First attempt at editing

[DEads]

First attempt of editing video. I am new to all of it. I am using Premier Pro to do the editing. I would appreciate critique and constructive criticism. One shot of the falls I know is longer than most other clips, but I felt it was important to keep that length as I followed the falls up the mountain.

Thank you!

 

[Dale D]

First attempt of editing video. I am new to all of it. I am using Premier Pro to do the editing. I would appreciate critique and constructive criticism. One shot of the falls I know is longer than most other clips, but I felt it was important to keep that length as I followed the falls up the mountain.

Thank you!

Bravo! I think this was great for a first effort. Premiere Pro can be a daunting challenge. A few "picky" and random comments.

No need to repeat the falls three times, rather, I'd try to show varying views. You were quite brave in even attempting that vertical rise with all of those trees waiting to ensnare your drone.

I think you need to color grade more. The greens and water were flat looking. Click on the "color" tab to open the Lumetri sliders and try to give the colors a boost.

Showing the people at the falls gave a nice perspective.

The closing shots of the sunset and night shots were admirable. Also, a bit less repetition of the same falls and dam. Could have been all combined in various clips. The film showed random shots. Rather, I would try to tell a story, or chronologically follow the dam/falls, the tall falls in the canyon, etc.

As I usually say, these are my opinions only. The creativity is always in the eyes of the creator.

 

[DEads]

Bravo! I think this was great for a first effort. Premiere Pro can be a daunting challenge. A few "picky" and random comments.

No need to repeat the falls three times, rather, I'd try to show varying views. You were quite brave in even attempting that vertical rise with all of those trees waiting to ensnare your drone.

I think you need to color grade more. The greens and water were flat looking. Click on the "color" tab to open the Lumetri sliders and try to give the colors a boost.

Showing the people at the falls gave a nice perspective.

The closing shots of the sunset and night shots were admirable. Also, a bit less repetition of the same falls and dam. Could have been all combined in various clips. The film showed random shots. Rather, I would try to tell a story, or chronologically follow the dam/falls, the tall falls in the canyon, etc.

As I usually say, these are my opinions only. The creativity is always in the eyes of the creator.

Thank you! Yes, premiere was very daunting as it took me hours and hours to do this lol. But I feel I learned a lot in that time. Also, yes the one falls were extremely hard to film the way I did. I had trees all around me and my sensors were going crazy. It took me over 7 minutes just to fly into the little cove carefully and to do a dry run of the burst shot. Are you meaning repetitive because of the nature of the shot being the falls? I ask that because the views I used were all just a tiny bit different. I will definitely look at using the color grade as that isn't anything I messed with. Thank you Dale for your feedback! EDIT: Sadly the water is very brown/cloudy because it rained the night before. I don't know if there is much I can do about the coloring of it lol.

 

[DougMcC]

While I am not an expert I think you did a fine job. Congratulations. I would echo the previous comment re color and contrast management. Now my personal choice for music for countryside, gentle scenic over flights would be different and more soothing but you are the director! Where are those tall falls? They are beautiful and your flying around them was very cinematic. Thanks for sharing.

 

[SmilingOgre]

Very impressive! I've done a good number of edits now and have not come up with anything that nice. Not sure what kind of color you were looking to achieve or what color scheme you filmed in but it almost looks like uncorrected D-log. If so maybe try a lut. DJI has a nice one that will produce some nice rec709.

 

[Dale D]

Thank you! Yes, premiere was very daunting as it took me hours and hours to do this lol. But I feel I learned a lot in that time. Also, yes the one falls were extremely hard to film the way I did. I had trees all around me and my sensors were going crazy. It took me over 7 minutes just to fly into the little cove carefully and to do a dry run of the burst shot. Are you meaning repetitive because of the nature of the shot being the falls? I ask that because the views I used were all just a tiny bit different. I will definitely look at using the color grade as that isn't anything I messed with. Thank you Dale for your feedback! EDIT: Sadly the water is very brown/cloudy because it rained the night before. I don't know if there is much I can do about the coloring of it lol.

If you shoot with H.264 the color grading is already done for you, I believe, in the drone software. If you shoot in H.265 OR D-LOG it is the same as shooting in RAW files with a DSLR. Those files are flat-e.g.; they are not color graded. Shooting in RAW or h.265 setting means you are planning all along to color grade. If you log on to your Premiere Pro with Adobe they have a color grading tutortial video which I find helpful. www.helpx.adobe.com

Try one ! Go to your Premiere Pro layout, highlight the clip you want to color grade, make sure the time line cursor is over that clip and highlight that clip. Open the COLOR tab. Play around with the sliders. Start with first group, then do the 2nd grouping. Be sure the clip is activated or selected during this process. I would avoid the Lumetri graphs. They are very confusing to me.

I spent a week on my last video from after breakfast until bedtime, with exception of meals and bathroom breaks. I created a 9 minute film (Montana-Mountains and Rivers,August 2020). you can find it here. Dale Davis
Every time I do one of these I learn something more.
Creative Live.com
Abba Shapiro teacher. see my attachment


Here is a screen shot. They have 3 or more tutorials.

 

[SmilingOgre]

Very impressive! I've done a good number of edits now and have not come up with anything that nice. Not sure what kind of color you were looking to achieve or what color scheme you filmed in but it almost looks like uncorrected D-log. If so maybe try a lut. DJI has a nice one that will produce some nice rec709.

