Before coming to work here at Macquarie, I used to pay hundreds of dollars per year for an annual subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud. Now we MQ staff all get free access to the platform – which is ridiculously cool. I find that this, plus full access to the online learning platform Lynda.com, is as great a pairing as a full plate of hot nachos and a generous serving of guacamole. Of course, you can’t eat those online subscriptions, but you can definitely cook up some wonderful content with them.
Workshop Takeaways
I attended two of the recent MQ Adobe workshops on campus: Video for Everyone and Animation Made Easy.
Video for Everyone
There is a new video editing program available called Adobe Premiere Rush. It is essentially a watered down version of their flagship video editing program Adobe Premiere Pro.
Rush is very easy to learn, which is perfect for editing footage of a workshop, presentation, event, etc. You can even use it for personal projects like editing a family travel video, snippets for your social media, birthday shenanigans, etc.
It can talk with Premiere Pro via a one-way trip, in that you can do a basic edit on Rush and then import it into Premiere Pro for advanced treatment – but you can’t go backwards.
Animation Made Easy
This workshop was an intro to Adobe Character Animator, which lets you manipulate 2D characters such as puppets and cartoons to talk and move. Whilst quirky and fun, I found it quite complex to use, requiring lots of effort to achieve small results.
On a side note, if you have a recent model iPhone there’s a feature called animoji that lets you talk through animated emoji characters. Not really a primary tool for workplace communication but could be a fun way to ask for an update on a parked project 😄.
I’ll give it a go!
Getting started with Adobe Premiere Rush is as simple as downloading it, opening it and playing with the built-in sample media. There’s no need to transfer and import your own personal footage if you just want to have a quick play around with how the editor works.
Instructions for download for MQ staff are on our staff wiki.
What does this button do…
For a comprehensive tutorial, check out the course Premiere Rush First Look (1h 13min) on Lynda.com. As a Macquarie staff member you have full access to the Lynda.com platform too.
1 lunch break = your first video
Fun challenge: set a timer on your phone for 60 minutes and see if you can download and install Premiere Rush and then edit a 10 second video before the timer goes off.
Another way to look at it is that in just one lunch break you can go from not knowing how to edit video to having successfully edited your first video.
If you don’t get it done in under 60 minutes, I’m sure you would’ve come very close and up-skilled yourself more than you would have in any other normal lunch break!
The MQ staff wiki page Adobe Creative Cloud has a great collection of FAQs, DIY Download Instructions, Specifications, Self-help Tutorials, and details on what to do for more help. MQ staff have access to Adobe’s Education Exchange (the free learning platform and community, designed by educators for educators, to ignite creativity in the classroom), which includes Adobe for Academics.
Thanks, Michael! Fun Challenge accepted!