Misha Aranyshev
Forum Replies Created
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It is not news I cut. It is theatrically released feature films. The amount of thinking and editing in your head is enormous indeed. It starts with reading the script in pre-production if I’m lucky enough to get hired that early. It continues during production with shots coming in every day. But the next day they’ve wrapped the director comes and I have to show them the story that makes sense. Yes this part is mostly about the order the shots come. I can be sloppy in timing and matching shots at these point if the schedule is tight and the shooting ratio is huge but I cannot be sloppy in presentation. The story has to make sense. That’s what they expect to see and that’s what they pay for.
Then the director is on it for as long as he likes or as long as the producer foots the bill. Still it isn not a Babylon tower of stacked shots on the timeline and an endless list of sequences containing the same cut just with a few frames shaved off here or there in the browser. I must show him the alternate take the instant he wants and edit it into the scene the second he likes it. And I must undo and redo all these changes right away. Which I do without resorting to keeping copy of every minutely different variant. When recutting a scene don’t keep the older version. When you need to revert to it if it was good you’ll reassemble it on autopilot. If it wasn’t good chances reassembling it manually you’ll make it better. The versions you keep are the ones that screening were scheduled for and notes taken. There aren’t that many.
Then it is time to polish there is no time to make your project ramble. To ear the heart-beat and the breath of your film you must focus on the film itself, not on the difference between “most fine finest fine cut”, “fifth director’s cut”, “rainy afternoon cut” and “the one we did just for laughs cut”. You will get distracted, lost and frustrated.
Well, to make it short whatever you do on the timeline do it as fast as you can. Keep your eyes on the picture, not on the interface. That will leave you more time to think and it will let you cut better.
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I don’t have time to first create a mess on the timeline and then spend hours cleaning it up. There is usually a director or producer in the room or over or scheduled screening and the deadline. If he sees a kind of messy timeline you describe I’ll be fired. He can have all the messy timeline he wants for a tenth of what I charge.
Editing isn’t about the order in which shots come in. Film is not a comic book. Editing is about the exact time the shots come in, exact duration they stay on screen and exact time they go out. Magnetic timeline was designed by those who think a film is a comic book. It doesn’t respect timing. There are ways around it but constantly fighting the tool you use is not a way to work efficiently.
Magnetic timeline won’t discipline anyone. It is one of the things that looks cool at a first glance but feels the more restrictive and frustrating the more you work on it. Magnetic timeline behavior is nothing new and can be found in every other NLE, shipping or discontinued. But even in the most unorthodox from the design viewpoint NLE’s this mode can be easily switched off.
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[gary adcock] “(highend data management tools like the Fotokem’s NextLab do this on ingest) “
Both FCP and FCPX also read it just fine. It won’t help though to automatically put Scene_123A/Take_03 to track 1-8, Scene_123B/Take_02 to tracks 9-16 and Scene_123C/Take_04 again on tracks 1-8 in exported OMF unless I tell the app to do so, right? And the Audio Role for all of them is Dialog by the way.
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[gary adcock] “ASSIGNABLE AUDIO TRACKS! ” An update this summer will allow you to use metadata tags to categorize your audio clips by type and export them directly from Final Cut Pro X.”
“Production sound comes to me in BWF-poly files with a track for each character, a boom, an M+S pair and a production mix. I sync them to the picture takes and go on cutting the scenes. The production mix track is usually good enough so I just mute all other tracks. But I don’t delete them becuse when picture is locked I have to export each 2000 ft reel with all the sound. Almost every cut in there is either J- or L-cut so it is all arranged in the checkerboard fashion. There is also some M&E but this doesn’t complicate matters. So how exactly do I tag my production sound and how long would it take me?
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Can I buy non-magnetic timeline module?
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Limited number of slots is a genuine problem but still they were more than happy to sell ProTools with expansion chassis. Still do.
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Thanks! Great to hear! I’m definitely going to do so.
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I’ve figured it out eventually but thanks anyway. I got myself a nice “Reveal in Project” too!
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I’ve fired up Premiere as soon as I closed FCPX last week. My list of things I need to work is rather long so it took a while but I’ve found most of them. Now I want to learn how to access them from keyboard. You volunteered to help so please do.
The search for “Open” in Keyboard Shortcuts shows only “Open Project”. Eyeballing the list I don’t find many things either.
I know how to change tools via keyboard. What I want to know is how actually ripple trim a few frames from the head of a shot without a mouse.
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Open clip from Bin in Source monitor?
Select Clip in Timeline?
Roll, Ripple, Slip (can Slide)?