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In-Action Story on FCPX and Focus
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I quoted the director of the film. If you have a problem with the quote then you are calling him a liar.
I don’t see you as having any standing to do that.
I’m sure he doesn’t need you to tell him his craft at this point in his career.
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[Oliver Peters] “BTW – did you miss the last part? That grading and finishing was done on Quantel Rio at Light Iron. Not your average desktop system.”
I did see that and agree.
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[tony west] “What it is, is reality slapping you upside your head ; )”
Oh snapple!!!
[Oliver Peters] “A nice article, but a HUGE puff piece. For all the discussion about a faster edit, the editing took 11 months. While that’s not uncommon for a studio feature – and is likely due to all sort of things, but not due to the choice of editing systems – it doesn’t make a good selling point for FCP X.”
[Oliver Peters] “Both are good moments – maybe even watershed moments, but neither is going to change the industry very much.”
What I take away from the piece, and we can call it speed or whatever, is that FCPX is a creative tool, and it helps people achieve creative goals from set, to directors, to editors, to the finish. I have long argued that while X might not turn an 11 month edit in to 3 months, you can get to the creative editing much more quickly, and you can view multiple takes, cuts, and angles extremely easily in X if you use it the way it was designed to be used. X is faster becuase you can create faster. This article also proves that X can “talk” via fcpxml to other high end finishing systems.
This same story could not have been told a few years ago.
Is it going to “change the industry”, I doubt it, but the industry seems to be changing around fcpx so the developers/managers responsible for fcpx need to adapt or die. This piece seems to prove X is adapting.
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[Andy Neil] “. A big difference is how smart collections don’t require clip moving or duplication like they do in Avid; they’re sorted automatically. And a single clip can appear in multiple places without duplication simple by how the collections are sorting things.”
I recently worked on a doc (using Avid) where people and events could fall into multiple categories. Initially we organized everything by date because, being a historical doc, going by dates was the most logical. Eventually we became so busy that dropping things into multiple bins became a pain in the ass because 1. I never quite got them into all the bins the media could maybe/sorta/possibly fit into and 2. I was working with another editor offsite so every time I updated my bins I would have to send him a copy too so our projects stayed exactly in sync.
My solution? Just add unique metadata to each clip (in the form of Markers) and use Avid’s Find command (which is very robust and quick). Used the same thing in the old FCP (which had a surprisingly good Find tool too). Not as slick as Smart Collections in X, but certainly effective. I haven’t used the latest version of PPro yet, but from what I hear they did a lot to beef up their Find command too.
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It’s just nice to have it out there officially isn’t it? So that the people who accused those of us who did take the plunge, of using something vastly inferior and unsuitable for anything professional, can finally shut up.
It is the Cold Mountain moment for me.
And wasn’t there a thread to which many of the usual suspects contributed about 6 or 9 months back when everyone was doubting this story because Apple had not announced it yet or used it as part of their marketing.
And we all said “give them time” because the studio will want to have finished all their stuff before they are happy for Apple to do their own marketing on the back of the movie. So that time has come now too.
I’m sure Oliver is right from an editor’s perspective in his comments (not much new). But for the wider world who go on what they’ve been told (production personnel especially), this is a great bit of ammunition for them to use over a martini or two on a Friday night when somebody sneers at them for admitting their latest production is using FCPX.
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[Andy Neil] “Also, time savings is time savings, and I completely disagree on it not saving time for the editor.”
Agree 110%. No idea how the work that the assistant is doing isn’t for the editor?! And for the sake of saving time. And clearly if he’s saying time, that translates to the editor getting to work faster, too.
Whereby I personally also find the notion that any other NLE, old or new, is or was anywhere near the level of FCP X in terms of metadata rather ludicrous. You plain cannot do a plethora of work relevant things in other NLEs as you can in FCP X. Starting with e.g. smart collections to one click favoriting (and display of the same), all the way to range based keyframes (sorry, sub-clips are not the same). As if being able to enter “metadata” in the form of clip notes, setting markers or the likes compared by any stretch of the imagination.
[Jeremy Garchow] “I have long argued that while X might not turn an 11 month edit in to 3 months”
Who knows? But for anyone to say that “Ha! It took just as long as with any other NLE!”, as suggested by others, is utter polemic hubris imho as long as you have no clue what the challenges and needs of the production were over all. For all you know they could have had to wait eight months for a VFX shot, had reshoots, had unrelated technical issues etc. etc. etc.
