Working On Nicholas Nickleby

My editing set up

As I mentioned in the last post, I'm currently working on a promotional video for the World Premiere of a musical adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby.

Whilst working on this edit, I was chatting online to one of my "online buddies" Godwyn, and started talking about the editing process. It was then I realised, how complex it can get - even for a small YouTuber like me. God knows how they go on when editing for a blockbuster film.

For this video, I started off by creating a simple animated introduction using Adobe After Effects. I then created a bunch of "lower 3rds" for the cast/staff that I knew would be on camera. From there, I then use the dynamic link feature in Premiere Pro to drag these in and over the top of your video.

It doesn't stop there. Due to using several cameras at once, I had spent time in Premiere Pro syncing the cameras together for various bits from rehearsals and "interviews". These were linked and edited in their own sequence. From there I drag them into the main sequence as a "nested sequence" (have I said sequence enough yet?). 

Oh, and let's not forget about Audition. So far I've only used that to simply convert the audio I captured separately into a file Premiere Pro will understand. I will be back in that program in a few days/week to edit the audio. 

And then there's the small issue regarding colour. Yes, it all needs colour correcting due to different cameras and different light sources. Then there's the decision of, do I grade it afterwards? Wow, I went on more than expected there.....

Anyway, the conversation led to how complex it sounded. Also, Godwyn asked if I do my After Effects stuff on the whole clip or just a snippet. I explained it depended on what I was doing. In this case, I didn't do anything on the clips at all. All of the After Effects stuff was done in a blank composition set to the dimensions of the final product. I then drag them into Premiere Pro. However, in past videos, where I've added graphic that have to line up  perfectly on the clip, I'll snip out part of the video I need, drag it into After Effcts via Adobe's Dynamic Link, do the effects, and boom - they appear in Premiere Pro.

What this lead to is me saying that I'll have to do a video showing my process on how I edit my videos. Or at least how I edit the majority of them. The bulk of my process is usually the same (and standard for most users I believe), however, depending in the project, my process may change ever so slightly here and there.

Oh, and on a separate note, this is my desk at work. It's safe to say, I need 3 screens at home - well, 2 screens plus my laptop (and all in horizontal mode). Due to the number of files, the 3rd screen would come in handy as somewhere to have all of the "bins" open, rather than keep scrolling through the main "project bin" as I usually would do. So feel free to send any donations this way 😁,