Premiere Pro Training and Stand-in for 'Bleed'
As CCAD offers us the possibility to study and get a certificate in Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2015 for free, Hannah, Has and I decided to take up their offer and take weekly courses conducted by our technical instructor.
Today was our first lesson and we received an introduction into the current interface of the Adobe CC 2015 version. As I have already worked with a German version of Premiere Pro CS5.5, the lesson today was familiar and brand new to me at the same time.
The interface of Premiere Pro had not changed too much that I would be unable to come around and get stuff done, but learning to master it in English was an entirely different cup of tea, as many of the labels and names were ambiguous or, respectively, contained words that I have never even heard or read about. Yay, more English lessons!
Which is why, in the ensuing practice test, I had to guess elaborately more than anything else to get around. Another issue was the fact that I did not yet memorise all the icons with their names and functions, which made things even more complicated. I realised that I remember the function of most buttons by the position in their respective windows, but not by the icons themselves, which made multiple choice tests (in which they were removed from their context) all the more difficult.
And last but not least, the practice test is very particular about the answers you can give and how you give them. While I, for example, learned and practised many ways to insert a clip into the timeline with CS5.5, the practice test only allows for one particular answer only. This, in turn, means that I need to memorise the preferred answer in order to score high.
However, luckily, I just about passed the practice test with about 72% which is not precisely glorious but per se still satisfying, regarding the fact that we were immediately thrown into the deep end without being able to learn beforehand. Plus, we still do have a bit of time until the actual test is nigh, so I do still have time to properly experiment and learn before the actual exam.
After our introduction to CC2015, Hannah, Has, and I went to the stores and then to the studio to experiment with pieces of equipment for the production of 'Bleed'.
I had offered myself as a stand in for this exercise, so that Hannah and Has could practise with a real person. Since 'Bleed' is supposed to film a Western-like short with introspective scenes at a cliff in the North East that is quite difficult to reach via official transport and takes up to 50 minutes to be reached by foot, the crew decided to take as minimal a film kit onto location as possible.
Thus, Hannah and Has had booked out a spider rig from the stores to experiment with it and, naturally, needed someone to step in as an actor.
As this was intended as the opening scene, I was supposed to walk a few meters and - being fictionally wounded by a gun shot - collapse to the floor in agony. In order to see whether this action could be captured well with the rig, we experimented with pace, timing, and equipment a couple of times until Hannah felt confident in making this shot work cinematically.
Watching the footage back, I now do understand why so many cinematographers do insist on working with spider rigs or shoulder rigs:
The footage looked like it was shot as a character's POV, creating a lot of intimacy and somewhat forcing the audience into a stealthy, voyeuristic position in which it was not entirely sure whether the character was followed by someone benign or malicious. The image immediately drew attention to itself, which is the effect that 'Bleed's director Nathan wanted to achieve.
Looking back onto the results, I want to add experimentations with the spider rig to my 'To Do'-list for the summer. This is sure going to be a long list!