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What does FCPX teach new editors?
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Forgive me waxing philosophic for a moment but I don’t think any particular way of editing will
make anyone a better editor. Understand I am not defending FCP X here, but it is a poor carpenter
who blames his tools. From my perspective editing is 90% organization and 10% inspiration (if you
are lucky enough to get one of those rare jobs where they allow inspiration – forget about them recognizing it; that rarely happens.) And that 10% comes from a knowledge of the language of film (gained mostly from watching films) and an appreciation and understanding of the art of storytelling (which comes from reading, going to the theater, watching the street performer in the park, appreciating how a good joke is crafted, and a million other ways.bigpine
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Quote:
If you grow up in Apple’s new paradigm and then decide you want to cut at a post facility using anything else, something tells me you’d better have a lights out demo for them to be willing to spend the time and effort to get you out of that paradigm.Christopher Gildenstern
Creative/Production Director
Barnes Chase & Davis, Inc.
Advertising, Marketing, New MediOr…
The new “editor” shows up at your facility…
you’ll give him the locator/unlock code to the footage storage pool…
he or she jacks in their laptop/pad/whatever editing interface to the pool…
works as long as it takes –
and output you a file with enough meta-data tags describing every editing decision, type adjustment, timing tweek and shift that they just made – so that whoever does the next edit can build on that.And the editing PROGRAM he or she uses is incidental to the entire process – just as the brush a particular artist uses is incidental to the process of creating a painting?
That ONLY might exist in a world where clips aren’t locked to a program – and robust metadata is the CORE of the edit – rather than today’s world where a monolithic core program is NECESSARY to the manipulation of the data that it uses.
Today, if you write a document in Word, I can open it in a dozen different word processors because they all understand (more or less) the underlying tags that reside atop the basic ascii code.
Maybe future video editing programs should be MORE like word processors than today’s “program locked data in a program locked code base?”
But to get there, we need a MUCH better data handling engine than we’ve got in the current structure. Perhaps that’s one meta-strategy behind the FCP-X re-write? The database is every BIT as important as the video manipulation tags (program features) because in the long run, it’s ALL just digital data – and if you can tag it really, really well – than anyone can use those tags in ANY program to access and manipulate it?
Perhaps?
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Conner
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Metadata can be a great thing in the right hands. But like auto-correct on a word processor,
it can get you into deep, deep trouble if you don’t know what you’re doing.bigpine
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[TImothy Auld] ” Forgive me waxing philosophic for a moment but I don’t think any particular way of editing will
make anyone a better editor.”I totally disagree with that statment. Simon said it very well:
[Simon Ubsdell] “Every time you learn a new way of doing stuff you get better and more imaginative – and that’s regardless of whether the new way is better or worse than your old way. In all probability you are creating whole new neurological circuits each time you do this kind of thing and creating new avenues of possibility.
It’s limiting yourself to one little world of editing that limits what you can achieve – this will be as true of those who only ever learn FCPX as it is of those who never wanted to get beyond Media Composer.”
-mattyc
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Jeez, Matt – where in that post did I even remotely imply that learning new things was bad?
Learning new things is good. Being forced to look at things differently is good. Organization
is good. An appreciation for storytelling and how it is achieved in different media is good.Just what exactly is it that you are in such disagreement with me about?
bigpine
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I must have narrowly interpreted this statement.
[TImothy Auld] “I don’t think any particular way of editing will
make anyone a better editor.”Misread your meaning.
Your meaning was that no tool can make you better at your craft. I misunderstood your meaning as learning a new tool won’t make anyone better at a craft. My mistake.
-mattyc
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[TImothy Auld] “Forgive me waxing philosophic for a moment but I don’t think any particular way of editing will make anyone a better editor… it is a poor carpenter who blames his tools.”
I’m arguing that editorial can’t really be taught apart from its tools and materials, just as carpentry can’t be taught without taking a saw to wood. I (along with Matt) wasn’t asking if FCPX makes someone a better editor — I was was asking how learning to edit with FCPX will color a new editor’s approach to editorial.
FCPX asks us to think about our work differently than previuos NLEs, and those NLEs asked us to think differently than linear bays, and linear bays asked us to think differently than physical film editorial.
An editor coming up on FCPX may have a totally different mental model for media and editorial than someone like me, who came up with a mixed linear and first-generation non-linear education. That’s the new take on FCPX that I’m trying to explore here.
Do you disagree with that premise? If so, can we discuss that a bit? Could you elaborate on why you think the tools we learn with don’t impact how we think about the work?
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 -
No problem Matt. Sometimes I get so involved in my head that I say (or write) things that
piss people off that I am oblivious to. Thanks for letting me know that this was one of those
rare occasions where this was not the case.bigpine
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Hoo, boy Walter. You ask the $64,000 question and then some. I guess I’ll start with how I approach editing. I’m looking to serve the story. I know that sounds a little bit pompous but I feel it is as valid in a web video about putting a slipcover on a chair as it is in a feature. I look at all editing systems from the
standpoint of how I can make them do what I need them to do. FCP X seems to be designed with many
powerful features (which may or may not be developed in the future) but also with an eye toward serving people who are not remotely interested in accessing those powerful features. If in the future I am forced
to work on FCP X (and I may well be) my focus will be on how I can get it to do what I need it to do and not
on how it wants me to work. I could be wrong (no, really – it has happened ) but I’m guessing that is how it will play out for most editors.bigpine
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Hoo, boy Walter. You ask the $64,000 question and then some. I guess I’ll start with how I approach editing. I’m looking to serve the story. I know that sounds a little bit pompous but I feel it is as valid in a web video about putting a slipcover on a chair as it is in a feature. I look at all editing systems from the
standpoint of how I can make them do what I need them to do. FCP X seems to be designed with many
powerful features (which may or may not be developed in the future) but also with an eye toward serving people who are not remotely interested in accessing those powerful features. If in the future I am forced
to work on FCP X (and I may well be) my focus will be on how I can get it to do what I need it to do and not
on how it wants me to work. I could be wrong (no, really – it has happened ) but I’m guessing that is how it will play out for most editors.Also, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people with no editorial experience whatever look at a scene and tell me what they thought was wrong and they were exactly right. In my view it’s not about the hammer, it’s about the house.
bigpine
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