About – “Seasoned Film Editor Takes Adobe Premiere Pro CC For a Spin”

[Santiago Martí]

It is not what it actually takes to make the job, but the turn around times between the creatives at the agency and the client. Well, editing, grading and sound are not made by the same guy usually, so there you have some days.

Santiago Martí
http://www.robotrojo.com.ar
Red One M-X, Red Epic X waiting for Dragon update, Red Pro Primes, Adobe CC, Assimilate Scratch

[Gary Huff]

[Santiago Martí] “Well, editing, grading and sound are not made by the same guy usually, so there you have some days.”

That’s not necessarily the case.

[Jok Daniel]

I edit a lot of this kind of stuff, so hopefully I can provide some insight.

First of all, digital cameras mean a lot of material. If you want every shot to be perfect, you need to shoot a lot. Especially if you’re shooting cars, animals or working with less experienced actors (e.g. amateurs or models). All common scenarios in advertising.

On an average job, I get about three times as much material today compared to say five years ago, when commercials used to be shot on film. For a 30-60 second spot, that means several hours worth of rushes. Usually around five but anything up to maybe 25 hours.

Viewing rushes is real time. No software in the world can change that. Making a selects roll takes me anything from 150%-200% of real time. So the first day or two on a job is typically spent just watching and selecting material. If you want to do a good job, you need to know your material, and that means watching it properly i.e. no “skimming”, “hover scrub” or other cheats.

Assembling the edit is the quickest part of the process. Usually no more than an hour or so.

The next couple of days are typically spent working with the director, refining and/or exploring different editorial options. And constantly going back to the rushes, looking for new angles on the material, really getting to know it inside out.

We would probably be listening to a lot of different music, trying it against picture. And we would be building a temp sound edit as we go along. A lot of ads are shot without sound, so that means building the track from scratch. If the spot is effects heavy, we would probably already be working with the post house, sending edits back and forth, incorporating temp effects etc. Usually, we also have to edit several different lengths, e.g. a 60″, 30″ and 20″ version.

Once the director is happy, the agency will want to spend anything from a day to a week (or more) in the editing room, exploring different options and sometimes making tens or even hundreds of versions in the process. The edits will then move through the agency approval hierarchy until finally locked and presented to the client.

Add anything from a day up to a week for the spots to make it through client approval and revisions.

That’s how you spend several weeks cutting a seemingly simple commercial. And incidentally, that is also why I am extremely skeptical of the huge time saving claims made by some FCPX fans. In my world at least, the “speed” of the software is simply not a major factor. I can already edit almost as fast as I can think, it’s all the other stuff that takes time – watching and re-watching the footage, and working with people (who are generally way slower than any half decent NLE).

At the end of the day, I really do think that all this time is well spent. I could easily edit a 30″ spot in an afternoon (and no doubt FCPX would be a good and fast tool for such a job). But how could I possibly be sure that I got the best out of the material, especially if there’s 25 hours of it?

[Bill Davis]

First, I think Jok gets most of this exactly right.

Just two thoughts to add.

Have you ever had a project crash at the tail end of the creation process such that you had to rebuild everything from scratch? Happened to me once or twice back in the FCP Legacy early version years. I was surprised that it took me about 1/10 the time to recreate than to originally create the work. This supports Joks point that it’s not the “doing” of the edit that takes the time. It’s the deciding how to do it.

And secondly, FCP-X does save me that much time in production compared to how I worked for the past 20 years. it’s because the central design bolted a flexible asset retrieval database directly into the edit interface. Which, in turn, caused me to revise my traditional “get to the timeline to start editing” orientation. Now, I begin every new project asking myself how my new tool might help me be more efficient – and I get better and better answers as I learn more about the tool. The upshot is that when I finally get to the storyline to create the actual work, my creaive flow is better, because it lets me focus on arranging and perfecting, rather than searching and finding.

FWIW

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.

[Gary Huff]

[Bill Davis] “Which, in turn, caused me to revise my traditional “get to the timeline to start editing” orientation.”

So now you are slowing yourself down by keywording everything…do you really need to keyword? I was doing that on a project just the other day when I realized that it was wasting time.

[Mike Parfit]

Bill’s response is helpful in defining X’s speed advantage succinctly. In my experience keywording isn’t necessary in short projects in which you tend to get a pretty good mental image of all the assets after a couple of days. But in our feature doc we had 350 hours of our own footage and about 45 hours of other people’s stuff, and the organizational work, including keywording, which we did in CatDV, was absolutely necessary. Even when different loggers accidentally used different keywords (one used “puff” for a whale’s breath while another used “blow”) the ability to find what we needed and be pretty sure we hadn’t missed something great was vital.

That’s the most appealing part of FCPX to me. I don’t like FCPX’s timeline at present, I’ve found it slow on my 2011 Macbook Pro, and CatDV’s working fine for us, so we haven’t made the switch. But I’m comfortable with the idea that I simply haven’t messed around with it enough to fully recognize its strengths. The promise of a major upgrade any moment is intriguing, particularly in light of Adobe’s decisions.

Mike

Michael Parfit
https://www.mountainsidefilms.com
https://www.thewhalemovie.com

[Gary Huff]

[Mike Parfit] “But in our feature doc we had 350 hours of our own footage and about 45 hours of other people’s stuff, and the organizational work, including keywording, which we did in CatDV, was absolutely necessary.”

I absolutely agree for a project like this. But for a quick turnaround with a 2:30 run time, keywording is a bit overwrought.

[Steve Connor]

[Gary Huff] “I absolutely agree for a project like this. But for a quick turnaround with a 2:30 run time, keywording is a bit overwrought.”

Absolutely, I never use it for shorter projects.

Steve Connor

There’s nothing we can’t argue about on the FCPX COW Forum

[Bernard Newnham]

Gentlemen, thank you – I get the idea.

Bernie

[Bill Davis]

[Gary Huff] “[Bill Davis] “Which, in turn, caused me to revise my traditional “get to the timeline to start editing” orientation.”

So now you are slowing yourself down by keywording everything…do you really need to keyword? I was doing that on a project just the other day when I realized that it was wasting time.”

Gary,

It is ABSOLUTELy a judgement call.

And yes, there are simple projects that don’t gain much if anything from key wording – (well, to be honest, just being able to sort takes by ratings is something I hardly ever skip over, but YMMV)

The overarching principal is that if an editor hasn’t taught themselves HOW to use a keyword system like the one in X – and doesn’t have strategies in place to meet a variety of organizational needs using the tool – then the benefits of it will remain obscured.

If projects in the modern era were getting simpler – fewer cameras, fewer shots, fewer takes – then I’d agree that the database would be more a “may use” than a “should DEFINITELY learn to use” deal.

But in my experience, the larger my budgets grow, the more likely it is that I’ll need MORE organizational power, not less. So I think key wording time is still VERY well spent.

FWIW.

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.