They had just gone into the studio with Iron & Wine to film the re-recording of his classic tune “Flightless Bird, American Mouth” for the new Twilight: Breaking Dawn soundtrack.  To add to it, Marketa Irglova from The Swell Season came in to sing harmony on the the track.  They asked if I thought I could cut the video in the two weeks I was in town.  I said ABSOLUTELY!

Currenlty, WordPress.com doesn’t support VH1 embeds.  So if you wanna see it there here it is. The VH1 link has over 70,000 views already!

For those who don’t know, the UNC File Path is short for Universal Naming Convention and is basically a piece of metadata that tracks the folder directory location of every imported piece of media into Avid.  This is how, when you go to batch import, the Avid remembers where your imported Quicktime came from.  It records it in the UNC File Path.

So back to where I was.  Now that I have all my Quicktimes imported, I needed a way to display the UNC File Paths so that I could organize the media into separate bins.  The hard thing about this situation is the the metadata will not display in every type of Avid project.  Currently, I’m working in an SD 29.97 project since most of my media is HDV and DV.  When I go to my Bin Headings…

…and I try to select UNC File Path, it’s not an option for me.

Ahhhh! Why, Avid, why?  Why do you torment me by knowing this information and not displaying it?!?!?

Never fear, though.  When it comes to the task at hand, the Avid will give me everything I need.  Currently, the UNC File Path will only display in a 24p Avid Project.  ”But Rob, my project isn’t a 24p project?”  No sweat!  In current versions of Avid Media Composer, you can still open and view video media of any project frame rate in any other project frame rate.  That means that you can still take a copy of your bin and move it into a 24p Project, view everything, organize it into any order you want, and move it back into your native project when you’re done.

Do like I do: create a 24p project with the Film radio box checked.  I called mine UNC File Path, so that I can keep it forever.

Now, make a copy of your bin that has the media you want to see the UNC File Path for, and copy it into your new 24p project.

Do the same thing as above: go to select your Bin Columns, and then, like magic, it appears.  Yay!  Go to town!

Now a quick caveat to this tip.  Thus far, I have not been able to make the Avid display this bin column in every type of project.  My tip is limited to bin and clip organization.  If for some reason you need to create any media, do NOT do it in your 24p project.  Sort the master clips into new bins and bring it back into your native resolution project.  Sure, it’s not perfect, but it’s better than what I was doing before I figured this out.  Happy Editing!

PS – Oh yeah…hey Avid!  Can you fix this please?  I shouldn’t need a work around.  Lovingly, Rob.

First, “A Handy Guide For The Easily Distracted”, the vignette I cut with Miranda as a promotional piece for her new film The Future.  Now that I’ve found an embedable link for the video, I decided to repost a note about it.  Check it out!  Then click the link below it to visit the original site with the posting and read a great interview with her about her work.

Click here to read her interview.

Next, a music video I cut featuring Reggie Watts. This video was finished a few months ago, but I haven’t had the time to write about it.  The band featured in the song is Eagle And Talon, a super-awesome duo producing some great tunes.  Shot by Catherine Goldschmidt and edited by me!

Lastly, the 2011 Teen Choice Awards!  Yay!  Harry Potter was the big winner at this year’s awards, so they asked me to cut a tribute package for the film to close the show.  It got a great response and even a mention in the Hollywood Reporter and other news sites.  Check it out here.  You can also watch the presentation from the TCA below it.

Recently, she and I worked together on repurposing a deleted scene from the film into a vignette for Nowness.com.

MIRANDA JULY on NOWNESS.COM

(Since embedded videos don’t always work on WordPress, click the link!)

And if you haven’t watched the trailer for the movie, here it is:

Right after Apple’s well-documented, well-staged NAB presentation of the new features of FCPX, I went right to WordPress and started drafting an article with the title: “What if FCPX is not awesome?”  I then proceeded to go right back to my 60-hour-a-week gig with little time to think about blogging.  Smart, Rob.  That was months ago.  Now that I’m back to funemployment, all I can think is how I wish I had finished that article.  Instead, I’m here with my late-to-the-game opinion.

The thoughts I wanted to get down on paper the internet were a few musings on how big a gamble it was for Apple to completely re-write FCP and how many changes it could create in our industry if it was a flop.  I wanted to talk about how, if indeed FCPX was indeed not awesome, it was going to tarnish Apple’s reputation as a company of not only great consumer apps like iPhoto but also high-end professional ones like Final Cut Pro and Logic.  I was going to prognosticate that Adobe and Avid would be jumping for joy, but I was also going to say how worried I was if suddenly our entire post-production ecosystem is devastated.

So now I say, with no great joy and without getting into too much more hyperbole: FCPX is not awesome.  I won’t go into listing out how FCPX has major problems.  Chances are, if you ended up here, you already know most of the issues.  If you need a refresher, check here, here, here, here, and here, and read a simple list of what it simply does not do anymore here.  Or you can just watch this video made by Conan O’Brien’s editing team (shouts to @robtheeditor and @ddandthecups) which basically sums up everything you need to know about the consensus opinion:

So then where does this leave us?  Well, for starters, disappointed.  I have been using Final Cut Pro since 1.0, the very beginning.  It was my first real introduction to non-linear editing.  Hell, I did ten times my film school projects in my dorm-room on FCP than I ever did on any of the school’s editing stations.   I certainly knew more about FCP then Avid or Adobe when I left school.  FCP was a welcomed addition to the marketplace because it was relatively inexpensive, easy to use, and robust.  To see it now neutered, that’s a hard pill to swallow.

