-
FCP X and film editing
-
[Franz Bieberkopf] “I think David Roth Weiss was referencing this in one of those old threads when he talked about passing negative through film-chain projectors.”
News stories were generally shot on reversal stock. Film chain projectors were typically far too damaging to run a lot of negative. They usually only ran reversal or prints. That’s why the industry moved to flying spot scanners like the Rank to transfer negative for commercial uses other than news.
[Franz Bieberkopf] “A/B editing is a broadcast conception of what editing is, and this is what has informed FCP X design.”
Well, in this context yes. But A/B-rolls are also a lab construct, where film negative can be assembled as single-stand (one reel with opticals inserted for dissolves) or checkerboard A and B reels, which run through an optical printer and dissolves are created by the printing process.
In linear videotape editing, it means something completely different again. If you had to dissolve to a shot on the same videotape reel, you had to make a copy of that shot, which was frequently referred to as a B-roll.
So, yes, the A/B-roll term is an imperfect analogy at best 😉
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “Well, in this context yes. But A/B-rolls are also a lab construct, where film negative can be assembled as single-stand (one reel with opticals inserted for dissolves) or checkerboard A and B reels, which run through an optical printer and dissolves are created by the printing process.”
Oliver,
This was my point above, though.
In 16mm neg cutting, the A/B roll designation was a technical distinction. Any given shot in roll A or roll B had no reason for being in that roll other than the technical necessity of checkerboarding (alternating) between one roll and the next, strictly mechanically.
(As a side note – prints from A/B neg rolls were usually contact prints, not optical.)
The A/B roll designation that came to us from broadcast was no doubt in the first instance a technical designation, but quickly developed an ideological component – shots in the A roll carried a different weight or meaning or function from shots in the B roll.
To this day, “B roll” means something that has been quite separated from the physical, technical reality. That meaning comes not from the mechanical necessity of A/B film neg rolls, but from the broadcast use of “cutaways for the radio edit”.
These are two very different meanings with different histories, and I felt your reference to the broadcast meaning as “film editing” was unduly confusing.
Franz.
-
[Franz Bieberkopf] “To this day, “B roll” means something that has been quite separated from the physical, technical reality. That meaning comes not from the mechanical necessity of A/B film neg rolls, but from the broadcast use of “cutaways for the radio edit”.
These are two very different meanings with different histories, and I felt your reference to the broadcast meaning as “film editing” was unduly confusing.”
I see where you are coming from. For me, it was a paradigm created by cutting news stories on film. Definitely different than cutting a feature, for example. I wasn’t necessarily being that literal, I guess.
So does that mean that you think a track-based system more closely approximates feature film-style editing?
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “So does that mean that you think a track-based system more closely approximates feature film-style editing?”
Oliver,
I think that’s a bit of a skewed question.
I suppose the short answer would be that a track-based timeline (or “open timeline” as David Lawrence likes to call it) is distinctly not based on A/B editing. In a way, it sort of asks the user to bring a model to it. Many, no doubt, brought A/B editing to it. FCPX, on the other hand, has the A/B model built in as a starting point (even if editors might transcend it).
I suspect that sequence-based editing (outlined above in contrast to browser-based editing) may, indeed, have a closer affinity with film editing past, but I don’t think I could make that claim without hearing from a lot more film editors of yore.
Franz.
-
[Franz Bieberkopf] “I suspect that sequence-based editing (outlined above in contrast to browser-based editing) may, indeed, have a closer affinity with film editing past, but I don’t think I could make that claim without hearing from a lot more film editors of yore.”
Unfortunately all of these models don’t relate well to actual film editing devices, because of mixing and visual effects. The types of things that NLE-based editors are called on to do would be impossible in the Moviola/KEM/Steenbeck world. Today we have to edit both “vertically” and “horizontally”, which never used to be the case. In that sense FCP X is more or a “horizontal” construct.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
There are times early on in the edit when I don’t need effects or precision and I set my main monitor like this:
Along with an AJA connected video monitor, it provides a very intimate, almost tactile view of the footage and timeline, with one main source of watching video in the external video monitor.
