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It’s All Connected — Clip Relationships and The Magnetic Timeline Paradigm
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Audio, nine times out of ten, tells the story I am being paid to tell. Visuals support the story. Which is one reason I have problems with FCP X. It makes decisions for me that I don’t want made. And to get it to do what I want is a long series of dubious workarounds. Not that Legend was not also a series of workarounds in some cases. But in Legend I generally did not have to out think the software. I certainly have worked in situations where the picture was primary but they are few and far between at least for me. Words tell stories.
Tim
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[TImothy Auld] “It makes decisions for me that I don’t want made. “
Like what?
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[Jeremy Garchow] “Why is FCPX an a/b editor only? I don’t understand this recurring comment.”
Jeremy,
Who has said this and where has it recurred?
Franz.
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[Franz Bieberkopf] “Who has said this and where has it recurred?”
Dodging the question is an answer, I guess.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “Dodging the question is an answer, I guess.”
Jeremy,
I don’t think so – you’ve not answered my question.
Franz.
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[Walter Soyka] “The thing I still don’t quite understand are real-world scenarios where you can’t think of an edit this way.”
Walter,
In general I avoid thinking about things in terms of A/B roll, and I proselytize against it, as I think it promotes a certain preconception of how to use shots. When given the opportunity, I actually urge directors specifically not to shoot B roll. Bring me A roll only. Every shot as important as the next. I don’t want to be cutting “away” to anything … only cutting to the next important thing.
In other words – if you can carry a scene on a close up of the coffee cup, then it seems odd to think of that as “secondary” in any way.
But that is more how A/B conventions impact on shooting.
The primary task of editing is, indeed, finding or deciding the shape of the spine.
In terms of process, I find I am often cutting groups of “threads” independently first. When I bring maybe 3 threads together to create a scene, the edit is partially determining which thread will come to the foreground as the driver at any given moment – the thing that “drives” a scene, or structures it, is often shifting from one element to the next, or can often be the interaction of two or more threads. (A simple example – if there is complex interaction between voice-over and a sync shot, it is sort of pointless to think about which is “primary”, particularly if you have to edit both threads to maintain the tension or harmony of the interaction).
It seems to me that if the focus or driving element is constantly shifting, or if your constantly talking about only primaries, or more than one primary, then you’re not really talking about an A/B model anymore.
A/B editing is a useful way of describing the “radio edit” approach (in which visuals follow an edited audio structure) or describing a sync-and-cutaways approach to hiding visual edits.
It doesn’t really describe a lot of editing practice well.
Franz.
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Like what? Have you not been following this magnetic timeline discussion for the last year and three months?
Tim
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[David Lawrence] “X is good but it isn’t necessarily better if you know what you’re doing in Legend.
“No matter how good you are it’s still a 32 bit program right David.
Are you overlooking that slow render?
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[tony west] “No matter how good you are it’s still a 32 bit program right David.
Are you overlooking that slow render?”
No, I’m working in ProRes and keeping my renders times minimal. If they’re gonna be long, I take a break. 64-bit is better, but I’ve been managing without. I don’t like the fact that FCP is 32-bit, but I’m living with it until I leave FCP completely.
That said, I recently did a project in Premiere that would have been virtually impossible in FCP. It used adjustment layers to create a palette of effects that were be mixed, matched, tweaked and previewed in real-time with no rendering. Having 64-bit performance was great, but Premiere’s adjustment layers were what really made a difference.
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David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
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[David Lawrence] “Premiere’s adjustment layers were what really made a difference.”
Yes, for me it would have to be 64 vs 64
A 32 bit program just was not going to work for me once I had a choice of 64
It was just a matter of which 64 program
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