As the sun lazily faded by the Marine Drive, and the street lights down the Buller’s Road lighting up the evening. A small crowd was gathering up at the reception of the Achievers Lanka Business School. This crowd represented the members showing up for the weekly General meeting of the Rotaract club of Achievers Lanka Business School.
However, unlike other meetings, there was something contrasting about this week. Most members have brought a laptop with them (while we do have some who tend to forget as well). This was because of our first Professional Development project, ‘After Effects 101!’ that was scheduled to take place later that day.
Rtr. Sahan Munasinghe and I, the two Professional Development Directors for the year 2018-2019 had been continuously nagging, our fellow board directors and club members to take part in this project. Initially slightly reluctant, but when the day came, they all walked through the doorway, slightly weary after a long day but ready to learn what some consider as modern art, video editing.
Whilst paying close attention to the evening’s proceedings, Rtr. Sahan and I, joined by our guru for the evening Rtr. Anushan, hastily ensured that everyone’s laptops had the required software installed and files copied for the upcoming workshop.
Rtr. Anushan Sathananthasarma, one of the humblest characters you will ever meet, is well known for being a great basketball player and being there to help out the club whenever he is required, but this particular evening it was his wizardry in video editing that was to come into play. Being one of the main ‘IT gurus’ of the club for many years and having conducted many past workshops on skills such as Photoshop, Anushan eagerly agreed to mentor our members on video editing.
After the general meeting had concluded, with the projector set and the microphone switched on, ‘Anu’ took his place behind the podium and got straight into work. The main objective of this workshop was to create a video for the membership drive of the club. This involved in stitching together many small clips, editing these clips to ensure that they looked professional, adding photographs, music and being able to vary things like the intensity of the music and playback speed at just the required frames.
Our members eagerly listened in, eyes fixed on the projection on the wall while Anu took them through each and every step, making sure no one was left behind whilst answering the queries he received along the way.
The workshop was carried on smoothly for almost 90 minutes. By the end, every single laptop at the hall had a video playing, made up of small clips, photos, and music. Members who previously believed that video editing was a sort of alchemy that only the tech-savvy could pursue had now created an enticing video which looked classy and professional. The workshop was a SUCCESS indeed.
It ended with all the present members looking much happier than when they came in for the meeting. All the participants and both Rtr. Sahan and I didn’t forget to thank Rtr. Anushan for his excellent mentoring skills and how easy he made video editing seems to be. The day ended with positive feedback on how impressed the members were with the workshop and a few of them even gleefully shouting out about how they would put this newly learned skill to use that night itself to make more videos by themselves.
Rtr. Yasiru Gunaratne
Editor