Chess Film Pre-Production: Learning to Edit

Learning the Editing Program

Prior to the film, I had some experience editing videos, but it was very limited. It was only two times, and it was using the photos app on windows. Both products came out very rough as I was new to the whole process and the program itself was very limited in what you could do. They were also for different types of media such as a PSA and a news broadcast. 

News broadcast I edited for a school assignment.

Going into the film, I knew I would be using a new program to edit, and I was very nervous about it. Although what I was using was bad, I was at least familiar with it. I was not ready to be out of my element, especially for such a large class project and practice. Once I opened the program, I felt somewhat overwhelmed as it was something new to me. However, the more I played around with it, I realized it was very user friendly and pretty simple to use. It was also infinitely better than what I used before. I wanted to familiarize myself with the app, so I uploaded some videos and played around with of the features just to get a feel for the program. 

Video I quickly edited together in Adobe Premiere Rush.

I was able to learn about some of the basic functions of the program as I messed around with the color grading, transitioning, playback speed, and cutting section so I would be better prepared for when it came time to edit the film. Some aspects were very similar to what you could find on a standard camera app so there were some things I was already use to such as the color settings and changing the exposure or contrast. Other things were simple to use like cutting parts of the shots out and applying transitions.

The experience made me realize that I shouldn't stress about editing software I haven't used before. I was initially fearful of having no idea how to use the program and causing a big delay in our process but once I started using the program, I felt more confident and realized I had no reason to worry. You just have to practice using it and play around with the features in order to get a good feel for it. Using unknown technology wasn't as difficult as I thought and it putting in work and putti