By Leslie Drummond, Mississippi State Ag Communications Student
The Alabama Farmers Federation hosted the Ag Communicators Network Southeast Regional Workshop in Montgomery, Ala. on November 14, 2017. The workshop featured speakers and presenters from around the state in all different fields of the agriculture industry. The speaker’s focused on hot topics concerning our state, such as food safety and GMOs.
In addition to presentations about agricultural issues, Mr. Patrick Barkley, from Reah + Kiaser, spoke about shooting video in the field and editing the content. With 25 years on experience and an Emmy under his belt, Mr. Barkley informed the audience of the correct ways to edit video content for different purposes.
The first thing Mr. Barkley suggests is to acquire a quality software program. The most popular program right now is the Adobe Creative Cloud. This package includes a state of the art editing program called Premiere Pro. This program is used by professionals as well as college students. After shooting quality video, Mr. Barkley uses a method he learned years ago. Take things slowly and edit the video take-by-take.
Although Premier Pro is the most popular, there are other programs that are beneficial to the editing process. Final Cut Pro is another program used by professionals. It is more expensive than Premier Pro but is much more powerful with different features.
When editing quality video, it is important to follow a rule that most of us have learned in elementary school. Include the three major parts of a story; the beginning, middle and end. Splitting the video up in this way will make it easier to complete in a timely fashion. Mr. Barkley uses this while editing his professional videos.
Everything that you see on television today has been edited. It has become a professional industry that has made millions over the years. The good thing about video editing is that you do not have to be a seasoned professional to make career out of it. The software is user friendly and includes videos to help you along the way. The age old saying, practice makes perfect, goes hand-in-hand with editing as well.
Mr. Barkley stresses one common factor, keep things simple. Viewers will be able to convey the message much easier if the final product is simple and comprehensible. The software used to edit the video clips will help in this process. Keeping things easy to understand will aid in increasing views for the video in the long run.