Editing the Me, Myself, and I
As of today, about two minutes of my piece are now roughly edited!
Whoop, whoop!
The only downside, if I may call it that, is the fact that I forgot to bring my production log and edit decision list along since it would have saved me a lot of time. Because of that, I naturally had to rewatch all of my clips and fill out a new edit decision list. It will be a lesson for me to treasure these lists in the future and to pack extra if I book myself into an edit suite.
But wait, there's more.
After creating another edit decision list, I explored the Avid Media Composer 8 on my own while creating the rough cut. This way, I exercised the use of shortcuts for marking in and out-points, explored the effects folder and realised that most video dissolves would only be used for extremely comical or alienating Brechtian effects. I also earned how to create and open new bins and tools, how to add and delete new video and audio tracks, and picked up speed in the process.
This may not sound like much, but it helped me find orientation in the interface and also understand how Avid 'thinks' as a program and what kind or order of interactions it demands of me as a user. For it is far stricter than Adobe Premiere Pro and as such demands of you to constantly learn how to interact with it, instead of just winging it. But even so, I personally prefer Avid to Adobe anytime, since this 'controlled interaction' as I call it, makes Avid run more stably than Adobe. I have previously worked with the Adobe Premiere Pro MS 5.5 and CC 7, just to repeatedly find out that the software crashed during finalisation or shortly before export because the it stopped tolerating decisions I made early on the process without telling me that this might become an issue. Which is really not a nice move if you are working towards a deadline in good faith.
But even though I am now constantly sitting in front of a monitor, I am already looking forward to tomorrow again. For tomorrow I shall finish my rough cut and learn how to add black film, titles and discreet dissolves onto the video track.