ISO standard fire lizard

I'm extremely pleased that this wasn't upsetting to read bc I was worried lmao. looking forward to how you improve!

Wanted to address what you were saying about motion graphics. Yes, they're infuriating. Don't do them, don't touch keyframes unless you absolutely have to - I actually used to use keyframed anims for everything, including my intro and outro, and I've dispensed with 95% of it and it made my life so much easier.

In Resolve (I believe you're using Resolve) you can get basic anims down to a rote science that takes a couple seconds and no problem solving. It requires a little bit of mise en place, and hey, i HATE customizing the UI of anything i use, but this is worth it.

First, I favorited Drop Shadow in the effects bin. That puts it permanently in the lower left corner of the screen, and any time I put a graphic on the timeline I just drag on a shadow, bam, done.

Second, I turned on Power Bins, from the ellipsis on the media browser. A Power Bin is a media bin you can access from all projects. Then, drag a text object onto your timeline and adjust it until it looks legible and decent. For me, that was yellow superbold italic sans serif with a side shadow and a stroke, but go with your gut. You want it fairly sizable. Now, drag that object off the timeline and into the Master power bin, and now you have a template. You can put that same text into every project by just dragging it out of the power bin.

You can do the same with a color matte. Drag it onto the canvas, color it, crop it until it covers the right third or w/e, then put it in the power bin. Now if you want onscreen text, you can assemble it with two drag operations.

Finally, get a standard transition you like. I use "Push" but you can use whatever you want, and tbh the default is fade, and you can just keep that if you want. Apply that transition to the beginning of an object on the timeline, then adjust it in the sidebar to look the way you want. Specifically, if it's a motion transition, set the Ease option - try each one and see what you like. Once you're done, right click the transition on the timeline and Save Transition Preset. Now you can find that in the Video Transitions section of the toolbox, right click it, and set as Default Transition.

Now, when you want to put something on the screen, you just drag an image to the timeline, drag a drop shadow on it, right click the beginning and end and add the default transition, and finally just put it wherever you want. If you want text and a backdrop, just drag those out of the power bin.

It sounds tedious but it's absolutely worth the effort to set up, it reduces the effort of on screen graphics to almost nothing, and when something's free you'll be more likely to do it.

In other news: Conclusions are the hardest part of every script, and the pit you fell in is a common one for me. "I have all these ideas I want to say" and "here is how they connect" is such a hard thing to nail down. Sometimes they just don't and you have to reconcile with that.

And re the zooming in and out: Oh yeah, I saw you were using it some, and it worked! but my advice is to do it like five times more often. it reaaaaaaaally helps pacing.

glhf!!