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The Open Timeline and Spatial Workflows — Another Example
INTRODUCTION
I had thought about posting this as a follow up (from my own perspective) to the David Lawrence post here:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/16979But it was Gerald Baria who pushed me over the edge here:
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/335/17704
[Gerald Baria] “I see a lot of people here having the habit of dumping everything in the timeline and making choices from there, creating the story “as they move along”, and I think thats a very messy disorganized way to work.”
Okay, so first some background on the kind of work I do.
I primarily do long-form, mostly non-scripted projects with a few shorter pieces thrown into the mix – projects which are a mix of commercial and government financing, for broadcast, theatrical, and other venues. I work primarily in the offline/online model (or cutting room / lab model, if you prefer) and picture general gets finished on niche systems (and sometimes on Avid – never FCP) while sound always gets finished in Pro Tools and mixed in a Pro Tools theatre.
I wanted to make this an addendum to the David Lawrence piece above because I thought I had two additional aspects to describe in my own workflow not covered in David’s post: the first being “the sequence as organizational tool” and the second (related to David’s post) being “vertical organization of tracks”.
I’ll start by responding to Gerald’s inflammatory post first.
You seem to prize organization as virtue above others for editors (so “messy” and “disorganized” are bad) and it is true that it is a critical, fundamental skill. But I would say that sensitivity (to material, to experience, to ideas) is at least important, to say nothing of creativity. Feeling my way through “as I move along” is important because one can miss strengths in material with a conceptual way of working (especially in unscripted work, but with scripted material too).
(On the other hand, conceptual work has its own strengths.)
Farouki has an interesting film in which he shows photos that the Allies took in flights over occupied Europe during WWII. They had detailed photos of concentration camps – except that Allied intelligence didn’t notice or care because they weren’t looking for them (this was before they had intelligence about their existence). The lesson is that your intention can blind you to important realities that you aren’t looking for.
I think it is wonderful that apple has suddenly become religious (except when it isn’t) about metadata. (Here’s a thought – timecode is metadata: why are you hiding it from me?) However, I also look on the sudden craze for metadata-as-organizing tool with a bit of suspicion: I can’t help but suspect that it is all an elaborate plan to aid people so they don’t have to actually watch and listen to material (or at least, not more than once) as they work on it.
All this to say that I’ll second Mark Morache with his unease with the “primary storyline”. The first steps of editing should not dictate your end. The story of a film (for those that rely on stories) is a result of the editing process, not the starting point. This is true whether the film is scripted or not – “story” is an impression left on the audience and will differ from audience member to audience member. Frankly I’m baffled that I would have to decide the spine at the beginning. Deciding the spine is the process of editing.
I’ll state again that I have not tried FCPX, but I do have the thought that in order to try it I’d have to use a slug as my “primary storyline”.
All that said – here’s my contribution: two key organization techniques that seem to be defeated by X:
THE SEQUENCE AS ORGANIZATIONAL TOOLSo here’s my fundamental: I don’t work with clips.
Of course, my media comes in as clips and those clips end up in a bin. But i don’t much organize them beyond that – as clips. They immediately get put into sequences – all of them, in their entirety. These sequences are broken down according to scene, situation, or location as best suits the material, and are labelled as such, along with “RAW”. So when I screen raw material, I’m watching sequences, not clips, and mostly chronological (or sometimes in script order).
Raw sequences are duplicated and selected and further duplicated and edited. This is more or less the process David Lawrence outlined (though he prefers to work in one timeline for reasons he elaborated).
So point one is that I don’t really use the viewer / source monitor. I use it for fx and audio work (from the timeline) and matchback sometimes. I point this because I am not much distressed at losing a source monitor if those functions are preserved.
But more, I wanted to bring this up because it hasn’t been discussed on these boards – that actually sequences are a way of organizing material.
