Using the exercise files

- If you're a premium member, you have access to the exercise files used throughout this course. These files can be found on the exercise files tab on the main course page. I'll be providing several pre-production documents, you can peruse those in your own time since we won't have the opportunity to go into them much in this course. I'll also be providing you some of the footage that we shot during the production. As you can see, I've organized it into different categorized folders. You can bring it into any editing software and edit your own version of the video if you like. Now in this course, we're using the software HitFilm Express because it's a free software for both Mac and PC and has a lot of really great features that surpass other free editing solutions. Also it's very similar in layout to many other editing softwares so you'll be able to learn the concepts here and apply them to so many other platforms. We go into detail of how to use the software in the post-production chapter but let me give you a bit of a primer now in case you want to set yourself up. Okay so there are actually two separate downloads for this course, there are the regular exercise files that contain all of the assets that we shot for this course and then there's a separate download called demo learning hitfilm. Let me first talk about this demo media. This is simply a folder of media that you can use to practice with in any software that you choose. It contains some music, an interview and a bunch of b-roll about a chocolatier making truffles and in this interview is about that truffle making process. So you can use these very basic assets to practice with as you learn editing and you can also use them at the beginning of chapter four of this course. In the first three movies of chapter four, I'm going to teach you how to use the software HitFilm Express and we use these very simple assets for that. Then in the later part of chapter four, we'll switch over to the actual exercise files that we shot for this course and put together the video, alright? So these are here for you to practice with, however you like. So then there's the actual exercise files folder. In here are some pre-production documents and you can take a look at those in your own time and there's also a media folder and a project folder. Inside the media folder, you see that we have everything pretty well organized, we have our b-roll, graphics, music, standups and voiceover and you can import this media into any software you like, alright, so if you're using something other than HitFilm Express, just import this and edit away. But because we are using HitFilm Express in this course, due to it being pretty robust and totally free and multi-platform option, I have provided you with the HitFilm project, in this project folder. So once you've gone to hitfilm.com and downloaded HitFilm Express, you can just double click on this project file, which I'll do now, but before I do I'm going to duplicate this and I'll show you why in just a moment. So I'm going to just select it and press command D to duplicate and I'll go ahead and just launch this duplicate project file. Alright and when the software opens, you may need to relink your media which is very simple to do. You just double click on the very first file in this list and then you need to navigate to where that media lives, so we know that it lives in exercise files and in media and you just need to find the file that it's looking for, and just find one and then it finds all the rest for you. So it's looking inside of media and then standups and it's looking for this specific file, so here's media, here's standups and we're looking for 095230, and it's actually right here, we have some starred options at the top so we skip over those and here's my 095230 and we'll open and again it's finding that one file and then once it's found that, everything else is brought online. You can see that my timeline is online and then all of the media in my media window is online as well. Now let me talk about why I duplicated the project. In HitFilm Express, you can only have one sequence loaded in your editor or timeline at a time. So if you want to just review the edit that I put together, then that's fine, it's all here for you. But if you want to put together an edit from scratch, you'll need to delete what I have here in the timeline. So I'm just going to select one of these clips and then press command A, or control A on a PC and then I'll press delete and now it's gone, alright, but I can still use all of this media to put everything together and we'll learn how to do that in chapter four. But of course if I want to go back and take a look at the edited program, I still have my original, okay, so that's why I duplicated in the beginning. If you don't have access to the exercise files, you can still follow along in the course and learn a lot of valuable information about making a high quality video with your smartphone.