THE ADVANCED PRODUCTION PRACTICUM
Welcome to the Advanced Production Practicum! In this course, we’ll be exploring two pieces of professional-level post-production software: Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects. The first part of the semester will focus on video editing in Premiere; then we’ll focus on motion graphics, animation, and compositing in After Effects.
Both Premiere and After Effects are incredibly powerful tools for creating video – so much so that it’s basically impossible to learn everything they have to offer. The goal of this class is for you to become proficient enough in both applications to be able to continue to learn on your own. You don’t need to know how to do everything in these programs – you need to know how to figure out how to do what you want, when you want to do it. To do that, you need to be comfortable with the software interface and confident in your own abilities.
My Background
I’ve been doing professional video work in some capacity for about ten years. I spent most of that time as a freelancer specializing in editing and animation. I currently work for Bucknell full-time in a split position between the Communications department and Film/Media Studies. I do production work for the university, manage the video studio in Marts Hall, assist with classes, and give workshops.
I really enjoy working on video in all its forms, but animation has always held a special interest for me. In addition to computer-based techniques, I also do traditional stop-motion animation. Below are some samples of my work.
Course Materials
There are no books required for the course and all the software we’ll use is available on campus in the Bertrand Library Digital Video Editing Lab and the Video Production Studio in Marts. However, you will need an external hard drive to store your projects and media files. If you don’t have one already, be sure to get a drive with at least 500GB of storage and a USB 3.0 connection. This will give you plenty of room and a drive fast enough to work off of. You can buy a 1TB external drive from Amazon (or Target or Walmart or Best Buy, etc.) for around $60. If this is a problem for anyone, let me know and we’ll figure something out.
Using This Blog
This website is your primary source of information for the class. Every week, a summary of the lesson will be posted, along with the details of the week’s assignment. If you find yourself confused or stuck during an assignment, I’d encourage you to review the blog post for that week. Of course, I’m always happy to answer questions as well — just send me an email at dan014@bucknell.edu.
In addition to the course’s lessons and assignments, this blog will showcase the work you do throughout the semester. You’ll find the finished projects on the Project Gallery page. We’ll be looking at everyone’s work together at the beginning of most class sessions, so please send me your finished assignments the night before the day of class (Wednesday night), at the very latest. This gives me time to look the projects over, upload them, and post them to the blog.
Since this blog will be acting as the textbook, syllabus, and project gallery for the class, there won’t be much activity on the course’s Moodle page. However, I will be using the Moodle page for grading, so check in there every now and then. Again, if you have any questions, let me know.
Course Projects
Most weeks, you’ll receive an assignment based on the techniques covered in class. The specific requirements for each assignment will be detailed in that week’s post. Each assignment is due by 9am the day of the following class. This gives me time to upload the projects and post them to the course blog. Late assignments will be accepted for lower grades. Of course, turning work in early is preferred!
Here are some projects from last semester:
https://youtu.be/JsRUs3_KkZE
https://youtu.be/rHh7GnK5OhA
https://youtu.be/wnrEMLnpoA4
https://youtu.be/QWXgoqEZNww
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYOKqgOzVSY