It’s Tuesday, October 4, 2022, and today is the end of my 5-week Foundation Skill: Digital Video Editing class at Columbia College Chicago. I walked into this class never having downloaded or opened Premiere Pro, and have left with 1 practice video, 1 short film, and a lot of new knowledge.

For our practice video, we simply needed to film three clips from different angles and learn how to edit as we followed along in class.
First I showed a high view from Columbia’s Student Center, then a worm’s eye view of Union Station, and finally an eye-level view of the Metra trains at Union Station.

The part I struggled with most was the cropping: every time I would cut a clip, I would have to move everything up, over and over. Or if I wanted to extend something, I would have to move everything back, again and again. It wasn’t a huge obstacle, and I’m sure there’s a way to streamline that process, but that was from my experience as a beginner.

For my final short film, I decided to make a mundane horror video. I’ve always enjoyed filming still-life type videos of daily occurrences, like traffic, people walking, trees blowing in the wind, people cooking, and more. I also love horror, and I had planned on making a horror film from the moment I registered for the class. So, I decided to mix the two. This is a concept I’ve seen been done before anyway: the horrors that are (or can be) present in everyday life.
Mini-warning: it is a “horror” film, so you might get spooked. Haha!

What I found surprisingly easy was the filming and gathering of the clips. I first started with a handful of scenes, and then I compiled them and edited them into a whole video. After watching it, I would see that some scenes were too long, repetitive, or missing something. I would think of clips I could put in to improve the video, film them, and then immediately insert them. After repeating this process again and again, I finally had the video I wanted. Yes, it was probably more tedious than it needed to be, but I think it worked out perfectly. As a full-time student, it was better to film and add as I worked, rather than waste a whole day filming scenes that I wouldn’t even use in the end.

I really enjoyed planning my films out, filming them, and compiling them into videos I was proud of, so I’m making a promise to myself to continue to create videos! I’d also like to refine my horror video and publish it publicly for people to see.