[Jeremy Garchow] “you can get to the creative editing much more quickly, and you can view multiple takes, cuts, and angles extremely easily in X if you use it the way it was designed to be used. X is faster becuase you can create faster.”
Precisely.
[Helmut Kobler] “I can’t imagine someone editing a complex feature given how sluggish performance currently is.”
:-)))) Right. Because your experience is the global yard-stick for X. They therefore had the exact same issues, only their tolerance level is MUCH higher and they’re of course not nearly as demanding as you. Gotcha. 😀
– RK
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Deutsch? Hier gibt es ein umfassendes FCP X Training für dich! -
Here also a surely far less biased report from USA Today with some additional insight:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/02/25/final-cut-x-used-for-hollywood-film-focus/23911667/
One of many notable quotes for me:
[Glenn Ficarra] “We have a whole generation of kids learning on iMovie, they’ll be familiar with this tool when they get into the real world.”
Something I’d say has been overlooked, is highly underestimated and why I think X has a huge edge over many/most/all in the long run. So if someone wants to call it “iMovie Pro”, great (even if iMovie, as of v10, is in fact FC Express, if anything). Is that supposed to be an insult? 🙂
I for one know from teaching and my trainings first hand, that there are a considerable number of iMovie users of all ages moving to FCP X, yes. It’s the obvious choice (as opposed to e.g. PPro and PElements if you ask me). First timers also will go for X first, because it just makes sense to them and they get results much much faster. The vast majority would never even have considered FCP 7, let alone PPro, even in its current incarnation. Avid is a complete unknown fwiw. “Pros”? Mostly not, no. But I don’t see how that matters in the end either.
2 Euro¢ from my neck of the woods. 😉
– RK____________________________________________________
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“I quoted the director of the film. If you have a problem with the quote then you are calling him a liar.
I don’t see you as having any standing to do that.
I’m sure he doesn’t need you to tell him his craft at this point in his career.”Wow! Talk about an overreaction!! I did no such thing and you seem to want to put words in my mouth and attribute motives. It’s a quote about a director who likes the tool he used. He is by no means unique in that and there are plenty of examples of other directors who edit that have said the same about the NLE they chose. That’s all I was talking about. Certainly NOT a contradiction or a denigration of his statement.
Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Good read. I find this far less a puff piece than almost every Avid press release (I am a stockholder, so I get those releases via E-Trade). At least there was a bit of workflow in it, versus “Avid Everywhere Takes Over the World” sh**.
The point of this is that where Avid touts “you gotta work with Avid to work in Hollywood” is just not true anymore. You can be Hollywood with a computer and the App Store. Yes, Avid still holds the vast vast majority of that niche but it’s getting bit around the edges.
[Robin S. Kurz] “I for one know from teaching and my trainings first hand, that there are a considerable number of iMovie users of all ages moving to FCP X, yes. It’s the obvious choice (as opposed to e.g. PPro and PElements if you ask me). First timers also will go for X first, because it just makes sense to them and they get results much much faster. The vast majority would never even have considered FCP 7, let alone PPro, even in its current incarnation. Avid is a complete unknown fwiw.”
Agreed. I see this every day. It’s down to PP and X at this point for my students. I think it’s PS and AE that keeps folks I teach on PP, not the editing tool itself. X is the preferred editor where I teach. A push on Motion marketing, integration, and development might just change that even more in favor of X.
Skate to where the puck is going to be….
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
[Noah Kadner] “For the folks who’ve been curious about how this went:”
One rather curious aspect of this production for me is that this is the very first feature film of any kind that the Editor Jan Kovac has cut, acccording to his imdb entry.
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm5552644/
Even his TV work is not especially extensive.
Clearly the decision to use FCP X for Focus was driven entirely (?) by Ficarra and Requa and their desire to be extremely hands-on with the edit.
Although it’s great to see X being used at this level, it’s a very unusual case history.
I was also very struck by this:
“The directors were happy enough with the animated opening credits — created by editors using the standard text tool in Final Cut Pro X — that they decided to use them in the final movie, which is extremely rare for a high-production feature film.”
Why would you not want a graphics expert to do the titles for a movie of this scale in a dedicated graphics environment? Bizarre.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo-uk.com
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