-
This thread is best of the cow. Lots to contemplate, here.
for your consideration: Events=Dailies.
-
That’s cool, but you can do the same thing in Media Composer or Premiere Pro. I tend to use the list view, which gives me one selected clip as a filmstrip. In a 2-monitor set-up, I can spread this across the width of the display. That gives you a pretty good overview of the whole clip without any skimming. With waveforms, it’s easy to identify the start of each take when you have multiple takes in one clip.
There’s been some discussion of browser-based versus sequence-based organization. I don’t think X locks you into a browser-based approach. Personally, I use the event organizing very lightly. For me editorial decisions are all about juxtaposition and that only happens in the edited timeline.
The much lauded database in X is very much like Media Composer. Sometimes a bit more elegant, but also less powerful in many ways. Premiere Pro’s bin organization isn’t as strong, unless you really tie it to a transcription. That adds a new dimension, which could prove to be the best of all. Too early to tell.
Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “That’s cool, but you can do the same thing in Media Composer or Premiere Pro. “
Mmmmm…ok.
You can certainly set up the footage and timeline stacked on top of each other, but the programs don’t operate like each other.
[Oliver Peters] ” I tend to use the list view, which gives me one selected clip as a filmstrip. In a 2-monitor set-up, I can spread this across the width of the display. That gives you a pretty good overview of the whole clip without any skimming. With waveforms, it’s easy to identify the start of each take when you have multiple takes in one clip.”
But that’s it. In this view that I have, I can easily switch between list and chiclets (I have remapped those to 1 and 2 respectively). In the chiclet view, I can easily skim through all of the footage and since the window is so big I have a very visual and tactile relationship to the footage, I can also mark favorites or ranges and then sort the Browser by those ranges with more keystrokes. It find it easy and creative. If I need more granular view of the footage, I switch to list view, but when I have a mass of footage that I looking through, I find having the footage with the timeline below, and one video viewer which is the external video monitor, to allow me to be very focused on the footage at hand. I tend to save the granular (editing) stuff for the timeline anyway.
[Oliver Peters] “There’s been some discussion of browser-based versus sequence-based organization. I don’t think X locks you into a browser-based approach. Personally, I use the event organizing very lightly. For me editorial decisions are all about juxtaposition and that only happens in the edited timeline.”
I agree. I don’t think FCPX locks you to one way or another. Tab based sequences would help here, but it’s not impossible to create “selects reels” in FCPX and choose from them. As a matter of fact, when making compound clipped selects, they also become a skimmable asset in the Event Browser. It is very flexible if you ask me, but I can see how someone might not feel that way.
Jeremy
-
[Oliver Peters] “There’s been some discussion of browser-based versus sequence-based organization. I don’t think X locks you into a browser-based approach. Personally, I use the event organizing very lightly. For me editorial decisions are all about juxtaposition and that only happens in the edited timeline.”
[Jeremy Garchow] “I don’t think FCPX locks you to one way or another. Tab based sequences would help here, but it’s not impossible to create “selects reels” in FCPX and choose from them.”
Oliver, Jeremy,
I certainly haven’t imagined any “lock-in”. But it seems evident in the split between events and projects, for example, and in a focus on the tagging and selection tools that FCPX took a browser-based process to model the software on.
For purposes of an example, I’ve just counted: on the current project, I have over 500 sequences organized in about 15 projects (I’d guess another 50-100 sequences before I finish). (This is slightly atypical in that I usually only have maybe 5 projects.) Nothing that I’ve read encourages me to attempt this in FCPX, to say nothing of the compound clip/event and project/project library split. (Contrast this with PPro, where I find the possibility of importing timelines from various projects into one “meta project” collection – I’m interested to experiment with that).
If I were using X, I’d spend almost no time in the events (after import) unless I worked with compounds. (Pending questions – why work with compounds and not projects? Why work with projects and not compounds?)
One project I’m consulting on is using my approach in X, but he’s got far fewer sequences and he’s only now headed into territory where those will start to multiply. It’ll be interesting to see how that works out.
Franz.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up