Question about this simple masking technique.

Hello all,

I am going through some masking and color correction training and can't figure out the reason behind this one step. In one example, a specific object is highlighted using a mask and animation and increasing the highlights in the mask. For those familiar, it's the cupcake scene in ripple training. Before doing the mask, there is a step to duplicate the clip and attach the duplicate above the original. What is the purpose of this step? Can't I just make a mask n the original, do the highlight adjustment in the mask, and animate it? Just scratching my head here. Thanks for any input.

not familiar with this specific tut, but one purpose could be to allow fading-in the colour correction, instead of a hard of cut…

+1 on Karsten's comment. I remember seeing that tutorial and am pretty sure that's why Steve did it that way.

This makes sense thank you.