-
What does FCPX teach new editors?
-
[Walter Soyka] “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?”
I think – to descend for a moment from the lofty realms of philosophy to a more practical level – one of the key things that is different with FCPX is that it encourages you to edit on the timeline, in other words to throw stuff down quickly and start thinking about the actual editing once you’ve got it there.
In the old days, and especially for editors who came from a film and/or tape background, making an edit (inserting material into your story) was always a very considered act. You selected very carefully, you refined your selection, you thought about what you were doing and the consequences of it before you “made the edit”. On tape for example, the magic button was the preview button – you made sure you were going to get the result you wanted before you committed to it. The consequences of “getting it wrong” could be seriously painful – in different ways on film and tape, but no less so in either case.
The development of NLE’s and their attendant working practices did not eradicate this element of preparatory thought and caution in making the edit – and one of the key tools for evaluation was the source/record window model. In Media Composer, while you had great tools to fine tune your edit once you’d made it, they weren’t the fastest and you would still save time by getting it right first rather than by “being sloppy” and fixing it later. FCP in my view somewhat loosened this constraint as it was definitely easier and more intuitive to fix stuff on the timeline – but I don’t think a lot of editors necessarily changed their method because of that. All in all, the hesitancy about making edits never really went away for a lot of people.
Conversely, FCPX emphatically takes the anxiety out of this part of the process and indeed out of editing as a whole. It’s not to say that you can’t do it the old way and carefully think through every edit, but you will clearly save time if you just dive in a throw stuff on the timeline with a view to crafting it there. I think then to answer a least one aspect of Walter’s complex question, this is one of the areas where you will see a marked divide between old and new schools.
Personally, I don’t think this is a bad thing – having observed many editors at work down the years, I always felt that “performance anxiety” at every level was a debilitating factor, and a large part of this was down to worrying about how much extra work would be involved in making the wrong edit decision and having to fix it. Oddly, the ability to keep multiple versions and Undo at will never seemed to be enough to conquer this anxiety. But maybe finally FCPX will do that.
My view is that it is frequently better to dive in and make lots of edit decisions, even “wrong ones” (if there are even such a thing as “wrong ones”), rather than endlessly agonize about making the right ones. Editing for me is about reviewing as many options as you can and seeing what comes out (often serendipitously quite amazing), rather than prejudging that a certain set of edits is not worth the trouble of trying.
So I hope and expect that FCPX will shape a new generation of editors who are fundamentally “braver” than their predecessors …
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
No problem I’m always happy to stretch a metaphor until it snaps.
The thing is, I really wish I had a good answer to your very good question. My guess is that
is X ever evolves into an application suitable for broadcast and features it will hardly be recognizable
next to its present form. If on the other it remains pretty much the way it is then I think the lazy
editors will come to depend on some of the more automatic features and will produce mediocre
content, while those who are driven by producing the best possible content will find ways to get
X to do what they need it to do. Not a very exciting answer, I know – but right now that’s all I got.And your film critic analogy could not be more correct.
bigpine
-
As an editor who is still not used to not hitting the preview button I have to agree with what
you are saying here. A big part of working with NLE’s (and getting used to working with NLE’s)
was the fact that you could just try something for the hell of it, and then just try something else.
Now that I have gotten used to that way of working and thinking I can’t imagine going back. If
new NLE’s encourage that way of working even more I believe that will be – generally – a good
thing. That said I still think preparation and organization and the heart of post production.The one thing that does make me long for the past is when I get 30 or 40 minutes of footage with
a useable minute and a half. That makes me wish for the days when they couldn’t possibly shoot
more that 11 minutes without changing magazines.bigpine
-
For sure, it’s not necessary to sit down at a Steenbeck. As I said, it’s kind of a grace note, to give you a visceral connection with the “metaphors” still in use. For example, “Hey Teach, why do they call it Final ‘CUT’ Pro?” “Well you see, they used to actually CUT a piece of film or a piece of tape.”
Doug D
-
I’d encourage everyone interested in this discussion to check out David Roth Weiss’s podcast Apple’s Final Cut Pro X: One BIG Love/Hate Relationship. He interviews David Lawrence, and they touch on several of the issues we’re discussing here.
It’s a three-part series:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/11421
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/11422
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/11423Walter 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 -
Although having more power and flexibility can improve the “story.”
If writers gained the ability to explore by cut and paste with word processing, might it have helped improve their writing by being able to venture down a path they might not have otherwise?The reader doesn’t see the improvement because they don’t know how the story would have been otherwise but the improvement (or change at least) is there.
-
Along the same lines, the Connected Clips and Connected Storylines make it much easier to move things together as vertical chunks along with the more traditional horizontal chunks. This mean you can cut a whole section with b-roll, titles, video and audio synced fx . . . and move the whole chunk someplace if needed. Building a story vertically is no longer something one is reluctant to do until the late stages since the whole vertical set of layers is connected to the “master” clip.
-
“This mean you can cut a whole section with b-roll, titles, video and audio synced fx . . . and move the whole chunk someplace if needed. Building a story vertically is no longer something one is reluctant to do until the late stages since the whole vertical set of layers is connected to the “master” clip.”
Talking about setting up a straw man – when was this ever hard?
I do this all the time without hesitation in FCP7 and improving it never made the top 100 of my yearly “wish list.” I bet if we did a search on the FCP forum it never made it to anybodies wish list becasue it was NEVER A PROBLEM.
What could be easier?? It’s called cut and paste – select the section your working on, shift-X, go to the place your going to put it, shift-V, done. Yes, you do have to put a moment’s thought into things like dissolves that are on the border of the selection, but come on — there were dozens of things that I really wanted upgrades to in FCP7, basic things like being able to mute the top video track without losing all your renders. The idea that this is somehow a major innovation makes me laugh.
The magnetic timeline – perfect for fixing things that was never a problem in the first place. Like “clip collisions” — oohhhh now there’s a scary term. But what is it really. Why would I EVER want to slide a clip into the same location as another clip without either rippling it or overwriting it? Is there some reason to want to hear 2 different audio clips play at the same time? What’s the point? I honestly don’t get it. But it sure produced a lot of oohhh’s and aahhh’s at the NAB sneak when he showed it on the screen. How about showing the source timecode of the clips on the storyline instead – or is that too pedestrian an idea?
New slogan – “Final Cut Pro X – it solves problems you never knew you had.”
End of rant.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions -
Interesting aspect discussed in those podcast is the fact that those new editors will have to start off learning descriptions of the processes that are COMPLETELY different than current industry standards. It is a very valid point to say that someone with only FCPX experience is going to be confused when they hear the words timeline, project and sequence, as they are used fairly globally now.
Perhaps FCPX is going to be a major contributor to confusion for those reaching out to a broader professional market?
Marvin Holdman
Production Manager
Tourist Network
8317 Front Beach Rd, Suite 23
Panama City Beach, Fl
phone 850-234-2773 ext. 128
cell 850-585-9667
skype username – vidmarv -
[Marvin Holdman] “new editors will have to start off learning descriptions of the processes that are COMPLETELY different than current industry standards.”
Is this really as big a problem as people are making out, I wonder? Many different applications use different names for the same thing but it doesn’t represent a major obstacle to learning them. Are you really not going to be able to move on from FCPX because you once learned that a sequence was a “project”? I somehow doubt it in most cases.
Not to say that Apple haven’t been particularly daft with their new nomenclature!
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up