CASSANDRA KAPSOS PD JOURNAL
AFTER EFFECTS AND PREMIERE PRO WORKSHOP
February-March 2020
This workshop was taught at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) during the Spring semester of 2020. It was a for-credit college class, and the class was a great way for me to meet/learn from art students and working professionals. The class was exciting and overwhelming because I was in the role of student. Learned so much, than Covid-19 hits in March.
The After Effects and Premiere Workshop
On the first day of this course, I was so inspired and excited about the teacher, the other students, and really getting to explore the two Adobe programs without distractions. It has been a long time that I had the chance to be in a classroom with art students and be an art student again. The experience allowed me to rethink pacing, modeling, and work time. The instructor did a great job of creating content on the blackboard program as well as printing out the day's lesson. This was great for different learning styles, but also it inspired me a little more about how organized my online lesson content. Also, creating projects in After Effects was fun, and challenging. It was a program that I didn't know, but wanted to understand so I could add more after effects work to videos in Premiere Pro. I challenged myself to only use my own video footage and images. It took a lot of work, and I have to say that I pushed my students to only use their own content too when creating videos. It takes a lot of work and I need to give more time in my classroom to let students shoot and edit, then go out reshoot footage again.
The After Effect Program is simple to get started but has so much to really master. We made it to week 6 before COVID-19 hit Maryland and closed everything. I got to create two projects at that time.
The first project was a PSA, which was the practice using text on images and videos. The project was a practice in using different effects on the text like position and fade. The theme of the After Effects project was "Keep Baltimore Clean." I found a country song called "Keep Baltimore Beautiful" from 1964. It was a good fit for the overall theme. I used only videos and images that were my own work. It was fun to schedule a time to go capturing the city again.
The second project was a challenge. Students had to take a book and create a movie trailer for it. Keeping in theme of Baltimore, I used my favorite book at the time "Lady in the Lake" by Laura Lippman. She is a Baltimore author that write fiction based in Baltimore and the Maryland area. This book was a murder mystery that takes place around Druid Hill Park Lake. See the video links below to view the videos.
