During my Marketing and Business Development internship at Tetsuyu Healthcare, I re-acquainted myself with video editing software, Adobe Premiere Pro, which I last used in 2016 after learning it informally from peers.
Adobe Premiere Pro 2021 has many new workspaces and tools. As the internship company was not centred on video editing, video editing tasks and the learning of Adobe Premiere Pro became a self-directed endeavour.
Highlights Reel
The Journey
My first video assignment was a product video. The pace of the voiceover was quite slow and had to be faster. The trouble I faced was that when I had sped it up from 105% to 110%, the voiceover became too high-pitched, and the automated pitch correction feature further distorted the audio.
Prompted by feedback from my supervisor, I soon realised how ridiculous it seemed that a professional video editing suite would only allow speeding up by such a small fraction. This prompted me to search YouTube tutorials on how to edit audios and adjust pitch. I learnt other pitch adjustment effects and how to apply them to either each clip or even an entire audio track. Eventually, I was able to tune the video’s voiceover to a tighter pace.
Prompted by feedback from my supervisor, I soon realised how ridiculous it seemed that a professional video editing suite would only allow speeding up by such a small fraction. This prompted me to search YouTube tutorials on how to edit audios and adjust pitch. I learnt other pitch adjustment effects and how to apply them to either each clip or even an entire audio track. Eventually, I was able to tune the video’s voiceover to a tighter pace.
Given that most of the company’s videos relied on voice overs, audio editing was an essential function I had to get familiar with. Subsequent videos even had me adjusting the pitch across audios at four varying speeds (100%, 110%, 120%, 130%). The incident at the beginning of my video editing tasks reminded me of the need to keep an open mind to feedback as it led me to learning more tools. Additionally, this method of strategizing and prioritising my learning of Premiere Pro features based on a “need to” basis made the self-directed learning process less arduous. Time spent on learning and exploring were more targeted to the work I had to produce.
For subsequent videos, I had to work on the drafts of a previous intern who had visuals done but had not received the voice overs. The previous intern’s style was to animate images using Microsoft Powerpoint before importing the presentation as a video to be edited. While I was able to follow Premiere Pro tutorials, I struggled with Powerpoint animation tutorials. And I realised I was not familiar enough with Powerpoint to replicate the same animation, I could do them with Premiere Pro. Yet, it was the opposite with picture editing. I found more ease using the crop and recolouring pre-set tools within Powerpoint as compared to Photoshop.
Both situations made me realise that there was an inherent need to strategise even while I employ learning strategies. It was not possible to learn everything. Overall, the self-directed video-editing process made me more deliberate with my learning. Questions I asked myself was, “Is it essential that I relied on one software when I was more comfortable with another? Would it pay off if I was spending such time mastering this software?”
While these were stop-gap strategies to getting the internship tasks done, I am also aware that these are gaps to learn and fill with regards to the Adobe suite software: Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe Photoshop.
Appendices: Background of Tetsuyu Healthcare
As a Marketing and Business Development Intern at Tetsuyu Healthcare, my other roles and responsibilities over the 20 weeks included:
1. Testing company’s web and app-based products to ensure quality before deployment to clients
2. Supporting administrative and logistical needs of local and international clients and partners
3. Spearheading the production of instructional and promotional videos using Adobe Premiere Pro 2021
4. Organising company’s assets across digital platforms (Google Workspace, Slack, Zoom, Confluence)
The internship was a part of my Undergraduate programme at the National University of Singapore. The above reflection was first submitted as an assignment.