As it has been made fairly obvious I have quite a few technical issues when it comes to working with computers… sadly that made this project quite a bit more challenging than it originally had to be. If I had a basic understanding of computers I would not have needed to waited and ask how to do most of the parts of this project. The first problem I had was one to kick off the great time I had working on this project. I had to install the Premiere software a good three times because something happened that blocked the software from being able to be installed. It took me two days to figure out how to install it. Once I figured out how to install the software my problems sadly continued. I had to try and figure out how to download videos off the public domain sites which was easy on some of the sites, but on others there were more than one download option to choose from. I was no aware of which option I was supposed to choose on those sites. Then I would just download every possible option so I was left with a bunch of the same video in my download folder. This was not a big problem but I do not like having a bunch of useless files taking up space on my computer, I prefer to save that room for all the projects I have done since eighth grade instead. My next problem after this was trying to find where all my files were. Luckily once I learned how to find one of them I was able to find them all without a problem. One thing I really did enjoy about this project was getting to watch all kinds of different animal clips. Through this project I think I found my favorite animal clip of all time. It was also interesting being referred to different YouTube videos since I learned some interesting stuff about animals.

Even though I had quite a few problems with this project I am glad we did it because I learned the basics of using Adobe Premiere.  From what I experienced I think Premiere seems to be a fairly useful tool for a lot of different projects, I know I will use it in the future. For the most part the basics of Premiere were very self-explanatory. Once I learned how to find the cutting tool on my version of Premiere I was golden, well until I had to do something else with the computer. I was very happy about this because in my past adobe experiences I wanted to rip my hair out when I tried to do the simplest thing. Through all those experiences I learned Adobe is like math, if it seems easy you are doing it wrong. I assume this applies to premiere as well but I never did anything besides cutting and pasting videos and music. All the problems I had with this project were very small problems I was either able to google the answer to or ask for assistance once. Then after that one time I was able to do it on my own. I think my project should have come out fairly well as long as none of my videos turn out to be blurry. But I tried to make my video clips as actuate to the ecosystem as I possible could by using a mix of the video from Youtube and the public domain websites. All and all I believe this was a successful project…until I have to figure out how to upload it.

Click on the transition you want. Then grab the transition and drag it in between the clips you want it to be between. This should be on the red line. When you have successfully done this there will be a small gray box on the line in between the two clips.

First you have to hover over the middle of two separate clips. When you are in the middle of both of them the mouse should turn to a red strip in the middle of both clips. Click on the red strip so it doesn’t go away when you move the mouse off it. 

For my tutorial, I chose color editing.

1. Open Premier and begin a new project. Go to File/Import and import video being used. Then, go to File/New/Sequence and add in Sequence.
2. Once sequence is added, select a portion of the clip that you want to edit the color. Use the { } buttons to select portion of clip and then press Insert.
3. Next, click on Color in top bar.
4. It will bring you to a portion of Premier necessary for color correction.
5. Use the color wheels on the side and saturation levels to edit the color of the clip, being as dramatic or realistic as you want.
6. Once finished, click back on the editing button. Once back on the editing page, your clip will automatically stay the color you changed it to without affecting the other portion of the clips.In the end, I decided to go with a more dramatic approach to the color editing. The end!

Now go up to the right hand corner where it says effects. Click on effects. under effects a list should pop up and one of the options is transition. click on video transition. Then a bunch of different video transition options should show up.

Composing my remix went exactly how I wanted it go go. I first started by choosing songs that I truly enjoyed listening which came out to Contact – Logic and Burn it Up All Night – Sweet Talker both of which are not Creative commons/public domain. The first picture above is a transition that I created using masking tool in After Effects which can also be done in Premiere. For this “scope transition” one simply crops out the parts they want. For the entire scope, I split it into four quadrants and each one became a separate layer. This allowed me to manipulate the quadrants as I pleased without affecting the other three. This was important to the video because it was probably the best effect I created. It took the most time, and yet it looks fairly simple.

The next picture above was one that looks like a “bubble” forming. This effect, however, can only be done using After Effects. One must use the CC Lens effect in the color correction tab. However, in order to do this one must first duplicate the layer they want the effect on. Afterwards, they keyframe the scale of CC Lens from 0(start) to 500(finish). This was very important because it allows for a very nice, smooth effect. It blended in well with video and added some flare to the remix rather than something very dull.

