FAQ
Who teaches the course?
John Neal Crossman has been editing daily since 1979. He started in TV News and 8 years into his career left to form a post production company. Since 1991 he has owned Crossman Post Production and won many, many awards for his work and contributions to numerous projects from sales and marketing to training and educational. His experience includes broadcast and corporate work as well as educational and sales/marketing. He was an early adopter in computer graphics and animations and has had a tight integration with editing and graphics since the late 1980’s. He has used many systems but currently uses the Adobe Creative Suite including Premiere Pro, Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects.
What is included in the course?
The course includes 9 Modules starting with what abilities a “natural editor” might have and including the Video Production Process, [Pre Production, Production, Post Production], Editing software basics, The top 10 Characteristics an effective video editor should have, and lastly, navigating clients, the freelance and corporate world. The course is self paced and as presently designed includes over 30 video lessons with John on camera and real world examples included with each lesson. Each lesson will also include material, be it worksheets or transcripts to give the learner take aways from each lesson.
What does the course cost?
The cost is $25 dollars a month renewable monthly or $250 a year. The pricing plans are nonrefundable and will auto renew unless canceled at any time before the next charge. There is a special launch offer of two years for the price of one.
Who should take the course?
There will be elements for the beginner who has no experience in video production. I would expect the learner to be someone without much more than an interest in learning about the video business in general and editing specifically. These elements might serve as a refresher for experienced individuals… but I expect seasoned veterans to know this material.
The course has a lot of practical information but is focused less on technical aspects and more on the power editing has in making great communication.
Refund and Website Terms
By purchasing a course on this site, you agree with the following terms and conditions. No other terms or conditions shall be made or inferred.
No refunds will be offered. You can cancel at anytime before an auto renewal is due and your access will end when the previous paid access time expires. You will be alerted of an autorenewal via email before it occurs so make sure your email is up to date in your account.
All content is copyright Crossman Post Production unless otherwise noted. Excerpts of work shown are property of the respective copyright holders and are not to be copied, distributed or shared outside of this course.
Please contact John through the contact form on the bottom of any page if you have any ideas, comments or suggestions you would like to see in the course. This is a living effort and will be updated from time to time without notice. Previous lesson material may or may not be available once deleted.
Should I use Premiere or after effects to edit video?
Is video editing easy to learn?
Because this answer will always be personalized... meaning the experience of learning ANYTHING is a personal experience hence two people's experience won't be identical. There is no one certain answer. It like many questions might be considered a "it depends" type of answer. This is the reason why my course starts with the 8 characteristics of an "natural editor". If you see that list and understand what I mean by each chararteristic, you should have a good understanding of the ease or difficultly you might experience in learning video editing.
When should an editor use effects and transitions and when should they be avoided?
It’s all about the message and telling it to the audience in the best way possible. Dissolves or fades from one scene to the next has become a very accepted way of giving the viewer the concept of the passage of time. I’m not 100% sure why, but it is.
Wipes are rarely used and when I saw the first Star Wars movie and they used a simple wipe across the scene to move the story to e new location I was very surprised… they are not often used. I’m guessing it’s because in actual film editing, a wipe or any transition is a pain in the ass to do and requires a lot more work than an cut. Harder equals more cost as well.
Today, with computer editing these transitions are easy and don’t cost you anything or any time [the real cost behind something]. So we find ourselves again thinking about the best way to tell the story.
In general, outside a dissolve to show time, there aren’t any transitions that really move a story forward in a narrative sense. I mean that in a universal sense… obviously George thought a wipe would “take us to” a new location… which it did … but even that simple thing was so radical [in the minds of purests here I’m saying] that it became a signature “thing” in all the Star Wars movies.
So then we talk about using transitions to keep viewer engaged and/or visually entertained. I have cut a lot of opens for videos and shows… sometimes they could be called montages, and in that case a wipe or transition can also support the stylistic theme of the show. I’m watching Person of Interest andthey use short very quick montages as breaks between major scenes. That’s both a transition and an effect and after watching the show, you know when you see that they are moving to a new location or new part of the story. So that’s a case of really supporting the storytelling of the over all edit.
You avoid them when when there is no purpose in the viewers eyes for it. Gratuitous transitions and effects are simply that… and they take the views attention away form the storyline. That’s not what you want to do as an editor.
You will also find that one person’s “style” might seem gratuitous to another and so like most editing rules you have to make decisions and be a good judge of what your efforts are doing. Are you supporting the message, or just using some effect because you like it? Sometimes my job is to grab the viewer attention, or refresh their attention. I might use an effect or transition for that.
I did a long series of educational documentaries and I tended to use dissolves to “smooth out” the camera work because I thought the movements of the camera and abrupt cuts would be more distracting to the viewer than trying to visually make it seem smoother… i wasn’t trying to move the story through time - the technical reason for a dissolve - I just thought it made the camerawork less distracting. So it isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer… and that’s where the “art” part of editing comes into play.
If you look back on a project and the effects and transitions start to communicate more loudly than the central message of the piece, they might be a distraction. In my case, as i reviewed my work, the camera work got better and I didn’t feel the need for constant disloves to smooth it out, and so those diminished a lot. So choose your motivation and don’t be afraid to change your mind as you learn new things.