FCP X in the Music Video world.

[Andrew Kimery]

[Bill Davis] “My fun is imagining how he might have structured his keyword collections to help.”

What are some possibilities you’ve come up with?

[Bill Davis]

Tom does work that’s very different than what I typically do.

As you can imagine, his source material is typically of the highest caliber. With far more excellent shots that compete for his attention. And more versions of those shots – since in Music Videos, it’s so typical to run the music track over and over while shooting different options.

As the above video illustrates, he might have a wealth of artistically relevant choices to go to for each measure of the song.

In editing terms, he likely has a lot more well loved babies to kill than most of us.

In the Supermeet video of his demo from NAB 2017, as he’s working with the Ed Sheehan piece, he explains some of his process for untangling what I’d term a “complexity of riches” far better than I ever could.

So I watch him to analyze how he deploys all of X’s unique features (connected clips, auditions, etc) to keep his creative focus. Keyword strategies are just one that I’m particularly curious about.

(Discussed after the Trim Editing demo reel that starts his NAB presentation)

https://youtu.be/iaeux3cGtQo

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

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[Andy Patterson]

[Bill Davis] “My fun is imagining how he might have structured his keyword collections to help.
Kinda “inside baseball, I know. But I enjoy it.”

Are you sure keyword collections were needed?

[Andrew Kimery]

Thanks for the additoinal link, Bill.

I was surprised that he didn’t do much with keywords/keyword collections. Maybe a music video just isn’t a good use for keywords since he syncs up all the takes and watches them in the mutlicam view. Being a more visually oriented person I also liked seeing how he used Lanes.

[Bill Davis]

It’s more that Tom was presenting (and live editing) essentially two projects in 20 min so he didn’t have more time than to brush across lots of things.

If you search out his IBC demo from 2015 or 2016 (can’t remember which) he delves into some of his keyword strategies in more depth.

For example on his auto spots, he aggregates stuff like the overcranked camera shots via smart collections, etc.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Bill Davis]

Hey Andrew,

It was nagging me that I remembered a piece where Tom did a more thorough explanation of his keywording workflow for music videos – and in another forum today, my friend Sam Woodhall referenced it – with a link.

This might provide more insight into a few more X Browser strategies.

https://vimeo.com/194855528

FWIW.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

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[Andrew Kimery]

[Bill Davis] “Hey Andrew,

It was nagging me that I remembered a piece where Tom did a more thorough explanation of his keywording workflow for music videos – and in another forum today, my friend Sam Woodhall referenced it – with a link.

This might provide more insight into a few more X Browser strategies.”

Thanks for the additional link Bill, but in this one he talks about his Audio commercial, not a music video.

One reason I was thinking keywords might not be that great of a help for a performance-based music video is that you can’t really cheat shots. You could create a keyword collection for “bob medium shot” but you can’t use any of the shots out of context so having a collection of them isn’t really that useful.

For example, if you want a wide shot of Bob singing the first verse you look in your multicam to see all the takes and either you have a medium shot of Bob singing the firsts verse or you don’t. You can’t take the medium of Bob singing the chorus and put it into Bob singing the verse.

This is of course with the caveat that the director doesn’t want a music video with sync is intentionally thrown out for dramatic effect.

[Bill Davis]

[Andrew Kimery] “For example, if you want a wide shot of Bob singing the first verse you look in your multicam to see all the takes and either you have a medium shot of Bob singing the firsts verse or you don’t. “

Ah, I see what you’re focused on now.

Take another look at the Ed Sheehan “Castle on the Hill” edit.

There’s a place where Tom is into his edit and he’s directly cycling through PERFORMANCE options via Auditions – and because he has those as Synced Multiclip options – HEs able to instantly look at alternate takes while maintaining perfect primary storyline music timing.

I don’t know of any other NLE that allows that same level of vertical timing lock like that. Something Tom leverages in his X Music video workflow a lot presumably.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Andrew Kimery]

[Bill Davis] “There’s a place where Tom is into his edit and he’s directly cycling through PERFORMANCE options via Auditions – and because he has those as Synced Multiclip options – HEs able to instantly look at alternate takes while maintaining perfect primary storyline music timing.”

Are you talking about what Tom’s doing between 7:30-8:00? I didn’t hear him talk about using Auditions. Maybe I missed it? I thought he was just cycling through the multicam clip he made of all the various performance takes. Given how Tom puts all the performance clips into a multicam clip it seems like using Auditions would be unnecessary/redundant, wouldn’t it?

To me the power of Auditions is that, in conjunction with the magnetic timeline, you can audition takes that are of varying lengths and the timeline will inherently expand/contract accordingly (maybe the actor delivers the line faster in Take 1, but slower in Take 2). But with a music video the duration of the take never changes because everyone is singing/playing along to a prerecorded track so even if they shoot 10 different versions of the chorus they will all be exactly the same length.

Music videos are pretty unique beasts in terms of workflow so maybe they aren’t the best for generalized examples of some of X’s tools?