This last picture is creating my messing with the scale effect which can be done in either After Effects or Premiere. It is simply done by scaling the black bars at the bottom and at the top to a greater percentage i.e 125% instead of 100%. After this, there was also a “pump” effect created for the clip itself. This was also done through the scale effect. Except this time one has to keyframe first at 125% then go down to 100%. The “pump” effect allows the viewer to understand that what just happened was fairly important.

The original versions were extremely different than my remix. They were all separate clips but now are all combined into one video.My favorite part of the video was around the 9 second mark. If you listen closely to the music, all the “pump” effect lines up perfectly with the song. Each strong beat is in sync when the middle part gets larger. My least favorite part was the ending of the remix. This is due to the slow mo at the end. It is extremely sloppy and the frames did not blend well at all together even if I tried to improve the frames per second. Overall, that was the only bad slow mo where the rest was very good.

There are many effects I got to use, but many that I didn’t. For example, my favorite plug-in for After Effects is called Twitch. It allows the user to do an RGB (Red-Gren-Blue) split between a video allowing for a very cool effect. I could have used this and CC Lens at the same time which would have looked even better. Another thing I wished I could have used was CC Tiler. CC Tiler comes as a preset in After Effects, allowing for very cool transitions. However, I could not find anyway to incorporate into my video; therefore, I did not used it. If I were able to revise my video, I would use all of these plugins and hopefully make everything smoother and more entertaining to watch.

At first I began assembling my project in the same line as other Pittsburgh-centric videos. What this meant is that I tried to get shots of the city that made it look beautiful, clean, and neat. However, the more that I looked at the footage available to me, I discovered that there were other views of Pittsburgh that are not normally expressed. These types of videos, while showing the city in a less-than-perfect light, showcased character and spirit, more so than a lot of the production-heavy clips that I stumbled upon in my search for media. Many of them included scenes of the Carie Furnaces, the Almono Works and LTV site, and of Port Authority transit. I quickly discovered that there was a whole other paradigm for people, and that was one with an eye toward hidden beauty.

Piecing together the clips into something coherent was done with cross-dissolving transitions between the scenes. It ends up giving the entire work a sense of connectivity throughout that loosely holds a narrative. I then inserted title cards every 3-5 clips to give a sense of direction and drive the viewer through the narrative that I have constructed.

The audio track was specifically chosen to give a distinct sense of calm and meditative reflection upon the imagery; the tempo is meant to match the same emotional state that I intended to bring out in the mixing of the clips. Sorting through the audio to find a track that achieved these goals was difficult, but I found a creative commons-licensed track that performed to my expectations.

After making these realizations, I was inspired to alter my video slightly. While the same intentions and methods were used to construct the project, my civic pride video attempts to show the city with those types of clips. It makes the city look scruffy in some ways, but I hoped to evoke a sense of personality and mystery that inspires a curiosity. I finished the project with a quote from H.G. Wells, which I felt was very appropriate. While Pittsburgh is an industrial city, it has charm and beauty, even in its less-polished spots.

For my video I want to make a sort of introduction or a sort of showcase for mixed martial arts and other fighting sports in general. As someone who has been involved in martial arts for a very large majority of his life I feel like they are in general both misunderstood and not as popular as they really should be. Fighting and martial arts in general is something I have a lot of respect for and would like to share with everyone. Most people see martial arts as dangerous and fear it but the truth is that practicing it is not limited to lessons about the body and require and very honed intelligence to be able to use as well.

The goal of this video is to get them excited about combat sport so that maybe they will go out and watch it so that maybe someday it can become as popular as basketball or any of the other major sports in the country. It takes a lot of training effort and intelligence to become a fighter and I want other people to see that as well. In my eyes those who fight in the UFC and related circuits are much more deserving of celebration than any other athlete because of the harsh qualifications to become a good fighter.

I plan to use freesound.org to find the majority of my audio as well as blip.tv and ourmedia.org for the majority of my video files. Anything I need that can’t be found there will be taken from archive.org or the much safer option of YouTube.

I don’t plan on using many effects while editing my video other than the standard cut and move functions. I may decide later in the project to use some sort of transitions between scenes and also maybe some touch ups just to change lighting effects and make something look just a little better.