press L to start moving at single speed. If you want to go faster, you can press L again and that goes double the speed. Press L again, that goes three times the speed. Then if I want to go to the beginning of that clip, I press on my keyboard Up, and so that's the beginning. Then we can press Spacebar or L to start playing. So here, that was a nice move when she turns her head but all the way until there, it's not that good. So, we're going to put an Outpoint right here, Outpoint, and then we're going to press Quote, or Single Quote in our keyboard, to get rid of the highlighted spot that we have on our screen. So, there you go. Now the clip starts here, and I think this movement is cool but after that movement, it doesn't get any better, so I'm going to press I to start selecting, to start cutting out all this stuff. Let's see, she has a McCafe. So, probably that clip wasn't that exciting, let's see if we see something else. Okay, not exciting, that was a nice laugh. So, let's go back to the beginning of that laugh, right there, and then we can press an O for Outpoint. Let me go back over here, in the Inpoint, stretch it all the way to the beginning. So now, I have highlighted this spot that I don't want. The first step I think is editing the negative parts, meaning cutting out all the fat. You're taking out all the stuff that you don't need and just leaving all the nice, precious moments. So, right now, I selected undesirable footage, and I'm just going to press the Single Quote key on my keyboard. There you go. So now, the shot starts here. That was really nice, okay, and that was a cool laugh. After that laugh, let's see what we got. It's just my camera is looking for the next subject to focus on. So, my shot was from here to here, and so I'm going to press I for Inpoint, and then L to start moving forward. None of that is interesting. McCafe is ruining my shot, and then this is a new shot. So, let's see when this shot starts getting interesting. Not yet. Okay, that was cool, when we see that DJ revealed himself. So, I'm going to press O to select up until that point because I don't want anything from the last shot after this girl turned. Then I don't think that that spinning record was a good shot yet, so I'm going to get rid of all this stuff. I press again, on my keyboard, Single Quote and I get rid of that. Press Spacebar or L. That was cool, that's cool, and then my camera just drifts out. I wish I would have hold that shot for a little longer, and that's something that you should always keep in mind, that sometimes you think you got the shot, but when you're in the editing room, you wish you had a little bit more time just like sitting on that shot, so you can use it more but it will be a quick shot. McCafe ruining my shot again. We're back at the DJ, that was cool but very short, so I'm not going to select it. That's cool, that was cool. That was even better than what we had selected before. This is cool. All right, that's a DJ right there. That's a DJ. So, I'm going to select with O, and all of this stuff, I don't want and I don't need, so I'm going to get rid of it, there. This shot is nice, okay, boom, DJ comes back. I'm just going to leave it for now and then we can do, right now, you're doing broad strokes, so you can come back later on. Okay, that was enough. So, now we're done with all the stuff that we shot at 24 frames per second, which is pretty exciting. We had eight minutes of footage before. Now, we have one minute and 42 seconds. So, I almost got rid of six minutes and a half of just stuff that I didn't need. So now, let's look at this pretty quick. We have a nice smile, we have the DJ, we have the DJ again, we have some burgers, we have the girl, burgers, Brooklyn Bridge, sorry, the Manhattan Bridge, we have that little moment, that, and then we have our crew in the background. Rock Folk is there. We have our cool bros there. We have a nice smile, cool dance scene. So, this was my first step, just taking out all the stuff that I don't think we need, and it already starts to look, just that first step, your video starts taking shape. We can start assuming that this is going to be a cool video.
10. Using the "Interpret Footage" Function: So, now that we have our 24 frames per second footage selected. I'm going to go into my 60 frames per second bin. I'm going to select all of the clips, and then I'm going to right-click, and I'm going to Modify, Interpret Footage, and I'm going to change this one frame per second into 23.97. That's what my timeline is set up, so I press okay. Now, all of this footage is 23.97, like my sequence downstairs. Okay. So, here I grab all this stuff and I'm just curious. I'm going to see how much footage we shot, we shot a lot. One hour, two hours. Oh, my God, is this for real? Three hours is because it's in slow motion, so don't get intimidated. Notice that my shot is smaller than my sequence setting. I can fix that really easily. I can either change my sequence setting to fit a 720 shot, or I can just grab this clip go to Effects Control and change my motion to this just I had right here, so it's going to be 150, so 150. Now, what I need to do is select this clip, go Command-C to copy, and then press A, notice my cursor changes from, if I press B, I always go to my original cursor. But, if I press A, is going to have two arrows pointing right, that means that everything that I click at that point is going to select everything on the right. So, I can do that and now I can go Control and click on any of the clips and I can go Paste Attributes based on that clip that we copy this one. I'm going to paste all the attributes, just using Motion. Motion is basically what's going to resize all of those clips and I press Okay. Now, all of my clips are the same size. Excellent. So now, we can start doing the same thing that we did with the 24 frames per second footage. Okay.
