walter murch, bee dancing, and blinking

[Aindreas Gallagher]

[Walter Soyka] ”
In a single-cam edit, there is no common time linking the A-roll and the B-roll. They both get separated from their own real times, chopped into pieces, laid onto the timeline, and related to each other. Clip connections make sense, because there’s nothing else tying them together.

In a multi-cam edit, you are not chopping the media’s real time into pieces. There is a common, continuous real time that connects all the media. B-roll happens in the same real time that A-roll happens in. In FCPX’s language, it’s all primary storyline, whether the shot is conceptually A-roll or B-roll. FCPX may not be built for unedited time.
“

I’d also like to add; that is kind of a – head nodding a few times re-reading the passage – brilliant point.

Apple may have cut beyond the fat, through the bone and into the marrow of time based editing with what they’ve done to absolute time.
I wonder a little if Lawrence’s post on time, as perceived by FCPX, might not be met by horrified glances between the software engineers at apple.
That it could quite simply be a serious intellectual error on their part.

http://www.ogallchoir.net
promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics

[Walter Soyka]

Hi Rafael — glad to have you in on this conversation!

[Rafael Amador] “Is not about tools, but about concepts… Tapes are disappearing and most of us are shooting file-based formats, but the concepts of movie, reel and sequence won’t change.”

[Rafael Amador] “I doubt very much Apple has studied the way people edit. All that of “primary storyline, secondary storyline, clip connections..” sounds to schools papers and manuals.”

My point here is that FCPX (the tool) has a very specific concept built into it about how editorial is supposed to be done. The most common approach to editorial — A-roll driving the story and B-roll filling in conceptual or technical gaps — has been hard-wired into FCPX.

You have your primary storyline (A-roll). Everything else (secondary storylines, B-roll) is placed and linked relative to the primary storyline in FCPX, instead of placed in absolute time as it was in FCP. It seems to me that FCPX is built to rough out a primary storyline, connect clips to it, and then re-shuffle the primary storyline and keep everything in sync.

It’s almost as if Microsoft Word forced outline mode on all writers, and added automatic unresolved antecedent replacement. You build the outline, you write to the outline, then you separate yourself from the actual flow of the words and simply re-arrange and edit the outline to craft your piece.

I call out the McLuhan quote because I think that Apple has built FCPX to make the general editorial case simpler — but now with that done, FCPX will affect the way its users think about editorial problems.

I have been fascinated by Herb Sevush’s comment that the first thing he does in an edit is rip sync apart. This style of thinking runs so contrary to the FCPX philosophy that an editor raised on FCPX might never realize its possibility, let alone its power.

I’d love to hear a bit more on how you work with FCP and how it doesn’t translate to FCPX, because I’m still trying to understand all the ramifications of changing the way the user intreprets and interacts with the timeline.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Aindreas Gallagher]

[Walter Soyka] “FCPX will affect the way its users think about editorial problems. “

yep yep yep. they may be right in their use case assumptions, but its still worth thinking about this.

http://www.ogallchoir.net
promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics