Reverting to Old Habits

One of the things I like about Professional Toolkit is I get a sense of fulfilment out learning a specific skill. Another thing I've gotten out of the whole unit is - I'm fairly certain my 'niche', as Mirella would call it, is in post-production.

Editing in the Avid Suite during my 2nd to last Avid lesson.

Learning the Avid basics was hard and I found myself reverting to my Premier Pro habits (habits I didn't have this time last year so I guess that's progress) but getting myself out of the Adobe mindset was hard. It was then I realised how user friendly Adobe really is and how Avid is the exact opposite.

But once I got there and had that moment where things just 'clicked' I don't think there is any turning back. I went to edit my November Vlog at home and had to Google the Premier shortcuts because I was just at a loss as to how I could edit without the Avid shortcut keys, I simply couldn't remember.

Since then I've been reading a bit about editing, I've never been terrible at editing and I can always find a way out of the bad situations I've put myself in by rendering at the wrong time. I'd just never thought about how much editing has a huge effect on the narrative. Well, it's not even that I'm very aware of how it can effect the narrative I guess I've just never seen it in practice, making the sports drinks advert and seeing everyones interpretations was eye opening for me, even if I was slightly embarrassed about how cheesy mine actually was.

I was in the library the other day (for a completely unrelated reason) and I passed the book In the Blink of an Eye by Walter Murch. What I've found recently is that when I'm in the library if a book catches my eye when I'm not looking for it it's probably a good call to check it out. Hence why I currently have 10 books on my desk that I will eventually read, honest. Anyway this book is really interesting, it's written in more of a conversational voice you feel like you're learning something rather than just being talked at with loads of jargon. They compare films to chimpanzee DNA, they make sure you know that the more complicated a sound mix doesn't make it good (Sidenote: The Martix had a 6 track orchestra, just how - how did they do that?), it also talks a bit about colour grading.

Colour grading is something that does interest me, especially the idea that there's an almost scientific approach to it but for now that's a bit far out of my league. I don't trust myself enough for that yet so I'll stick to colour correcting, sometimes, occasionally - I'll do my best to avoid it.

So for now I'll stick to my books and training videos, I'm currently making my way through the Avid Essential Training on Lynda.com but I think I might start looking into more specific effects and how I can use them in my studio edit.