Your home to learn to edit video faster.
Last summer I wrote a post called What’s working for me in post right now. In it I mentioned a handful of items, methods, services and more that I’ve been using which have been helping me tremendously in post production. I feel like it’s time to update it with what’s been working for me more recently in what I’m calling: What’s Working for Me in Post – Summer 2015 Edition.
I’ve been writing for my friends over at ScreenLight for…well…a long time. It’s been over two years and in the Internet world that’s a really long time. Over that time I’ve been able to stockpile a bunch of writings that I want to share with you today. 23 of them to be exact.
The posts range from Media Composer tips to the Pomodoro Technique for time management to Apps for Editors and so much more. I’ve broken them up into a couple of categories. At the very top are a few of my favorites and ones I think you should definitely read.
The Edit Bay – A Romanticized View of One Editor’s Relationship With Four Walls
Video Editor is Not a Synonym for Motion Graphics Artist
Editor: The Amateur vs. The Professional
Hey! Just to let you know I’ve made a 2nd and IMO a better overall keyboard shortcut quiz for Media Composer. You can find it here. — Hey there! This is my second product and my first quiz. This is a quiz for Media Composer editors who want to improve their keyboard shortcut skills. It’s a … Read more
Today is a huge day. A monumental day! Do you know what today is?
It is the one-year anniversary of Edit Video Faster. My blog birthday! 365 days ago I was up late one night and decided to stop waiting and just go after it. Here’s how it all started.
I’m not going to spend the rest of this post recapping what happened over the past year. Basically I can sum it up in that I wrote a bunch of posts and made a ton of tutorials with the goal of helping video editors or creative professionals like me. The results came in the form of overwhelming support from my readers, people actually bought products I created, new friends were made, I created a course for Tuts+, I started a podcast, I got new freelance clients and I pushed my abilities further than I ever thought I could. Oh, and last week just to top it all off… I got to write a post for Avid!
Okay, okay. No more bragging. I promise. I feel very vain at the moment.
Being on Avid’s site seriously means so much to me. I was legit nearly brought to tears. However I was in the middle of a shoot when the article went live and thought it’d be a little inappropriate to start tearing up so I tried to keep my joy and excitement to a minimum, at least externally.
In today’s post I want to touch on what happens when you attempt to help people without expecting anything in return. Let’s call this unconditional help.
This is Part IV and the final chapter in a series called Over the Editor’s Shoulder where I document my daily progress on a freelance editing project I’m working on. I chronicle what I do in the edit bay, what I learn, my struggles, failures, successes and more.
Hey there! I started a new freelance video editing project this week. I feel like it’d be a fun exercise to document my journey through it. You’ll get to see my workflow for a freelance video editing project from beginning to end. Hopefully you can pickup some useful tips based on things I do. By doing this we will get to see my workflow and by stepping back and looking at it we can see where I excelled and where I could have done better. And most importantly it will keep me accountable to stay on track with it.
Want to join me on this journey?
Hey guys! First off, I know I’m late on this week’s post. My bad…it’s been a hectic week. Long story short I had to make an unexpected mad dash to New York City on Monday and got there just in time for a shoot. Then I got to make a fool out of myself on national TV.
On the train ride back on Tuesday I was going in a complete different direction with this week’s post. I simply ran out of minutes Tuesday and Wednesday to finish it but it worked out in the end. I found out this morning that my Tuts+ course Introduction to Video Editing in Avid Media Composer went live!
In this post I’ll tell you about my course and how to watch it (and hundreds of other courses) for free.
I want to make you a better video editor. That’s what I’ve been doing through my site, YouTube channel and other avenues for the past year. Pretty much this entire time I’ve been helping a faceless audience. I’ve been guessing at what you want to learn and hoping I’m using something relatable to be able to teach you. I know it’s working for a lot of you (I love the thank you emails I get!). However a lot of the time I still don’t know what you are struggling with. You, the one reading my words right now, I want to help you. That’s why I want to be your coach.
Recently I’ve had a huge problem. I have had several requests come in for complex custom tutorials that can’t be reused for everyone. I want to help these individuals out but I have such limited time after my 9-5, creating content for this site, walking Peyton, another new secret project I’m announcing soon (!!!) and trying to have something close to a social life. I have two options. I can:
Neither option works for me.
I cannot justify helping one individual person at the expense of not being able to create content for this site (and thus helping many). It isn’t fair to everyone else…that means you! My family time will always come first and with my limited free time I need some grounds for cutting out on one of them. That justification comes in the form of private, one-on-one premium coaching.
Me, and a lot of other editors, like to say that knowing an NLE is just another tool in your tool belt. I like to take that analogy and go a step further. Every effect you learn to apply, software trick you implement, skill you acquire, connection you make, value you create for others and anything else you can think of that works towards improving yourself is a tool. Your tool belt consists of all of these. Each tool preforms a certain action whenever you are working on a project.
With your fully loaded tool belt you can build all sorts of things. The majority of time we tackle two types of projects. The first project is something simple, let’s say a chair if we can turn my analogy into something physical. We know there are four legs, a seat and a back to it. We have at least a rough blueprint we can follow or can easily find someone (or a YouTube video) to guide us. The other type of project is to build more tools! We build ourselves another screwdriver or a hammer or drill bit. These two types of projects pay our bills (barely) and (we hope) make our bosses happy. Are you happy though? If you are anything like me then you might not always be satisfied with the things you are building and their outcomes. Do they have enough reach? Do they improve my life or someone else’s life substantially?
Sure, we’re content after we sell off our chair or put away our screwdriver. We sold enough to pay off the mortgage this month or make ourselves more valuable candidates for a future job by having more tools. What we built was average. Deep down that’s not what we want. That’s not why we do what we do. We want incredible. As I lay here at 11:00PM drafting this on my phone in bed with my wife and dog already asleep long ago I’m reminded about how much incredible I want in my life and how little I am doing about it. For now…
