10 Things I learned about video production at my first Broadcast Education Association/National Association of Broadcasters Conference in Las Vegas

1. Cut aggressively
   

   Kyle Hufford holds an award he won in the BEA Faculty Video Competition

   • From Mindy Elliott, editor of A Plastic Ocean, Assistant Editor of Nebraska, The Descendants in a BEA Master class
   • When editing videos, oftentimes you may find that storylines and plot points that you thought were essential are really just ancillary. Try to remove entire sections. If the storyline still holds up, maybe those weren’t as important as you thought. In The Descendents, they cut a large, elaborate, beautiful sequence that they’d spent a lot of time because it simply wasn’t essential to the story. They said, “The audience doesn’t know what wasn’t there. The only ones who missed it were us [editors].”
   • This is important to us at FiveCore because we always want to balance brevity with the clear communication of stories that clients have entrusted us to tell.
2. Assistant Editor isn’t the same job as Editor
   • From Mindy Elliott, editor of A Plastic Ocean, Assistant Editor of Nebraska, The Descendants in a BEA Master class
   • While they must collaborate and work together seamlessly, the Assistant Editor does not simply report to the Editor and do what he/she says. The Assistant is in charge of collecting footage, transcoding it into appropriate formats to work with, organizing it, and putting it all in place with a structure that makes it easier for the Editor to work with.
   • At FiveCore, with students working collaboratively on nearly all editing projects, it’s important to differentiate roles so that people don’t feel they’re stepping on each others’ toes by re-editing each other’s’ work. If we assign an editor and an assistant editor, it can add clarification and turn out a better product in the long run.
3. “The audience wants to know in the first minute that they’re in good hands”
   • From Mindy Elliott, editor of A Plastic Ocean, Assistant Editor of Nebraska, The Descendants in a BEA Master class
   • The first minute of a film is key. It must grab the viewer’s attention, but also build a world that the viewer wants to experience a story in. Let the viewer sit themself down and buckle their seatbelt before you take them on the ride. The opening has to make sense and be relatable. Characters behaving unrealistically, edits that confuse the viewer, and a lack of context can create intrigue at the start of a film, but it’s generally better to limit that until the audience finds something they can relate to and trusts the filmmaker to tell a good story.
   • We generally produce short-form videos, but nevertheless, introduce the audience to the video and get them interested so they don’t just scroll down to the next video in their news feed.
4. Get feedback. Lots of feedback.
   • From Adam Leipzig, producer of A Plastic Ocean,The Way Back in a BEA Master class
   • Show your videos to conventional audiences, not just the client or producer. Let people who aren’t related to you screen the movie and then participate in focus groups and fill out questionnaires. And have someone unassociated with the film ask the questions, so the audience is not afraid to give harsh criticism.
   • Our goal is to please the client, but the bigger goal is to achieve the client’s goals for the videos, including high viewership and positive feedback. The more feedback we get, the more data we have to work with, and the better the video ends up, so we should do regular screenings of our works-in-progress with our campus community.
5. Send full scenes for your editing demo reel
   

   Hufford speaks about the usefulness of iPads in the pre-production process at a session at BEA.

   • From Mindy Elliott, editor of A Plastic Ocean, Assistant Editor of Nebraska, The Descendants in a BEA Master class
   • If you’re applying for an editing job, in your Editing Demo Reel, show 2-3 full scenes. Uniquely-cut scenes. Fast cuts between lots of projects don’t prove your editing prowess.
   • Good for students of video production of any age to know.
6. Organize your footage with Post Haste
   • From Jay Dunmore, CTT/Adobe Education Leader in the Adobe Creative Foundations session
   • Besides a great name for their product, Post Haste by Digital Rebellion offers a free, easy, simple way to organize video and media projects by creating a folder structure based on templates. Stay organized and save yourself a lot of headache later on in the editing process.
   • A must-get for FiveCore
7. Use Adobe Prelude to get started with editing.
   • From Jay Dunmore, CTT/Adobe Education Leader in the Adobe Creative Foundations session
   • It’s a great beginner’s editing tool, which can teach the basics until you can work up the courage to learn how to edit in a full-fledged non-linear editor like Adobe Premiere.
   • The more students we can get interested in video production and editing at Goshen College, the better. If this is a way to get more people involved, it should be encouraged.
8. After Effects basics: Learn PARTS
   • From Jay Dunmore, CTT/Adobe Education Leader in the Adobe Creative Foundations session
   • The basic After Effects animations (and their keyboard shortcuts) make the word PARTS: Position, Anchor point, Rotation, Transparency (also called opacity in After Effects), and Scale
   • Good teaching tool. Shortcuts make everything faster!
9. There’s no shortage of equipment and software available for what we do
   • From the NAB Show
   • Walking through the four massive exhibit halls packed with camera, software, and gear manufacturers will leave you speechless. Your name-brand booths are enormous, and the ones
     

     Jake holds an award certificate after accepting it at the BEA Student Video Competition.

     you haven’t heard of have some awesome toys to show off as well.

   • To stay ahead of the curve on video production equipment, software, and techniques, you have to do your research. NAB was an awesome chance for me to learn about a lot of things I hadn’t been aware of before.
10. It feels good to be recognized for your accomplishments
    • From BEA Student Video awards
    • Goshen College students and faculty won 4 awards at BEA this year! I had a chance to work on 3 of the videos, so I got to go up and accepted a couple of them at the awards ceremony. FiveCore Media provides incredible opportunities to work collaboratively on a variety of projects. Kyle provides excellent leadership and I learn new things every day from the talented student staff I get to work with.