June 6, 2016

Three new articles this week, including my thoughts on hardware, technology and teaching after wandering the streets of CineGear.

I created a new webinar last week illustrating "Masks in Premiere and Final Cut." And I got a lot of feedback suggesting that, just perhaps, I was cramming a bit too much into the hour. So, during editing, I divided the show into two shows and slowed the pace down a bit. You'll find more details in the webinar section below, as well as two video highlights from the show posted as video tutorials.

As I get older, I find myself increasingly fascinated in finding new ways to teach our craft to new students. Not just youngsters, but oldsters who want to upgrade their skills or move into a different career. For this teaching to work, I discovered that it needs to be a balance of technology and story-telling coupled with an understanding of the history and fundamentals that got us where we are today. Leave one of these out and confusion reigns. It is easy to teach which button to push, but more effective to teach why to push it in the first place. It is good to know how to tell a story, but, unless you also know how to use technology to convert that story into pictures and sound, you are simply teaching a writing class.

As you'll read in this week's blog, I'm designing a new course for freshmen and sophomores that I'll start teaching this fall that wrestles with exactly this issue. I have a good idea where I'm going, but some of the specifics are still missing. I look forward to sharing some of my insights with you as the course develops over the summer.

Lots of stuff to think about this week. In the meantime, enjoy your summer.

Create and Use Masks in Apple
Final Cut Pro X

Masks allow us to modify or hide portions of an image. While most often used in chroma- (or green-screen) keys, masks have a wide variety of uses.

In Part 1 of this two-part webinar, join me as I illustrate how to create, modify and use masks in Apple Final Cut Pro X. Learn how to:

* Use the Trim and Crop tools in the Inspector
* Use Mask effects such as Shape, * Graduated, Vignette, Image and Draw
* Use the built-in masking tools in all effects
* Use masks in chroma-keys
* Use masks in color correction
* Use keyframes to track a mask

Download here.

Create and Use Masks in Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2015

This is Part 2 of my two-part webinar on masks.

In this two-part webinar, join me as I illustrate how to create, modify and use masks in Adobe Premiere Pro CC.

During this webinar you will learn how to:

* Use the Crop effect
* Use the built-in masking tools
* Add more than one mask to an image
* Use masks in chroma-keys
* Use masks in color correction
* Track masks automatically

Download your copy here.

Or, sign-up for our Video Training Library and watch all our videos for one low monthly fee.

� YouTube Budgets, Hollywood Dreams (Blog)

� CineGear is all about hardware. Why is that not enough?

� Final Cut Pro X: Graduated and Vignette Masks (Video Tutorial)

� A video tutorial on how to use two special masks in Final Cut.

� Adobe Premiere Pro CC: Use Masks in Chroma-keys? (Video Tutorial)

� A video tutorial on how to create masks to hide garbage in a chroma-key.

� Premiere Pro: Boost & Smooth Audio Levels

� EQ: Warm a Voice and Improve Diction

� What I Learned - El Capitan Upgrade

� Caution: SSD Drives and Yosemite

� View tutorials here

� Learn Adobe Audition

� Masks in Adobe Premiere Pro CC

� 184: 4K Video in Premiere Pro CC

� 160: Get Started with Motion 5.2

� View all webinars here

� Stephen Nakamura: Color Grading "Oz The Great and Powerful"

� Heath McKnight: Welcome to DoddleNEWS

� Steven Roth: Introducing Thalo.com

� Justin Thomson: Balance Business with Creativity

� View all interviews here

� 2016 Larry Jordan & Associates, Inc.