Editing: Premiere Pro

I was late (very late) to the video craze, but I need to catch up. At least with the basics. I’m a freelance photographer with an unfortunate emphasis right now on free. (Worst choice ever for a job description by the way.) My primary interest or focus is photojournalism, which is a brutal industry. There are bazillions of talented photojournalists out there scratching and clawing for dwindling resources. If I’m going to make it, I need to be able to shoot and edit video.

I follow a lot of YouTubers who make video and film-making look easy. It’s not. One of my favorites is Griffin Hammond. He’s talented and hard-working, and he shares what he knows freely and patiently. The other day I saw that Indy Mogul was back, and Griffin accepted the challenge to shoot a one day documentary. They looked around the neighborhood and did a great little documentary on Vanessa’s Dumplings in NYC.

Watching the video made me want to go out and shoot something, so I grabbed my X-H1 and went to Pike Place Market. There’s so much potential for short films in that little city within a city. Unfortunately, I just ended up shooting some video to practice with in Premiere Pro. I did get to hang out with a friend of mine and meet some new folks, though.

I hastily pulled the video into Premiere Pro, and now I’m setting myself the task of practicing with at least one thing in video editing. Today it’s going to be color grading.

I shot the video segments at 24p at 1/60th second with the Eterna film simulation. For sound I used a Rode Videomicro (there might be one or two segments with just the camera’s mic.)

Here is the straight out of camera version, no edits.

I’ve added an edited version below. I did some minor color grading (you might not even notice it), added some titles, included some music from Epidemic Sound, and faded portions of the audio. I have a ways to go with video editing, but I think I’m starting to get a hang of the fundamentals, at least in terms of mechanics. I have a long way to go with putting together compelling videos.