When kids aren’t busy waging their own online reputation management on Facebook and Twitter, they still enjoy being creative. Video editing software has become almost ubiquitous on most operating systems. iMovie is good for its ease and recent upgrades have come close to approximating professional video standards. A person looking to start a career in film editing might explore more top notch pieces of software. There are several free license examples on the market right now, like OpenShot. Not only is it easy to learn the basics, many of these programs integrate well with great free graphics programs like Blender and Cinefx.
If you’re looking to expose your teenager to video editing or if you yourself are looking to get involved in the field, here are 5 exercises that will teach you basic to intermediate and advanced skill levels:
Make a double. You don’t need to wait for biotechnology to clone yourself. Just produce video of you in two places in one room, keeping the camera still. Then import the footage, line up the two shots, one on top of the other, apply a simple garbage matte (four point or eight point, depending on the complexity of the cropping) on one of the shots, and pulling back the appropriate corners. This already sounds more complex than it actually is.
The Pleasantville Effect. Using the pull down menu on the Color Correction filter, OpenShot allows you to easily manipulate color, saturation, and other effects. You can select a single object and make it the only part of the frame with color, or select a tone and effect it throughout, making all the grass red, for instance.
Keyframing. A fundamental building block of video editing and is used for everything from digitally censoring someone’s face to creating Transformers. At its most basic, keyframing is controlling when an effect will change on your timeline. To get started, apply a simple effect to a shot, open up the motion tab and apply two nodes, then make the second node exaggerate the effect. The shot should change as you progress across the timeline. And you can add more nodes…
Go Green…Screen, that is. Green screens have gotten much easier. These days you don’t even necessarily need a screen, just the luma key filter and a few others.
May The Force Be With You…and Render Well. Light sabers and lightning never disappoint. Export some shots to Cinefx and use its custom light beam and lightning effects and what you know of keyframing to create your own Star Wars effects. Most likely, George Lucas won’t sue you.
These are just a few simple strategies for getting exposed to video editing and getting excited about it. Learning the basics of video editing doesn’t have to be a dull process of trimming shots on a timeline. Today’s free license software allows you do perform very complex operations with minimal training and RAM.