Wednesday, July 4, 2012

NMA Seniors: Summer 2012 Assignment

NMA Seniors (Yes, you're seniors now!):

As I explained to you several times during the last few weeks of school, you have a summer assignment. When we come back from break, we are jumping right into the first project of the semester. We are also jumping into using Avid Media Composer for all the rest of your projects in the New Media Academy. But I didn't want you to be ill-prepared, so you have this assignment.


The assignment has multiple parts.

  • First, go to Avid Community and create an account.
  • Then, head to the Get Started Fast forum. This forum is designed for new users of Avid Media Composer. You can search for answers, post questions, and get connected with other new Avid users.
  • Optional: Join the Avid Student Facebook page to connect with other students of Avid software like yourselves.
  • Take a look at this post about tutorials and training. Here, you will find tons of available resources to help you get a head start on using Media Composer.
  • The particular resource you need to look at (in its entirety) is the Edit to the Future webinar series from ProMax with Steve Holyhead.
  • While watching the webinars, TAKE NOTES on what you're learning in a Google doc that you will share with me as soon as you create it. (Name it: P4_AvidNotes_Lastname) This document is going to be where you store all your notes about these webinars and all the lessons we will go through over the year to prepare you for the Avid Certified User exam.
  • After watching each of the 12 webinar sessions, check into our backchannel conversation on TodaysMeet. Here is where you can chat with me and all of your classmates to ask questions, answer questions, and keep up with how everyone is doing on this assignment.

If your personal computer meets the minimum specs, download the free trial of Media Composer. The tutorials and training post linked above also has info about downloading trial media to play around with. The webinar also has source footage to use while following along.

Of course, if you have any urgent questions, email me. The more you explore in the Avid Community forums, the more notes you take, and the more time you spend poking around the software, the more successful you will be this school year. Good luck!