What does FCPX teach new editors?

[Walter Soyka]

Timothy, please indulge me if I over-stretch the carpentry metaphor.

[TImothy Auld] “I’m looking to serve the story… 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”

This is the approach of an accomplished craftsman, not a novice. Consider the law of the instrument: when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

I’m not talking about FCPX will affect anyone already posting in this thread. We’ve all already learned editorial to varying degrees. We all have hammers, but we’ve also got screwdrivers and wrenches and vices. We know how to handle nails, but we also know how to handle screws and bolts and glue. We also all recognize that we need to continue learning as the craft itself evolves.

But what about new editors — people just starting in editorial for the first time today — whose only experience with editorial is going to be with FCPX? How will they learn differently than we have? How will they think and solve problems differently than we do?

[TImothy Auld] “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.”

I think there’s a colossal difference between being able to point out what’s wrong and being able to make it right. After all, you don’t need to be a good filmmaker to be a good film critic.

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
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[Aindreas Gallagher]

Walter Soyka : “some problems are easier to solve linearly (radio edit, then visuals), and some problems are easier to solve non-linearly (assembly followed by re-arranging to shape the story)”

and – “From FCP’s immense flexibility, I added what I’d consider a clay-sculpting approach to my mental toolbox. I could throw things on the timeline, use multiple layers as a scratch pad, and manipulate clips and edits directly on the timeline with the mouse.”

Poking head in late. Super super duper interesting stuff. Deadly thread. I’m honestly personally deeply confused on this point. I was taught radio edit for promos and short form – it’s an impeccable approach born from serious prior limitations. But it’s still immensely correct now in certain circumstances. Which make this whole thing metaphysically weird – limitations of craft impose discipline which bears real fruit. so what does perceived limitation mean? and given that FCPX has conscious limitations, or rather – shapings – of approach what does it mean this time? There are consciously designed channels of execution in FCPX, mostly regarding an explicit statement of function; that the provision of b-roll is a near absolute eventuality on V2 that deserves explicit terms, linking and methodology, such that it is easily absorbed by an early entrant as it is one of the invariable uses and expressions of the vertical stack, that the vertical stack is, as a verb, effectively “b-roll” second story or what have you…
To define the intelligible purpose of the stack – it’s reality in practice – is something which on a certain level I find myself having quiet difficulty disagreeing with.

But I also – looking carefully at my pots of expended bile – do really find myself hovering back to Walters interspersed question – is this degree of conscious pre-shaping, literally provisioning packaged second storyline verbs and nouns of editing usage of the toolset at its most basic level an issue?

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

[Douglas K. dempsey]

Walter:

Thanks for the great post on your formative workflow influences. I especially liked the clay-sculpting metaphor; this is how I work all the time in documentary — where you can go in so many directions, and so you need to gets your fingers in there and get the feel of how best to shape YOUR version of the story. Whether FCPX influences us, a new generation or no one, YOUR particular post is both familiar and inspiring.

Doug D

[Douglas K. dempsey]

Walter, re: starting at the base of your domain, this has been a proven methodology of teaching since teaching was first taught. What makes us think we have suddenly and magically short-circuited learning? We are still born earlier and less formed than any other species, so that we can learn our environment and its complexities from the ground up.

Many film programs, the smart ones IMHO let students who seem serious about the craft work on Moviolas and handle film. They don’t necessarily start there; they are not dogmatic about “walk before you run.” But at the appropriate time, once you have been exposed to NLEs in depth, the handling of film can create an epiphany, a realization of the “metaphorical” nature of GUI and digital tools. It can help you separate WHAT you are doing from HOW you do it. It can remind you that the basics of visual communications and psychology come from inborn mechanisms from ‘the ancestral environment’ — rather than something “invented” every year by each new software.

There is ALWAYS the danger with any experience that is automatic or does the work for you that, you may never learn how to problem solve in its absence. Is that a defect? Not if you never need to know how something works. Few people understand the basics of electricity and yet survive and prosper in the modern world.

I have watched my son (age 17) learn “organization” via the MacOS and Google. Whereas he mother and father are expert organizers in the hierarchial filing system, folders within folders, he locates everything via Spotlight, Google and other searches. I accused him of not being “organized” but it turns out he maintains a sophisticated relational database in his head of keywords that allow him to use his searches efficiently. Just as my filing and bin systems only work if I know what the names mean, and can visualize in my mind’s eye the logical path as I drill down into folder stacks.

So who is more organized? I think we just do it differently.