The current project I’m primarily working on (almost finished assembling) has probably a hundred sequences in it. Another which is almost locked has maybe 6 or 8 times that number (organized in 10 smaller projects). These sequences are organized into bins which separate Raw material from Selected and Marked material from Assemblies from Versions of Cuts and Exports and Sub-Selections etc.
Again I’m a bit baffled at how FCPX would handle my ways.
VERTICAL ORGANIZATION OF TRACKSOrganization of tracks changes during the edit and after picture lock.
During the edit, the track organization tells me primarily about sync, and a little bit about function; but primarily I use it as a tool to indicate picture and sound relationships.
I always keep linking off, so I can move any audio or picture at any time.
Tracks are used in Video + Stereo Pairs for the first 3 layers, then additional material, best described by illustration:
The advantage for me is that I understand how material functions and some simple relationships at a glance. It also allows for very fluid movement of material. Occasionally it requires some complex operations during editing. (The magnetic timeline seems to “solve” the problem of complex operations without addressing organization questions – it wants to organize for me, in one way and only one way).
This is a fairly simple timeline. FX and Subtitles would add their own dedicated tracks as would more complex audio. (I can’t imagine what FCPX timeline with subtitles would be like to work with – I imagine apple cute screen animation hell – has anyone had experience?) I think this approach to tracks is likely quite common.
After lock, I have the picture tracks reorganized – redundant clips are stripped and the whole thing collapsed to minimum tracks. Then material is separated onto tracks that are helpful to lab – usually by source type or categorized by processes needed to be performed – so for example anything that needed frame rate conversion would be one track. Audio tracks are usually sufficiently organized as is for OMF.
What I think is important to point out from the illustration is that I have no “primary” track – there is nothing against which I am judging placement on a consistent basis. Sometimes it is dialog. Sometimes it is action. Sometimes it is music. Sometimes is voice-over. These things change there pace, placement, and rhythm constantly as the meaning, drive, focus, and structural purpose of a scene changes. The only real constant is time (and so I am back to my idea of a slug as “primary storyline”).
BUT …
But, and this is a point which is fundamentally more important than anything I have said so far, the real flexibility of the “open timeline” (and accompanying project structure) is most apparent when you consider that it allows my approach to working as well as the bin and source monitor approach, as well as, no doubt, many other approaches; to wit it doesn’t dictate one method of working, and easily accommodates many ways.
That’s a powerful tool.
When you consider that those many ways of working can further be easily translated into other software and maintain their organization, you grasp how powerful it really it.
I will again make that point that apple is the one making claims of revolutionizing – others have responded on these boards that “marketing” seems to be form a speech that shouldn’t be thought about critically. I think in fact that one of the best use of these forums has been to examine the claims about new software and hardware, as well as explore the problems and possibilities they pose.
So far, apple has failed to make a convincing case for FCPX.
And as a final note to Gerald Baria – I don’t know if you’ve ever had chance to see picasso or pollock at work; no doubt you would have found them to be messy and disorganized. You may, however, find other ways of evaluating their methods and results.
Franz.
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45 Replies
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“I don’t know if you’ve ever had chance to see picasso or pollock at work”
Have you had a chance to see them at work?
Linked switched off. Vertical organization. Track jumbles. There is nothing to say your way is inherently better or worse, simply the track structure lends itself to working in this manner. You like to work this way because you can. Other editors hate the chaos.
All the best,
Tom
Class on Demand DVDs “Complete Training for FCP7,” “Basic Training for FCS” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy”
Coming in 2011 “Complete Training for FCPX” from Class on Demand
“Final Cut Pro X for iMovie and Final Cut Express Users” from Focal Press -
Outstanding post, Franz. Thank you.
[Franz Bieberkopf] “Deciding the spine is the process of editing.”
Perfectly said.
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David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
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The spine: What an exactly description for what Apple calls the primary storyline.