 

[DEads]

While I am not an expert I think you did a fine job. Congratulations. I would echo the previous comment re color and contrast management. Now my personal choice for music for countryside, gentle scenic over flights would be different and more soothing but you are the director! Where are those tall falls? They are beautiful and your flying around them was very cinematic. Thanks for sharing.

They are Cathedral Falls in Fayette County West Virginia. About 6 miles from Hawks Nest and not far from the New River Gorge Bridge (highest single steel arch bridge in the US that is unfortunately in a National Park). They are in a little cove right off the road and close to those small falls in the video. Definitely was nerve racking flying in and around it lol. Tree branches coming out towards the open area, mist, etc. I

 

[Spider]

Am in full agreement on the tell a story advice. For example starting point could be either the bridge or the falls and then move from there to the end which could be the bridge or the falls. And connect the pieces in a natural order, not randomly. Transitions could be softer. For example on the story. I put together a glider flight which had three parts, takeoff, flying (showing scenery } and landing. Starting from the landing would have been awkward. The footage was from the original Sony tape era. Took me over a year of education and execution to get it digitalized and then programmed into a video story.

 

[Tiger64]

Awesome work. I am fairly new to this myself. I agree with the others about story line but it really depends on what you are trying to acheive i guess. The one thing that stood out for me was the transitions. Some of them sort of sped up or fast zoomed to next clip. When watching, It felt like matrix glitches, compared to the very smooth flying you were doing. I might have chosen different transitions but hey, that may have been what you were aiming for ?.
Bit picky i know.

Trev

 

[JohnnyD913]

First attempt of editing video. I am new to all of it. I am using Premier Pro to do the editing. I would appreciate critique and constructive criticism. One shot of the falls I know is longer than most other clips, but I felt it was important to keep that length as I followed the falls up the mountain.

Thank you!

I think u got it right..
Good job

 

[Greekislandlover]

Well done!

I would say that Premiere Pro is worth the learning curve, as you can do SO much with it! Plus there are many youtube tutorials out there. I use it myself. The more you play around with it, the flatter the learning curve gets.

 

[vindibona1]

I think you did a really good job for a first editing project. You have some great footage. @Dale D had a lot of good comments. I want to double down on his comment about more color grading needed. But I think that can be the most challenging thing for newbies. I've been doing still color corrections for 20 years+ and still am finding good color grading a challenge in video, especially working with new equipment. Again, look to see if every shot has the color that makes you "feel" as you want it to. Small changes in hue or WB can make a big difference in the feel.

I sympathize with you about the hours and hours it can take to do a 2.5 minute project. Massaging one to its best self can seem to take forever. The last project that I did, after all those hours, when I thought I was just about finished, probably made 20 different revisions before I finally had to acquiesce to it being "perfect enough".

Since this is a critique area, I don't want to come of as critical, but just provide suggestions with a "fresh set of eyes".

There were a lot of really cool things in the video. The night shot of the city and the hyperlapse of the moon I think were my favorites, then followed by one or two of the sunset shots. I liked the speed ramp of ascending by the waterfalls.

I think this project still has some room for improvement, but the footage (some really good footage) is there. A few small things would be 1) Make sure you open to a clip while it's in motion. 2:05-2:10 was static. It's a great shot, and if the drone is stationary, just zoom in a bit with Premier in post to provide that sense of motion. 2) Cut out clips that have jerky motions. I saw at least one where that extra footage up thru the jerk wasn't essential. 3) Make sure your transisions feel right. There were a couple that I found drew my attention. (2:04 is one that bothered me. 1:05-1:08) Transitions shouldn't call attention to themselves unless there is a deliberate purpose for them to do so. 4) There were a couple places where you could have opened up the shadows a bit ( 2:14, possibly 2:24 ). I thought a bit more shadow detail wouldn't disrupt the sunset. 5) Sequencing. I really liked that shot at 2:05 but thought it might have more time relevance if it came after the bridge/sunset shot. JMO.

One or two other suggestions. Don't be afraid to zoom with keyframes. I might have liked to have seen that with the bridge at 0:19 then the kayakers. While you did pull back perhaps you should reverse that clip to zoom in and perhaps zoom in even more for effect? When you have similar clips, like going toward, then under the bridge, perhaps you might combine those clips and do something creative to have a sense of continuity? If it were me, I would cut out 1:05 to 1:08 entirely, which I think will make the transition to the waterfalls more impactful. There are a few other clips that could be massaged to make them more intersting.

Forgive my criticism, but I hope you found the comments constructive. I really think you've done a good job, particularly on the flying/shooting. Learning to fly, shoot and edit is like drinking out of three fire hoses at once. Again, bravo on your first project!

 

[The Scary Monsters]

First attempt of editing video. I am new to all of it. I am using Premier Pro to do the editing. I would appreciate critique and constructive criticism. One shot of the falls I know is longer than most other clips, but I felt it was important to keep that length as I followed the falls up the mountain.

Thank you!

That is pretty bloody good!

Maybe tighten up the symmetry a little, for example your opening shot was amazing but wasn’t perfectly square in the frame. People love symmetry in photography.

A lot of us starting out tend to use every transition we can! Big zooms, fades with pans, fade to blacks, all the cool stuff. When you start noticing moves in videos you’ll soon see the pros (watch music videos for the latest techniques) use hardly any transitions, they will use the camera or the scene to Segway into something, or no transition at all, just a cut. Get comfortable at just cutting between scenes. Make sure they compliment each other though.

Great video though!