Editing First Steps

You've just begun your journey into editing!  How does it feel to take your first baby steps?  What are three things that surprise you?  What are you finding difficult?

    After taking my first steps into editing, I feel pretty excited to edit and learn more. Some things that surprise me are the amount of tools and shortcuts there are, how easy Premiere Pro is to use after learning how, and the organizing capabilities.

    Going in, we learned a whole boat-load of shortcuts that was in a pretty intimidating list. But there was a shortcut for practically everything you could imagine. That being said, I still haven't learned all of them but the ones that I have gotten used to make the process much easier. This works in tandem with how easy Premiere Pro is once I've learned how to use it. The shortcuts make it a lot quicker but this also applies to other functions. At first, I was very intimidated by everything that was on the screen. But now, I have a basic understanding of how edit on the software. Another thing that surprised me was the organizing capabilities that were available in the project files. I never knew how much you were able to organize the files that you had. Before we started this unit, I thought the most you could do was change the name and put them into bins. But now, I know that you are able to write descriptions, labels, mark whether the shot was good, see if it's audio, etc. All this makes finding the right shots considerably easier and faster.

    One thing that I'm finding difficult is the learning curve. Because there is so much to learn and so many functions and processes that all have a role in editing efficiently, it'll take time to fully grasp what Premiere Pro is capable of and what I'm able to do when editing. I struggled a lot when learning things and how to find certain functions, such as transitions, and that left me stumped until I learned where to find them. There are still so much that I have no clue how to do on Premiere that I need to take the time to learn and then use to solidify my understanding.