In-Action Story on FCPX and Focus

[Herb Sevush]

[Andy Neil] “When digitial cinema was in its infancy, there were DPs who understood it, and others who did not. Some of the ones who worked only on film were probably highly experienced DPs and there was a new crop of DPs who were learning all there was to know about digital. If a production chose digital over film, they were making a business decision or aesthetics decision and its only natural to hire people who are comfortable working with that equipment.”

Any producer who hired a DP because he was familiar with digital as opposed to a film DP who was familiar with lighting and would trust his assistant to figure out the digital details, deserves what they got.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

Creating a film is much more like architecture than it is like fine art. It is a massive team oriented enterprise that at it’s best expresses a singular point of view but, one hopes, at it’s worst will keep you dry when it’s raining. For both it is in the merging of the technical with the intuitive that the art, if there is any, exists. I would be as hesitant to trust the building of the Freedom Tower to a novice as in hiring a first timer to cut a Will Smith movie, but Frank Lloyd Wright had to start somewhere.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Robin S. Kurz] “[Andy Neil] “Who are you talking to that says anything of the sort about FCPX? Pretty much every single person on this forum and others who you would classify as FCPX enthusiasts, are constantly talking about how easy it is to use.”

I, too, have never once heard anything else either. The only people that I have heard suggest anything similar were in fact those who haven’t seen more of X than maybe some screenshots, but certainly never actually used it.”

This has been part of the standard two headed argument “FCPX is very easy to learn, young students pick it up right away” combined with “well if you tried FCPX and didn’t like it, it’s because you didn’t give it enough time to learn it thoroughly because you were trying to make it work like your last NLE and you have to unlearn your old habits.” Apparently FCPX is both way simple and way complex, depending on what point you’re trying to make.

Bill Davis has repeatedly said that it takes months to truly master FCPX in all of it’s depth and that it is especially hard for experienced editors who have to first “unlearn” so many of their old habits. He has stated that he thinks it will be a financial boon to him that he has jumped on the FCPX bandwagon early as it gives him a head start on those poor benighted editors that refused to go where the puck was headed.

Now if you want to make me go back through the forum and find those explicit quotes I will, because there have been many, but only on the condition that you post a picture of yourself eating crow when I do.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Richard Herd]

[Oliver Peters] “looking at the visual display of the entire clip without playing or scrubbing”

And that’s the gist of it, knowing whether the metadata was right or wrong in a glance and not having to playback.

[Tony West]

[Herb Sevush] “Any producer who hired a DP because he was familiar with digital as opposed to a film DP who was familiar with lighting and would trust his assistant to figure out the digital details, deserves what they got.
“

Sometimes what you may get is very good when you give an unknown a chance.

Any of you guys know Janusz Kaminsky?

My brother went to film school with him. When Spielberg was setting up for Schindler’s List he want to shoot it in Black and White and he wanted somebody that knew their way around Poland.

Janusz had shot a small film in black and white and was born in Poland. He was not some A-list DP at the time, far from it, but Steven took a chance with him.

Janusz, as many of you may know won the Oscar for that beautifully shot film.

Just a cool little story that fits perfectly in this thread.

[Bill Davis]

Wow Herb,

Thanks so much for acknowledging me as the sole and leading authority on how X operates for the entire universe and particularly for how X works for everyone reading Creative Cow.

It’s also good to know that my writing has the weight of FACT when all I thought it was was opinion (occasionally supported by at least half assed reasoning.).

That said, I seriously doubt I ever used the term “benighted” – since the word kinda bugs me.

But basically, it’s nice to know I matter.

; )

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.

[Herb Sevush]

[tony west] “Any of you guys know Janusz Kaminsky?”

My post had nothing to say about hiring unknowns. As I had posted elsewhere on this thread, everyone has to start somewhere. What I was commenting on was the idea that knowledge of a particular tool, in this case a video camera, trumps talent and experience. When I was switching over from 16mm film to shooting Betacam we chose to work with the great film DPs and figured they would get the most out of the video tools they were given. We were rewarded for that decision. It takes decades to master lighting, movement and framing; it takes a few days to figure out the video side of things.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Bill Davis] “Thanks so much for acknowledging me as the sole and leading authority on how X operates”

The quote I was responding to was –

“I, too, have never once heard anything else either.”

So I was presenting you as the antithesis of “never once” as I do consider you a “once in a while.”

[Bill Davis] “That said, I seriously doubt I ever used the term “benighted” – since the word kinda bugs me.”

You got me there, I was exaggerating for effect.

[Bill Davis] “But basically, it’s nice to know I matter.”

Your welcome.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[James Ewart]

[Herb Sevush] “This has been part of the standard two headed argument “FCPX is very easy to learn, young students pick it up right away” combined with “well if you tried FCPX and didn’t like it, it’s because you didn’t give it enough time to learn it thoroughly because you were trying to make it work like your last NLE and you have to unlearn your old habits.” Apparently FCPX is both way simple and way complex, depending on what point you’re trying to make. “

Both statements are true in a way I think. I unfortunately have clients who used to play with iMovie who are able to cobble things together with FCPX. But they do not understand the depth of the software, the workflows, the audio, smart collections, keywords, auditions, connections and all that jazz that comes under the bonnet. But they found it pretty easy to get started with. Does it annoy me that suddenly they are empowered to put together little things themselves? Yes it does! It worried me a bit too at first. I’ve lost a lot of bitsy little jobs that I didn’t like doing but helped pay the bills.

I think a lot of professionals don’t like that it has this more approachable streamlined interface. That it looks like I movie. “Easy”. “Unprofessional”. And then a lot of them have a go with it and don’t like it all over again because you can’t just jump into it from Legacy or Premiere because it works differently.

So the people who don’t like it don’t like it for both reasons. It’s too easy and it’s too complicated!

Weird innit?

[Dennis Radeke]

[Richard Herd] “I tried to use the metadata stuff in Prelude, by recipe name and corresponding script. And then I’d have all these nifty subclips. It really did not work at all, because the information I typed into Prelude did not show up in the clips unless I opened the clips and looked at the markers, the GUI problem. (CS6, fyi).

I am basically committed to Adobe (although I love X too) (and will continue to argue with accounting for CC). Having said that, I hope Prelude can include a true metatagging/keywording interface.”

Hi Richard. With CC2014, we now have access to the comment markers of Prelude searchable in Premiere Pro. In addition, we have the search bin feature which creates a bin based on your criteria. So, if you wanted to create a bin for “Tomatoes” you could enter in “Tomatoes” and “Tomato” and it would create a bin for that. We also have a tag panel in Prelude that allows you to create custom tags (also searchable) that would hopefully allow you to easily log footage as a pre-production process.

[Richard Herd] “One more thing: Audio from Premiere to Audition is lame lame lame because when the audio goes from Premiere to Audition, the media is transcoded and the timecode is re-written to where ever it is in the Premiere time line. This means conforming any picture changes is virtually impossible, and I literally have to use old-school metadata: paper and pen. This hopefully has been fixed in CC.”

I think we’ve addressed this with later releases. Let me know if not.

[Richard Herd] “And changing audio output settings (ergo omf) is simply ridiculous: new sequence, change audio settings, copypasta. Roles win for this every time. There is no reason this cannot be done in Premiere via the mixer interface: I need a little button [export stems], and then whatever name they are is what they are named. When someone else (say in ProTools) opens it up, they see exactly what my mixer is. … and now I’m writing that as feature request”

We agree 100% 😉