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Et voilà! Genius Hour Project is almost complete! It was a long and arduous process, but it is pretty much done. After having spent many hours (er, days) in front of the computer screen I can safely say that I have something that is pretty much ready for submission. I have created a film about international Reggae music on the Final Cut Pro X editing software. My original intent was to edit a short film with a running length of about 8-10 minutes. I kind of went a bit overboard and my final cut is over 20 minutes long. I just had so much information and so many songs that I wanted to include in the film, that I could not squeeze it all into a 10 minute timeframe. But I think that I am pretty happy with the result. I went over the film again a few days ago and cut out a few superfluous bits. I also shortened a few of the clips of artist songs to try and make the edit flow a little bit better. I also added title cards to introduce the artists profiled in the film. That was super easy to do as there are many pre-sets of title cards to choose from within Final Cut. I have included a final song at the end of the film which I want to play over the end credits. I still have to make the end credits sequence – am not sure yet if I am going to do it as title cards or rolling credits. That is pretty much the final touch that I have to add to the film. Then I am going to have to add it to my YouTube channel so that I can get an embed code and post the completed film on the ‘My Product’ page of my blog. This was a challenging project, and it required lots of time and patience. I learned that at the outset I had very little patience as I did not know how to manipulate the attributes of the Final Cut Pro X editing system. As time went on, I became more patient, and with each new facet of the editing software that I learned, my patience developed and I was able to apply a great deal of focus into this editing process. I feel that I applied myself well with a high level of discipline in regards to this Genius Hour Project. I did make the mistake of leaving the bulk of the actual editing to the last two weeks but in the end I managed to get it finished by putting in some very long days. So in the future, I must remember not to procrastinate with the actual editing process and perhaps spend a little less time on research and clip allocation. I learned many of the basic functions of the Apple Final Cut Pro X editing software. I now feel confident that I could edit a small presentation or an instructional video that could be used in the future in the Communications classroom. This project was also helpful as I used i-movie on my laptop for the first time when I was editing my TED Talk. The i-movie software is essentially a basic version of the Final Cut editing software and I was able to use and manipulate it without any difficulties. I think that this was very helpful because I plan to use i-movie as an editing platform in the future with students in the Communications classroom. It is a very basic and simple format and if I edit a few more projects with i-movie, I think that I will be able to understand, and even better explain how the software works. What I would like to learn going forward are the more advanced functions of the Final Cut editing software. Effects, rendering, Optimal HD resolution, subtitles – there are so many more details that I need to learn. I kind of feel that I am only using about 40% of the potential of the Final Cut software, and in the future I would like to unlock all of the myriad possibilities that this editing software has to offer. Not that I need to know how to use it as well as a professional editor, but I do need to improve on my shortcuts and cutting strategies. Once you have attained the desired level of technical proficiency, then you can really focus on the content, or the story that you are trying to relay through the editing. So where do I go from here? Well, I think that the next best thing to do is to utilize the Final Cut Pro X editing software in another upcoming assignment. This will help me to get even more comfortable with the software and learn more of the editing features. If I can have a solid grasp of this editing platform by the time that the Tech Ed program finishes in May 2022, I think that it will be highly beneficial for me as a teacher in the Communications BBT.