[Simon Ubsdell]

[Jeremy Garchow] “I used to use string outs all of the time, only because it was the best way to handle all of the material in FCP7 (and Premiere). It was the easiest way to slog through lots and lots of footage. After a while, it becomes cumbersome, because you make many sequences, some for “organization” and some for the edit.”

I think it’s all ultimately about what makes you comfortable and gets rid of the mental clutter.

In this case, what constitutes mental clutter is what differs from editor to editor:

For you “too many sequences” creates mental clutter.

For editors like me it’s “too many bins/keywords/tags/markers/notes”.

I can totally accept that your objection to “too many sequences” is a real, lived experience. But then so is my preference for sequences over “proliferating bins, etc.”

I never find I have “too many sequences” because for me they are a way of reducing the “clutter” not increasing it.

For both of us the “clutter” that we prefer reduces the “clutter” that we dislike.

Does that make sense?

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Simon Ubsdell]

[Chris Harlan] ” I mostly agree with you, though I do believe there is a continuum be tween the two–at least with what I mostly do.”

Yes, you’re right. I overstated there, I’ll accept that. But you’re making a nuanced observation in a place that’s not terribly friendly to nuanced observations right now.

😉

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Simon Ubsdell]

[Bill Davis] “That the original post “as written” was pretty rude. “

Call me an unreconstructed Marxist but I choose not to rank one person above another according to their socio-economic status.

I would certainly not rank a bricklayer above a sculptor and I would not think highly of anyone who did.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Simon Ubsdell]

From the same article:

If you’re a subtractive editor, Grandma gets most of the footage, except maybe where snow splattered on the lens, where a direct shot of the sun flared the image out to blinding white, and where you fell over a pile of snowboards with the camcorder. The result: heeeere’s Susie, zigzagging back and forth and back and forth and back and forth across the slope in a numbing repetition brightened only by brief interludes of windmilling into the powder.

Damn!

So that’s why my videos of Grandma are so bad.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Simon Ubsdell]

[Michael Hancock] “It’s surprised me.”

I’m very glad to hear you have found it useful, Michael.

I didn’t mean to start a war here.

I just wanted to share a method that I have found extremely useful both practically and creatively over many, many years of editing across many different genres. A lot of the editors that I have trained and worked with have agreed as to its benefits which in my view are many and varied. Some will disagree and prefer their own method and that’s all fine by me.

And apologies to everyone for my clumsy bricklayer metaphor. I have great respect for bricklayers of all kinds whether real or metaphorical.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Simon Ubsdell]

There are several different ways of creating a spillmap for green screens, but the simplest way is just to subtract the red channel from the green channel.

How you do this is up to you, but you could use the Set Channels filter to set an instance of your footage to all Green with Full Alpha, the set another instance to all Red with Full Alpha. Set the Blend Mode of the upper Red layer to Subtract and you have your basic spillmap.

Again there are a lot of different ways you can go on to use it.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Simon Ubsdell]

[Erik Lindahl] “The GUI also suffers deeply from amnesia. In project A I want one layout, in project B a different one. It’s manual setup every time more or less (the project / bin setup windows primarily).”

Could you expand on what you mean by this?

I have numerous custom layouts that I can call on across different projects, and I haven’t yet encountered “layout amnesia”. The deep customisability of the Premiere UI is one of its attractions.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Simon Ubsdell]

[Bill Davis] “And every good editor must balance both – regardless of the tool.”

Hopefully “every good editor” will have explored the outer limits of both options before deciding where the “balance” lies.

Regardless of the tool.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Simon Ubsdell]

[Walter Soyka] “I, for one, would eagerly welcome that boredom.”

If this were indeed a forum not a colosseum, I would certainly oblige.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Simon Ubsdell]

[Mark Suszko] “Documentaries often take the opposite tack and are more additive”

It really depends on what school of documentary making you are looking at.

There are documentary makers who proceed entirely by subtraction.

“Additivity” is the dominant mode of thinking about editing, but it is by no means the only possible mode, or the only mode in active use around the world.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki