Time Spent: 5 hours
Programs used: Adobe premier pro
Backstory:
A couple of weekends ago I had the pleasure of photographing my cousins small and very casual wedding ceremony. While you might not be able to tell from the fabulous photos but it was 110 degrees in the California country desert. Safe to say, I killed it at my job. What turned into "maybe just a couple of photos" turned out being a whole shoot and I am forever grateful for the opportunity to capture our beloved family all together. What my cousin DIDN'T know was that I was secretly taking videos for this project but also to capture the day all together.
Starting Point
First when we open premier, I start by importing all of my content and then just dragging it all over to the work space. It can get messy but I have a trick for how to keep this organized, I promise!
Prep
I then like to also make sure to unlink my audio. For any video I do not use the original audio for I select all ➞ right click➞ say "unlink". This will unlink your audio from your video so then you can just trash the audio.
While I am doing this I like to mute all the audio lines. If I was using audio I would still unlink and mute the tracks until I came back to work with audio. This just keeps everything organized and on a tighter editing line.
Culling
This next part is where most of the time is spent. This is called culling your videos or choosing which video clips you want to include in your movie. This is an incredibly tedious process as you have to pretty much watch every clip and use the slice tool to trim where you want the clip to start and stop.
Once its all done though, you'll have a sequence that looks similar to this.
Color Correction & LUT's
Once your sequence is pieced together, you'll want to color correct your videos. Not all videos need color corrections but I like to make sure all my clips have the same fade and coloring table within them. This is almost like a filter. Since I was using about 4 different cameras, my clips all have slightly different lighting scenarios so I use Lumetri color profiles to correct the color and make an overall lighter appearance.
Since I had a TON of clips within my video sequence, I wanted to just copy and paste my settings much like I do when editing in Adobe Lightroom.
When copy & pasting a color preset in premier though, its crucial to take these specific steps to make sure you aren't copy & pasting the clip instead.
Once your color edits have been made, simply right click ➞ copy ➞ select next frame ➞ right click ➞ "Paste Attributes". (This is a super crucial step as you will then select to just paste the effects).
Then boom! Repeat steps for the rest of the clips you wish to color correct & match and you're ready for the next step!
Effects
Effects are crucial to any video. Whether you think a video needs them or not is up to the creator but they usually add a visually pleasing aesthetic.
Photo 1
In this photo you can see we're clicked on the "editing" button at the very top middle of the program.
From there, I am adding in transitions. My top 2 transitions for slides are fade to white & film fade. I use these two religiously as they truly encompass my style as an editor and creator.
By dropping down the "transitions" menu, you find a TON of different transitions to use on a clip. From there, you simply drag and drop the transition on to the clip and adjust accordingly.
Adobe has a great article on transitions for your video (linked here).
Photo 2
A little more on the fade to white & film fade.
Fade to white: exactly how it sounds. It makes the clip end on a white transition. This gives a light, bright angelic feel to any clip. Similarly, there is also a fade to black transition which gives the same effect but in black. These transitions are used all throughout my video.
The film fade is a personal fav as it can give a really cool effect of one video clip transitioning into the next. This can be seen in the finished video at the 0:25 mark.
Photo 3
The next effect is the title or credits slides. I did not do a credits slide BUT I did do a title page as seen in the beginning of the video.
This was not just any title slide as adobe premier is always a little more in depth with their features. I definitely had to look up how to do this but found a great video linked here.
I added a simple title page with my cousin and her husbands name and the date they got married but did add an effect to make it grow and fade.
Ending
In the end, you should have a sequence of clips and transitions that look like this. My last step (Which I forgot to picture) is adding audio. I went and searched specific song titles that were covers produced by people who allowed free use on their music. I found a beautiful cover of Elvis Presley's famous "Can't Help Falling In Love" and gave credit to the producer on my youtube video in the description stating:
Copyright free info:
Artist: Almanfaluthi_Djaka
Song: Cant Help Falling in Love | Acoustic Karaoke Cover
Download/Stream: https://uptona.com/nuH2l47GY
Credit is super important because when you upload to youtube, the platform automatically checks for copyrighted materials so giving credit in the description as well as using free copyright material is an easy way to make sure your video won't be taken down by Youtube.