11. Adding Audio Elements: Okay. So, we just finish this selects process. Now, I had originally three hours of footage, and it came down to five minutes. You can look at this as doing a sculpture. You find a rock and you take out all the stuff you don't need in order to go, and find a gem there. So, out of those three hours of footage, in my view, this is the best five minutes of those, of that footage. I think I can even cut further. But before I do that, I'm going to start looking around for a song. For this class, I'm going to go into the Free Music Archive. It's a cool website that you can browse by genre or by curator. First section, I'm going to look for a music, is a classical, just because I have a preconceived idea for this video while I was shooting. I thought maybe it could be a nice contrast to put some classical music. Finding music is always problematic. If you're going to screen this movie just for your friends and family, probably, you can use whatever you want. But, if you're going to use this commercially or if you're going to put it online for anybody to see, I'll recommend stay out of trouble and look for something that you can publish without having any rights issue. Sometimes it takes me a few minutes to find a song, sometimes it takes me a few weeks. It all depends on what project you're working on. Right now, I'm going to cross my fingers and going to hope to find a good song right away. Let's see. Okay, so we found an interesting song from the Free Music Archive. I press Download. You can donate if you want. If you don't want to donate, you can skip that. Then, I put my song right here in my music folder, and I'm going to drag and drop it right there on my bin, right here, and I'm going to drag and drop this into the timeline. So, let's see how this starts looking. Okay, that's good enough for now. Earlier today, I recorded my friend Brey Quick. You probably saw in one of the shots and I asked him to recite one of his rap lyrics. He's a really good rapper. So, I made a folder over here called Brey Quick Acapella. The song that I like the most is this one that I extra highlighted. So, I drag and drop it into the project. Grab this, drag and drop. I'm going to look for just somewhere to put it right now, maybe here. I'm going to get rid of the first part of the song when he's leading the song. Let's see. Brey Quick Out of this Town verse one. Okay, there. I can press end-point for here, and then automatically it translates down here. So, let's look at this. Let's see how this sounds. I press Unmute here, and let's see. Okay. The sound a little bit dramatic, maybe this song is not going to work with what we have. Audio track, we're going to put this down a little bit, and the same, you can just double click on the audio track and you'll have more control over here, then you press Effects Control, you bring down the volume, control and you bring down the sound. Okay, let's see. I'm feeling like I got the recipe, so I am make it out of town, trading in my piss. That actually wasn't that bad. So let's see what else we can do with this. Let's see. This selects number two. As we move along, we can use this Selects 1 as a reference and Selects 2 is now going to become a reference. So now, we have Selects 3 here, because if I ever want to go back to look for that shot, I can go back to Selects 2 or Selects 1. I don't need to go back to my original footage. You know I can just go back to the timeline of selects. So now, Selects 3 is done and I'm going to put a mark, I'm going to write right here, one minute. That's my mark for one minute. I'm going to press M for marker, M right there. So, I know now that this is my one minute mark. There you go. Okay, now I have my minute mark, I'm going try to make this footage compress into one minute. Let's see. Okay, I'm going to put Brey Quick's verse riding right before the minute hits. I'm going to double-click, probably, there's a little section that I can cut out over here. There, boom. Out. You reflex it down here. So, now we have it like that. I know that the song is going to stay there and these lyrics are going to stay there, so I'm going to lock this two down. That means that anything that I erase here is not going to affect the two songs in the bottom.
12. Editing to Music: Okay, so now we're going to learn one of my favorite tricks my friend Breyquick gave me some of his music to play around with. I'm going to use this song called Melody. I'm going to drag and drop it on my project, and then let me just get rid of some things here. We get rid of these two songs. Okay, We're going to grab this song called Melody and drop it right here. Now, I'm going to double click on it and we have it right here, and we're going to bring that cursor all the way to the start, and I'm going to apply markers to each beat. Every time I feel a beat, I'm going to press M for marker. Let's see how this works. Wow. Okay. So, I just did the whole song because I'm not sure which section I'm going to use for the song but it's something that you only have to do once. So, I did the whole song right there and if we want to zoom in, you can see there's a marker in every beat and we can use these markers as a grid system. So, let's start playing around with this. I'm going to grab this track and put a lock on it. That way, anything that I effect on the timeline, it's not going to affect the actual track. So, let's see. So, let's see this first clap right before I can move frame by frame right there, and I'm going to put an in, out, and then I'm going to exit right there on the beat, finish that song. Sorry, finish that clip right there, and then this one, right on the beat, finish that. This, then from here and then every time I hear the beat, I can cut out this section that it's outside of the beat so it can be a little bit snappier. It will sound more natural even though this is a very artificial process, it makes it sound more natural. That's how film works sometimes. We're going to use a jump cut right there. Like we said earlier, jump cuts are basically cutting out boring section of the same shot so you end up with two shots because you cut something in between but it's very useful. I rather see jump cut than a boring shot always. Okay. If I want to correct this cut right here, what I can do is click on the edge and then you press command Shift, and here you can move to wherever you want. Right there.
