This week in film making we worked on making a slideshow or photo montage as a project in class. I learned a lot of tips and tricks for using Premiere Pro and a lot of tips for making a successful photo montage in general.
First of all I learned just about everything I know now about zooming and fitting images from the past week of working. Not only did it speed up the process but it made the project enjoyable and I was very engaged in my work. I learned how to zoom in and fit by setting up key frames, which when they are placed on a photo set the zoom and movement of the image by placing different points where the image is a certain way and moving the image to reach where the second key frame has the image. Without this feature there would be no way of moving the images or increasing their size, zoom or opacity.
I also learned how to use the razor tool. Whenever one of the images had too long of a duration for how I wanted it to fit in the project, I would manually go in and change the duration by numbers at first. After I figured out how to use the razor tool, I didn’t have to even open that menu. By using the razor tool, all one must do to change a clips duration is click where they want it to split and delete what’s left over after. It was as simple as that.
I also, through reading an article about key shortcuts in adobe Premiere Pro, learned about the J and L keys. These keys can be used to to go back and forth from what ever speed necessary (change the speed by holding shift or pressing the other button), which is very helpful in many situations, especially when you have one Clío that you need to go back and make sure it changes right when the music hits a certain spot. I specifically used this in order to change from pictures of certain characters because they were the ones singing the song in the music video online, so I used the keys to slow down and backtrack and then slow down and go forward in order to make sure they images I had in the montage would change to the next at the perfect time.
Although I learned a lot and felt relatively good about how much I learned and the outcome of my project, I wish I learned a little more. Namely, I wish I could’ve learned a lot more about transitions. All of the pictures in my project would simply transition to the next with a quick flip. I wish I could’ve learned about how to add more interesting transitions, like something where the images fade into each other or dissolve to reveal another, maybe even slips into to halves like a curtain being drawn back. I am definitely going to learn how to use more of the features the more I use Premiere Pro I’m sure.
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