Doug D

[Aindreas Gallagher]

Great reply, hanging off my blurb and rather meant for the Walter – but just to say – that’s a nuanced post – is there an ultimate truth to the practise of editing, ala see the flammable celluloid in your mind – that it is an anchoring truth – or can it all now be be sublimated completely to new ways of thinking ala issues of organization and recall growing out of words and tags etc. I’m regurgitating there but it’s all a bit interesting that.

Like – are there valid historical truths to editing; does it have a memory as a craft, or is editing instead a malleable expression of something outside of itself such that the practise of it can be completely reformulated by time and technology?

Walter Murch, blinks, and the bee dance as the man says.

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

[David Roth weiss]

[Aindreas Gallagher] “are there valid historical truths to editing; does it have a memory as a craft, or is editing instead a malleable expression of something outside of itself such that the practise of it can be completely reformulated by time and technology?”

There goes the neighborhood…

Shakespeare has arrived, but he hails not from England.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.com

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Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums.

[Gerald Baria]

[Walter Soyka] ” I think that FCPX’s design philosophy is abstraction, hiding technical detail where possible and moving the editor away from the underlying mechanics of what the computer must do to assemble the edit”

This is EXACTLY is what Steve Jobs philosophy on how he approaches every single Apple product. Ever since the first mac..up to its most recent releases..this is his entire point. Giving the user the power to do what he needs, without having to learn all the complications under the hood.

Heres a great playboy interview of steve j. in 1985 which exemplifies this: https://gizmodo.com/5821429/that-time-in-1987-when-playboy-interviewed-steve-jobs

“That’s a simple explanation, and the point is that people really don’t need to understand how computers work. Most people have no concept of how an automatic transmission works, yet they know how to drive a car. You don’t have to study physics to understand the laws of motion to drive a car. “

[Bill Davis]

Doug,

I don’t disagree with you at all – but – we also have to realize that there will be some functional limits on the relevance of older approaches to modern processes.

Cutting on a Steenbeck may well imposes some important understandings and disciplines on the student.

But few of them will really NEED to know that to function in the modern editing world.

I’m not sure a modern math teacher would be prized if he or she demanded that their students master the slide rule before moving on to the calculator. It’s a generation too far for significant relevance.

Reminds me of sharing a cab at NAB one year with some young audio editors. I mentioned that I started out cutting tape on a splicing block and they were FASCINATED. They had never editing in any fashion other than digitally. That happened more than a decade ago.

At some point tools move on. That’s just the way it’s always been.

FWIW.

“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

[Gerald Baria]

“But what about new editors — people just starting in editorial for the first time today — whose only experience with editorial is going to be with FCPX? How will they learn differently than we have? How will they think and solve problems differently than we do?”

Those new to serious editing who will exclusively learn and live with FCPX will be better off in the long ruyn because this product is made for the FUTURE, and in the future traditional NLE systems will disappear.

FCPX is all about digital “maximization’ in both metadata organization, li instantaneous effect previews without rendering, clip connections,manetic timelines, and “visual” data manipulation. As the world moves forward, and REDs makes 8k easy, HDSLRs makes 2k to 3k cheap (megapixel wars on video capture ), mobile processors enables hdslr RAW video capture, televisions will have to be broadcasted not only on cable, or antennas but also on the web, no more bandwith bottlenecks so interlaced will not be required anymore, HD will be cheap and is the standard, 3k the premium, 3D TVs will be cheaper and people will want them (some maybe), tapes and all of its incarnations will disappear.

And we’ll be left with an all digital capture and workflow. That is the inevitable future – ALL WILL BE DIGITAL. And thats where FCPX is strong. And as the world moves by it will get even stronger, because the foundations that are in place are already awesome.

[Bill Davis]

Is it at all instructive that prior to the advent of word processing, humans were able to easily write novels with grace, eloquence and a clearly unfolding plot?

Word processing certainly changed how writers approach the mechanics of writing – since there’s no longer the same penalty for exploration and re-arangement as there was before you could cut and paste text as easily – but the essence of what makes a story sing didn’t actually change all that much from the typing to the word processing era.

Perhaps we’ll see the same with editors who use this new tool.

Perhaps the human taste for storytelling fits within a more narrow set of parameters than we might think? And in the end, we’ll just use the new tools to create the same types of finished products?

The advent of power tools didn’t actually change the nature of what a house is all that much. Wood, concrete, glass, metal studs – the materials, techniques and embedded systems may change, but the vast, vast majority of homes are still merely a basic arrangement of rooms – because that form satisfies our needs really well.

Just thinking here.

“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