London Film Academy: Young Film Makers Series : Final Cut Pro X Editing Course
Words: Tom Kembery
I’ve been in the print media game now for over 10 years, and in this time I have seen the rise of digital media, social media and bloggers take over!
There was once a time when a proper magazine Editor, who had gone to uni to study journalism, endured endless amounts of unpaid work experience and clawed their way to the top to earn the title as Editor. They would bask in the glory of being invited to the coolest parties, wear the latest trends and be invited to sit in the front row at London Fashion Week!……Now, they’re being replaced with bloggers! No experience is required, all you need it a website and a decent amount of writing skills (or none as most of them show). Or you can just forget all that and join the new age of the video blogger.Back in 2005, 3 ex-employees of PayPal set up YouTube, and little did they know that they would change the world forever (as well as pocketing $1.65 billion by selling their site to Google). Before we knew it, everyone began to upload videos of their friends, gran and cats, but above all, it gave birth to a group of people that liked to sit in their bedrooms and talk to a camera…the video blogger was born. It also opened the door of a generation of film makers to have a platform to publish their work for people to see for free.
We have come a long way since then and now to be a successful, video blogger or film maker you need to be able to edit your videos quickly, producing a fresh and in-your-face edit for people to appreciate, like, tweet and share the crap out of it.
As part of STUDIO CLUB’S Young Film Makers series, we went to London Film Academy to learn how to edit on the new Final Cut Pro X course. The 2 day intensive introductory course, priced at £395 per person, is your first step to creating video awesomeness!
After a quick tour around our new home for the next 2 days, we were introduced to our teacher Peter Hollywood (an apt name for a film editor I think you’ll agree) who took us through the basics of the editing software on a large projector screen in the classroom. The course is limited to 10 students (only 5 on my course) and I felt it was quite casual in the sense that if you had a question, you could ask it at any stage with other members of the group having input - unlike a uni lecture. Once we had grasped the basics for importing clips/ music, adding our clips to the edit line etc…it was then on to working on your own projects in the afternoon session.
Final Cut Pro X is surprisingly easy to use. Everyone in the class picked the skills up easily as we separately edited as series of bald eagle clips together with music and narration. Unlike the former final cut programs, Apple have added simple drag and drop features and new cutting techniques meaning you pretty much have your edit ready in a few clicks. As someone who has never edited video before, I was pretty pleased with my progress and how natural I was at it. I started to picture myself on YouTube talking about how much I love my my shower gel….titles whizzing around with amazing transitions in the edit before I shared it to all my friends on Facebook.
By the end of the day, I had a fully edited and finished video of the bald eagle and I now know everything there is to know about the bird!
Over to day 2 and it was time to step our editing up a notch. The morning session consisted of Peter demonstrating how to layer up files with transitions, add effects and colour grade, so we now had all the basic skills required to edit a video to a good standard. Like anything, once you have the basic skills it is then up to you with how far you take your video edit; it’s about messing around and pushing the boundaries to create exactly what you want to create.
Our second video was an interview with a glass blowing artist and we were handed out a work sheet with instructions on the edit. The task was more intense and about using all the skills we had learned over the 2 days, and help was at hand if you needed it. Again by the end of the day all students had managed to produce the edit to fulfil the task set out and my glass video has the be one of my proudest moments on the course. Export and share to friends right away!
The course was rounded off with a question session with some of the students and we were given a certificate to take away with us (and mount and show everyone how cool at video we now are).
So, if you’re looking for a course to teach you how to edit your amazing videos that you have spent so much time in making then get down to the London Film Academy and grab your spot. Whether you’re looking to become virtually famous as the next big YouTube video blogger or fancy yourself as the next Quentin Tarantino, this course is perfect for anyone who is into film or just wants to make videos for fun.
