Thursday, June 12, 2008

Plans and stuff


I realized yesterday that if I bought Avid my computer would explode. So instead I ordered Adobe Premiere and an external hard drive (both still with the educator's discount), because I like my computer and I don't want to blow it up.

I'll practice on my Game Night footage so that by the time I go to edit Guthrie I'll have an idea of what I'm doing. And if I end up sucking as an editor, I'll turn to one of the people I know who's better than me. But I'd like to give it a try first, and it's not an absurd amount of money. It's not cheap, but it's not going to bankrupt me either.

Now I just have to buy a camera.

Meanwhile....

The Great Dramatic Irony Debate: The Sequel has begun over at Wordplay. It never ceases to amaze me that so many people can be confronted with a dictionary definition of a term and refuse to admit that they're wrong. I got a little carried away the last time and some girl told me I was a horrible teacher and implied that I was a cunt - yes that word and yes, over a goddamn definition of a fucking literary term - so I'm trying very hard to stay as clean as possible in this one. Still, I can feel the ire rising again. Just when I think I got out, they pull me back in.

And, I should add, Terry Rossio will now forever know me as the girl who pissed him off by criticizing his vocabulary on her blog.

For the record, I've met Terry and I think he's fabulous and wonderful and makes a bazillion dollars more than I do and I really liked The Mask of Zorro and I wish he'd stop hating me.

10 comments:

  1. Haven't read any of the new WP posts, but the last run was just crazy... and inspired me to do a tip of Situational Irony which is coming soon. I'm also doing a tip on Obligatory Scenes that will make everyone hate me.

    - Bill

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  2. Anonymous7:04 PM

    I would be curious to know the process you used to narrow down your video editing software choice. I have zero knowledge of the topic. Some might ask why not go with a free product rather than an expensive one? Let's pretend that you don't have access to the educational discount.

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  3. I knew Final Cut Pro was THE program but it's only good for Macs and I have a PC so I tried to find the equivalent and came upon Avid. But then when I realized my computer can't handle Avid I asked a friend to give me some advice. He suggested Adobe Premiere, but said Pinnacle (which retails as low as $50) was also a good program.

    I looked up reviews for both programs and the general reviews for Pinnacle were kind of bad whereas reviews for Adobe were consistently good. I think Pinnacle is good if you just want to do cheap videos but I have plans to eventually do more fancy stuff. And if I don't, I'll sell the software and recoup some of the investment.

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  4. Anonymous7:58 PM

    Once you learn how to edit with one program you should be able to pick up the other programs easily. I know you want to learn using your footage, but you might want to look at one of adobes classroom in a book, books. They are great and come with a dvd with footage you can edit to learn the programs and all the shortcut keys and what not. I've used them to learn premiere and the lessons are about an hour each. At least do it for the first few lessons that teach you what the symbols mean and how to use them.

    I use both FC and Premiere and like you said Final Cut Pro is THE program but you can get the same results once you know what you're doing.

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  5. Ooooh thanks! I'll do that.

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  6. As far as I know:

    Dramatic irony -- when the audience knows something the character doesn't. Hitchcock used it A LOT to create suspense.

    I made my own definition from irony because I could never quite grasp what the dictionary definition was trying to get across.

    So, am I right?

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  7. Anonymous1:30 AM

    Not to throw gas on the fire but I have Final Cut Pro, Premiere, and Vegas Video and prefer Vegas over both.

    Lots of great plugins for Vegas too...

    But Premiere will do what you need to do.

    Unk

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  8. Yeah, Shep, that's the definition. But in a column Terry wrote about Dramatic Irony as anything that's ironic. What he meant was irony that had dramatic effect.

    And when I wrote my own column correcting that I kind of acted like an ass, which set off a shitstorm on Wordplay and even though I apologized for my holier than thouness, he's still pissed.

    Some chick on that site told me I was a lousy teacher and that English teachers don't know shit and it pissed me off and she never apologized. It was a mess.

    But Terry said just now that he's going to edit the column so this doesn't happen again.

    Besides, he gets to go home at night and count his money.

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  9. Well, I can say part two was interesting to say the least.

    I agree with UNK that Vegas is really great. I love the workflow and time line, plus it works with my Sound Forge audio SW.

    For only $500 you even get DVD authoring SW with support for 96K\7.1.

    If you're looking for a camera check bhphoto. They have tape-based cameras for under $1000 and Flash-based ones for under $2000.

    If I had any friends, I'd buy one and film them.

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  10. I use Premiere Pro. The only editing program I want to use.

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