All the best,
Tom
Class on Demand DVDs “Complete Training for FCP7,” “Basic Training for FCS” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy”
Coming in 2011 “Complete Training for FCPX” from Class on Demand
“Final Cut Pro X for iMovie and Final Cut Express Users” from Focal Press -
Based on that workflow I can say FCPX is certainly not for you!
“My Name is Steve and I’m an FCPX user”
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I wonder how long it will take before apple bring out a new final cut with people moving to different systems
Stray Fox video production newcastle
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+1.
I would also like to add my current TV show to the (probably huge) list of productions using sequences as your base source of content. When dealing with enormous amounts of footage is just makes sense to create a series of sequences and work from those instead of source clips.
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“Deciding the spine is the process of editing.”
I think I’m going to hang that on my wall. Perfect. Can also substitute for the word “editing”: acting, painting, musical composition, writing …
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions -
Franz, thanks for a great post.
There is no question that Apple is asking a lot of it’s FCP users.
I of course have a question back to you. I know you haven’t used FCPX yet, so a lot of your thoughts are about concepts, so conceptually, how do you see FCPX prevent you from being able to use a a sequence to organize your thoughts?
Did you read my response to David L here?:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/17096
Since a sequence is a collection of clips, would you be opposed to have a clip in the browser that is that collection of clips? You can then click on that clip and choose to open it in it’s own timeline? You could then a keyword collection that is a collection of all your selects clips that are organized by “sequence”. Just talking conceptually here.
[Franz Bieberkopf] “VERTICAL ORGANIZATION OF TRACKS
Organization of tracks changes during the edit and after picture lock.
During the edit, the track organization tells me primarily about sync, and a little bit about function; but primarily I use it as a tool to indicate picture and sound relationships.
I always keep linking off, so I can move any audio or picture at any time.”
Have you seen the “break apart clip items” feature in FCPX?
Jeremy
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Add me to the list of people that ditched FCP 7’s bin and use sequences to select clips. However, it is not a one-key operation. I match frame it, switch sequences, mark in and out in source and sequence then drop it in the final sequence. The reason I came up with this work flow is primarily because the bin system and source viewer in FCP 7 sucks, quite frankly. They are outdated and useless.
The one thing I’m interested in with FCP X is the new bin system. Events make a whole lot of sense to me. My thinking is I won’t need the sequences to store footage as I can do a better job sorting through the material with events and metadata.
Magnetic timeline? I’m not sold completely on it. I think it could be more efficient than the old open canvas, but likely it’s simply a 50/50 tradeoff. Which if it doesn’t make me more efficient, I’m not sure it’s worth the time it takes to learn it.
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[Brett Sherman] “The one thing I’m interested in with FCP X is the new bin system. Events make a whole lot of sense to me. My thinking is I won’t need the sequences to store footage as I can do a better job sorting through the material with events and metadata.”
That’s my thinking, but there’s a way to use sequence like behavior without creating a traditional sequence in the project library.
I have been using favorites and markers. Unfortunately and for some reason, the text in favorites isn’t searchable in the browser but it is for markers, so I use the favorite to mark a range, then markers to describe what’s in the range. You can then also turn all these clips into a compound clip and name it something useful like Jeremy_Selects_Reel (I sort the bin by favorites (control-f) select them and then choose to make compound clip (option-g)). This compound is then one skimmable clip in the browser, or you can choose to “Open in Timeline” which allows all kinds of timeline operations including further editing/trimming (even filters, like a tc reader) which is then stored in the browser. You can then skim and add parts of the compound clip to the timeline. If you ever need to not have that clip be in a compound, you simply “Break Apart Clip Items” and it turns the compound in to the original clip. It’s quite cool, very fast and flexible once you wrap your head around it.
That marker text then transfers to the index once you put a clip in the timeline, then you can look at the index by marker under the “Tags” section and you can even text search there (or just lick on a marker to go to that point). It’s pretty awesome and in my opinion, way more flexible than FCP Legacy will ever be, but I’m a weirdo so I weird it up sometimes.
Jeremy
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