13. A Critical Look at Selects: Okay. So, now our footage is almost four minutes and a half. I going to try to cut it down a little bit more because I think I can tell the same message in less time. My message is very simple in here. It's just people having fun, friends sharing time together, just enjoying life. That's pretty much what I'm promoting in this video. I started here just like bringing some of the shots earlier on and just thematically feel that it fits better. Let's see how it looks right now. Here I think I'm going to choose one or the other. I really like this reveal. This was nice but her facial expression is better on the last shot. So, I'm just going to replace this one. Again I'm trying to make this video shorter so that's why I'm like really critical with my foot right now. So, let's see how this looks. It creates a bigger impact instead of two steps to get to that close up, It only takes one step now. So like. Nice, that's cool. Maybe I'm going to cut it shorter because I think less is more in this case. We just have this review shot and then she looks straight into the camera and then wear out. And then maybe on this shot I can see that's a nice expression but this one, that's crazy. I think he even like hit himself. Let's look at that right there. It's like boom. But that's how much he's feeling the party and I'm going to show that. So, it's a nice expression but, this guy is maybe start right there. Yeah let's see. Maybe there. Let's see. I can just select the gap and press delete and that brings everything back. If you find a shot that really strikes you, you should find other shots to go along with them. So, you can maintain the same energy level. So, here we had this reveal and then boom she looks at us and then this guy is like celebrating that moment. Here I'm just going to delete a little bit of that tail. Well, let's look at this shot. Okay, at the beginning I can see that she's acting but here she's really feeling it. So, I'm going to delete the head of the clip. Okay. So, that was nice. It was not on that beat but we see the, we see this shot of the DJ just compensating for that. His movement lands on the beat. So, let's see. I'm going to leave it like that because it's actually really cool. We have a long shot and then a very short clip that doesn't land on the beat. But look at her dress and then the incoming shot we have the red color also on the same direction of the frame that this one was. So, they almost communicate as one clip. That's one thing that you can keep in mind. It's like how are you going to transition from clip to hip clip. Are there certain characteristics like the lighting, the composition, the colors and the frame that you can guide yourself with? Those are things to keep in mind always when you're editing. If all your clips hit the beat, that's going to feel a little bit mechanical or the truth is that you are just like cutting to a grid, and that's how it's going to feel like. It's going to translate into that even if your audience cannot articulate that, that's the way that they're going to feel it. So, sometimes be confident and cutting outside the beat is actually a good thing. So, it all depends on the impact that you want to create with certain shots.
14. Finishing Your Edit: Okay. So, here we are almost done. We have this much of the song, and then we need an establishing shot. For that we're going to bring that shot that we did in our first class assignment. Do you guys remember? This was my establishing shot. So, for that, I'm going to look for a part in the song where it just loops, because this song, it's looping, but there's new elements on it. Let's listen to it. So, the main beat hasn't started yet, but it's about to start. There, so it's right there. What I'm going to do is I'm going to grab all this footage, and then I'm going to move it to there, because my beats are going to be correct because I almost cut to the music and the music is just repeating itself. So, maybe let's see. So, you see that all my cuts are correct, they are on the spot that I want them to be. I can bring my establishing shot and I know my establishing shot the ending is more interesting. So, I'm just going to cut a little bit of that and I'm going to use the ending there. Then I'm just going to elongate the beginning there. So, now we have our establishing shot. I can put a title card there in a second. Nice. Cool, I feel it's really good. Okay. Now, we're going to add a text. To do that, you just right click here New Item, Title, and then 1920 x 1080, that's our resolution Timebase, yes. Title card, we're going to say, "EstablishingShotTitle." I'd like to put capital letter in every new word that you introduce in the Title, so "EstablishingShotTitle" and we're going to call this number 1. Okay. There you go. So, this is going to correspond to wherever you put the cursor. So, it's pretty cool. You have your own little window. Then we can grab this text tool and it's for like web safe, TV safe. I'm just going to start right here. I'm going to write the name of this event. It's called "Southern in the City." I'm going to change the color though. It's right here, I'm just going to let's see why don't we just try something crazy like red. Okay. Southern maybe all caps, "SOUTHERN IN THE CITY" and then we can add another one. So, here is my Title Card and just it's something really simple. I can get rid of this screen and this is my title card that I can bring at any point. Let's look at it again one more time. I'm going to leave a little bit of black space just in case I want to add later, a title or special thanks, or maybe a shout out to the sponsors or something, I'm just going to leave it right there. Now, I can export this pressing O for outpoint, and then go File, Export, Media. We did this before, I'm going to change the name of the output. I'm going to put on my exports and I'm going to put Lesson 3-FinalVideoGabriel. Then I'm going to press Save and here I'm going to make sure it's an H.264 preset much the source is fine because our sequence is set up well. That's it, Export. Hope you enjoyed the class. It's been really fun for me. Thank you.
Ceremony Films, Filmmaker
