This week, I've been learning Adobe Premiere and After Effects

I recut the Jenni's Angels 48 Hour film from 2010: 'Ultimate Monster Fighter: Showdown' (UMF:S). It was a small project to ease back into editing and teach myself the basics of Adobe Premiere.

'The Hunt' is the result:

As I looked over the raw footage of UMF:S, I felt that I really wanted to concentrate on the story of the fight between Jon and Kerina. Figuring out the beats of that story and how to play it tighter and more seriously than UMF:S took a while.

It became clear that it'd be cool to insert a special effect into one of the sequences of the fight. Until this week, I'd never created a special effect but I've watched Norman and Andrew use After Effects to do some great stuff, so I decided to boot it up and teach myself how to use it (google proved helpful).

The weak spot is definitely my sound mixing skills. I haven't figured how to balance all of the elements yet, and that's crucial to any film playing properly.

I'm looking forward to doing more of this.

Here's the original 'Ultimate Monster Fighter: Showdown':




... which is, itself, a sequel to 'Monster Hunter IV: Beyond Repair':

My project for the holidays: learn to edit by editing Monster of the Week

Mike's hired me to edit his game, Monster of the Week. It's exciting (because I've had a lot of fun editing and giving unsolicited feedback on games before).


It's also a completely new work process for me. I've peer reviewed and edited 10 page briefings and given overviews of novels before. However, it feels a little different to actually be working 'on the clock'. I'm being paid for about 10-12 hours of editing time, and I want to give Mike value for money.

At the moment, I think the best approach is to treat this in the same way I treated all the feedback I've received for Left Coast: I've read through the rules for Monster of the Week, making notes as I go. Now I'm going to create a mind-map of those notes and choose which of the issues I've identified are the most fundamental ones - the ones that'll make the biggest differences to the book. That's where I'll focus my efforts to start with - not on a line-by-line proof-read, but on a 'how could we present this information so that it feels like it's in the right place'.

I think my feedback (at this level) is going to feel more like the starting point for a conversation than a list of instructions to follow.