Video editing is perhaps not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of what an eLearning designer does. The reality is eLearning designers need to know the basic of several disciplines to create highly engaging learning experiences. Video production and editing skills are priceless for the effectiveness of any multimedia eLearning project. On a previous post, I shared some basic video production skills and editing such as background removal or keying. This post gives you some awesome tips for editing like color isolation, blurs and transitions.
Color Isolation Editing
Color isolation in video is a superb color correction effect that engages viewers immediately. I use color isolation to shift the viewers attention to a specific video element. This effect is extremely useful in eLearning because it can serve to emphasize visual metaphors regarding key learning content. To my amazement and probably yours too, color isolations are super easy to achieve. All you need is video editing software like Adobe Premiere Pro or Apple’s Final Cut X Pro. For example, in this video below I used the Leave Color effect in Adobe Premiere Pro. After adding the effect to the video file, you would use the eye dropper function to select the color that should remain intact leaving the rest of the colors in grayscale. In other words, you are asking the software to keep the color you select and make everything else black and white. This technique has been highly effective at making the related content highly memorable for viewers.
Blurs
Another great video editing technique for increasing a viewer’s focus is blurring. Many films use this technique to no surprise as it trains our eye to ignore what’s blurred and pay close attention to whatever is not. Once again, applying a blur in Adobe Premiere is a very easy task but, that can also be said of the wonderful Camtasia or Final Cut X Pro apps. It bears to mention that these effects are visual effects that can also be applied to images. Below is an example of an eLearning demo I created to illustrate the effects of alcohol consumption on our vision.
Transitions
Last but never least, we have transitions. Transitions are great because they help designers seamlessly connect video segments. More often than not, your video shoot will have bloopers and other inconveniences that make you create several clips. Transitions like fade ins or fade outs keep things interesting for viewers by signaling a new segment or a pause in the narrative of your story. All video editing software have transitions as it’s a common feature. Video transitions are very similar to transitions seen in PowerPoint. However, video transitions let you superimpose images and merge videos in transition. An example of this would be Adobe Premiere’s Pro cross dissolve transition effect.
How do you learn video editing?
There’s no simpler answer to this question than to get your hands-on practice. One of my go-to guys in YouTube is the awesome Kris Truini, AKA KriscoArt. I learn much of my skills from this guy and I highly recommend him.
Wrap Up
Well, there you have it! If you had video in your mind as a skill to master, then you now know about a few skills that can make your videos pop to your audience. As an eLearning designer you have to master the art of guiding your learner’s attention to create memorable learning experiences. If you liked or hated this post, have suggestions or other ideas; leave a comment and share ; )
