New Skills, New Responsibilities

   Over the course of my education at the Seattle Film Institute ( commonly known as SFI) I've made it a point to be a go-to guy. I've taken a fair amount of my spare time to go into school and study more in depth aspects, particularly with editing.
   For editing, SFI uses Final Cut Pro 7 and Adobe Premier Pro CS 5.5. I cut and recut all of my projects multiple times just for the experience with the software, as well as with Motion and After Effects as I added in simple but effective special effects. The extra practice has paid off as, on multiple occasions, classmates and even teachers have asked for advice on how best to achieve a look or an effect in a film. This trust and expertise (I'm not an expert, that takes years, but you can get an idea of where I'm at by watching my films) led to my being put in charge of the graduating class' film reel.
   DVD Studio Pro was a program that I wasn't familiar with, and I only had a week to get the DVD composed. I tinkered for a day to learn the layout, menus and buttons, and then I watched tutorials for another day. I like to tinker first before watching/reading tutorials because I'm a hands on learner. Then, when I did go through the tutorials, I had a better idea of what was going on. I also gained a greater appreciation for the intermediary steps since I'd gained a better understanding of where all the steps were leading. Compressor became my friend as I exported the movie files into workable DVD formats.
   I've gathered the needed films for the graduation reel and my layout should be finalized before the end of today. I'm rather pleased with how well things have turned out. Learning new programs and finding interesting ways of implementing them has always been a joy for me. If I have time early next week, I'm going to put together a custom background animation for the DVD using both Photoshop and Final Cut Pro 7 to make an animated collage of the graduating class and stills from our production sets. It's not that hard and it would add a nice touch to the DVD. Don't get me wrong, the ready made backgrounds in DVD Studio Pro are nice and I'm pleased with the one I've selected thus far but it never hurts to put a little extra work in, especially when I know it would add so much more to the finished project.

   There are a lot of programs that could have been used in place of the ones I listed, these are just the ones that I'm familiar with. They're all great tools; powerful and easy to use (once you've put in the time) and allow you to be creative, rather than getting frustrated with technical issues that stifle your mind.