#premire pro

First meme I animated. Love making this

Audio is from RussianBadger

@xelcon @caseykeshui @phoenix92obelle @askcountryhumansusa @krysyeet

Made another one! I love making these. Planning on making more!

Video content is everywhere today. From YouTube videos and Instagram reels to movies, advertisements, and online courses—everything depends on good editing. Behind every engaging video, there’s a video editor who turns raw clips into something creative and meaningful.

For students who want to enter this field, video editing can become a great career option. But many beginners often feel confused about where to start, which software to learn, and how to become job-ready.

This is where a beginner-friendly video editing ebook can really help. Instead of learning random things from different places, it gives students a proper direction and step-by-step understanding.

Why Video Editing is a Powerful Career Skill

Today, businesses, creators, influencers, and brands all need video content. And because of that, skilled video editors are always in demand.

Video editing is not just about cutting clips. It’s about:

Telling a story

Creating emotions through visuals

Making content more engaging

Keeping viewers interested

That’s why good editing can completely change how a video feels.

Starting as a Beginner

Most students think video editing is difficult in the beginning because professional videos look complex. But every editor starts from the basics.

A simple video editing usually begins with:

Understanding the editing timeline

Learning cuts and transitions

Adding music and sound effects

Color correction basics

Exporting videos properly

Once students understand these basics, editing starts becoming much easier and more enjoyable.

Learning Through Practice Matters Most

One thing every beginner should understand is this:

Video editing is a practical skill.

You can watch tutorials for hours, but real improvement comes when you actually edit videos yourself.

That’s why good e-books often include:

Practice projects

Editing exercises

Real editing examples

Step-by-step workflow guidance

The more you practice, the more creative and confident you become.

Understanding Motion Graphics

As students improve, they usually become interested in animations and visual effects. This is where a motion graphics ebook becomes useful.

Motion graphics help editors create:

Animated titles

Social media effects

Intro animations

Dynamic text and transitions

These effects make videos look more professional and modern.

👉 Simple truth: Even small motion graphics can make ordinary videos look much more attractive.

Career Opportunities in Video Editing

One of the best things about learning video editing is that career opportunities are growing rapidly.

Students can work as:

Video editor

Reel editor

YouTube content editor

Motion graphics designer

Freelance video creator

Many editors also work remotely or freelance from home, which makes this field even more flexible.

Why Beginners Should Learn Step by Step

Many students make the mistake of trying to learn advanced effects immediately. This often creates frustration.

A beginner-focused video editing ebook helps students:

Learn basics first

Build confidence slowly

Understand editing workflow properly

Improve creativity naturally

This step-by-step learning process makes a huge difference.

Skills That Matter More Than Expensive Software

A lot of beginners believe that expensive software alone makes someone a good editor. But that’s not true.

Good video editing depends more on:

Creativity

Timing

Storytelling

Practice

Observation

Software is just a tool. The real skill comes from how you use it.

Final Thoughts

Video editing is one of the most exciting creative careers today. Whether it’s content creation, filmmaking, social media, or digital marketing—video skills are valuable everywhere.

A beginner-friendly video editing ebook helps students understand the basics clearly, while a practical motion graphics ebook helps them move toward advanced creative editing.

The most important thing is to keep practicing and stay patient with the learning process.

A SHORT STORY STOP-MOTION

My final piece of filming for Animation 102 was to create a short story animation using one of five prompts as inspiration;

Dental Pain

The irritating insect

The kitchen mishap

The mysterious package

The wilderness walk

I decided to base my animation on the mysterious package idea but incorporate some elements of the irritating insect. With an insect-like creature being revealed to be in the box.

With this, I wrote down a rough plan of the actions in my story as a reference for the animation.

I decided to make the creature in the box a slug, as the shape would be simple and easy to animate and because I could easily sculpt it in plasticine. To make the eye stalks, I used two sewing pins with pink tips. Cutting off the sharp ends with wire cutters.

I had nothing to use as the box that would contain the slug. So I looked around the classrooms at the campus for something feasible and finally came across a box of story dice.

I went into the stop motion studio and booked room 1 to film my story. While I worked on my animation, I took a timelapse on my phone to catalog the process.

Overall, this process took roughly seven hours.

One problem I ran into was after the production when exporting the video. When exported as a video, the lower half of the picture was cropped. Not only this, but the frames where my hand was in shot that I deleted were somehow still present. I tried several times to make different versions that didn't crop out the lower frame and did not contain my hands, but they didn't work.

The day after, I met up with the teacher in charge of the studio, Owen, to take a look and help me identify the problem. For one, the reason the hands were deleted on the file but not the video when I exported it was that I captured the HD photos on the camera, and these were a different library of photos from the ones I was using in the program. By clicking a diamond icon in the sidebar over the timeline, I could see these HD camera photos and finally take out the photos with my hands in them.

As for the cropped frame, I did not have the letterbox view on, so I couldn't see how the frame would be cropped to a 16 by 9 aspect ratio. To fix this, when in the exporting menu, I should turn the aspect ratio mask off. And if the menu says I can't export because of the pixel size, I'll just need to delete a single pixel or two.

With this, I went home, and edited my filmed short story on Premiere Pro, adding titles and music. I chose a piece of music that I would describe as relaxed jazzy lounge music because I felt it added a kind of comical yet classy element to the piece. I then added the Short Story to my showreel and uploaded the now complete showreel and the stand-alone short story to my Vimeo.

As part of my Animation 101 class, I was tasked to compile the animations I had made so far into an Adobe Premiere Pro project and create a showreel.

The animations I have made so far for this brief include several sequences of different balls in motion of various sizes, materials, and weights produced using Procreate for iPad, two paper cut-out stop motion clips, and a Maya test animation. I couldn't find all the Maya files I worked on, and the one I wanted to access to get high-quality video wouldn't open. So I used a lower-quality version I filmed using my phone. I need to explore and understand how to export into a higher quality in Maya for future projects - I am new to Maya, and this is a learning curve.

I was also required to download a graphic to annotate my various animations (i.e., test 1, test 2, etc.); however, I tried downloading it from Blackboard, but it wouldn't work. I believe this was because I was using a different version of Premiere. Without the graphic, I instead improvised using the Premiere shape tool. Using the video Premiere Pro : 'How to Draw Circle and Rectangle Shapes (EASY and FAST method) by the Youtube channel Adobe in a Minute, and created a similar graphic from scratch.

Once all the clips were together, and the graphic added, I set about finding a soundtrack to go along with it. It didn't take me long to find a website that provided me with royalty-free stock music to use in my reel. On the website called Mixkit, I found a track entitled 'Hip Hop 02' by artists Lily J that gave the footage a mature and contemporary feeling appropriate for a professional feeling animation reel.

I'm glad I was able to find a track of such high quality in such a short amount of time on a free music website such as this. Royalty-free music, especially the type found on websites without the requirement to create an account or subscription to download any tracks, tends to be not of best quality, and they often have a bland, soulless sound to them. So I'm happy to have happened upon a website like Mixkit and the excellent work of Lily J.

Once I exported this project as an mp4 file, I finally uploaded my animation reel to my Vimeo account.