But we’re here now, so eventually we must reach the last stage of grief: acceptance.  We must accept that now there is one less professional-grade editing software on the market.  Our baby has been put out to pasture.  But lo-and-behold, part of me actually feels relieved and excited about the future of post-production.  Could it be that Apple has actually helped us?  ”But Rob, whatever do you mean?” you say.  The key is this: barriers to entry.

About a year ago, I wrote a two-part piece on getting into the Motion Picture Editor’s Guild (Part 1, Part 2).  In it, I wrote about inexpensive non-linear editing systems and the problems that poses for making a living as an editor:

Experience aside, one once needed access to extremely pricey equipment to be able to hone one’s skills and practice as an editor. This provided an extra barrier to entry for anyone trying to get into the business. With the introduction of [Final Cut Pro], it has become easy for any person with about $5000 to be able to create a broadcast-capable editing system. [...] That has made it easy for young kids in high school and college (I’m speaking about yours truly and many following after me) to learn the skill of editing quite easily.

But today, it seems the tide as shifted back somewhat.  Not completely, but somewhat.  At the time I wrote that, the $5,000 number came from my loose budgeting around a Mac laptop, a copy of Final Cut Studio 3, some extra RAM and peripherals, and maybe some hard drives to boot.  I was not considering the $2500 price-tag for Avid Media Composer or Adobe Master Suite.  It seems now, though, that my math should be adjusted, because I would never call the current version of FCPX broadcast-capable.  And given that math, it seems that a broadcast-capable edit suite just went up in price.

In the past, many new post houses and editors chose Final Cut Pro over Avid or Adobe because of budget.  There were always small arguments to be made for which fit the required workflow the best but, in truth, all three basically provided the same functionality.  The exception to this was that FCP cost much much less.  Since the release of FCPX, though, the paradigm has changed.  Now, I’d be willing to bet that the average beginning filmmaker will spend their money on the new FCPX while most professionals and production companies will focus on Media Composer and Premiere.  And why shouldn’t they?  FCPX is easy to use and does a lot of thinking for you, while Adobe and Avid provide support for nearly every type of production and the architecture of the software is scalable up to the largest projects.  But, because not every level of editor requires the same software, us professionals can breath a sigh of relief about some young kid with a Mac and FCP asking for half our rate and thusly eating our lunch.  It’s not that easy anymore.

Before, someone could buy FCP7 and cut their home movies on it while reading the press about how Walter Murch and the editors from The Social Network used the same software to edit Oscar-winning films. (Side note: has anyone interview these people about for their thoughts on FCPX?  Can someone please get on that? Send me a link!)  While that was great to imagine, believing that was simply drinking Apple’s Kool-Aid.  Not all editors need the same software.  Here’s an example: in-the-field documentarians and journalists don’t need a particularly robust editor.  They just need to get their footage in, view it, tweak it, and spit it out fast to Youtube, CNN iReport, and so on.  They don’t need advanced media-management tools for dealing with terabytes of footage.  They don’t need power-windows and secondary color-correction effects.  They don’t need the ability to export data and sequences for Pro-Tools, Resolve, or Smoke.  And now there’s software to serve their needs.  This is good.

But this new version of Final Cut Pro is also good for editors who need more advanced tools, in the way that it pushes professionals to harder-to-reach software.  There used to be two levels of software: consumer and professional.  Now, though, Apple has created a new class of software that requires an intermediate-level knowledge of editing and post, but not a mastery.  And so, for those of us out there who are required to be masters, the talent pool just got smaller.  And that’s also a good thing.  Now, I don’t need to look over my shoulder as much, wondering when the next development is going to take away the need for an Assistant Editor, or whether some new hotshot film director is just going to cut out the need for an editor entirely and cut their projects themselves.  Apple is revolutionizing the prosumer market, and there’s no shame in that.  From where I sit, the more prosumers we have, the more it separates me from everyone else.

PS: Just caught this as I was writing this, from the ever-excellent Revision 3 show Film Riot.  It’s another good primer on the good and bad of FCPX, and recommends it exactly to who the software is targeted to: the beginner.   Please let me know what you think in the comments.  I’d love feedback on my thoughts.  Also thanks to @therealjimhall for his feedback.

One other small post-script: I fear for the life of Aperture and Logic.  If I use those programs on a daily basis, I’d be very afraid of this trend.

Hard Drive/Avid MediaFiles/MXF/1

On every hard drive where you’re currently carrying Avid media, your media lives in this folder labelled “1″. But did you know that you could rename this “1″ folder to something more project-specific?  Apparently, as long as the folder is within the Avid MediaFiles/MXF folder structure and there are Avid Database files in there (those two MSM files in the folder with all your media), you can name your folder whatever you want.

But when would this come in handy?  If you’re managing multiple projects, or multiple phases of a project, such as offline and online on the same drive, this will be truly helpful.  That way, if you ever need to consolidate, manage media, or do anything when you only want to affect one project’s media and don’t want to manage it in the Avid Media Tool, you have set yourself up to do this very easily.

As a example, I was recently editing a music video on my laptop.  The media was stored locally on my internal hard drive.  Another project came up and I wanted to be able to keep the other media on my hard drive too.  So I took my current “1″ folder, which I knew was only media from my music video, and I renamed it “Music Video”.  Then I imported the media from my other project.  When there isn’t a “1″ folder in the Avid folder structure, Avid will automatically create one for you when creating new media, so when the media was done importing, I simply renamed the newly created “1″ folder to the name of my other project.  And bang, two folders, two projects.  This came in handy when I wanted to take the music video to online on another system.  Without needing to consolidate or manage media at all, I just grabbed my “Music Video” Avid MediaFiles folder and copied it to a new hard drive.  No Media Tool necessary.

Here is an example of how I have my current work set up:

PS – Just a note: this only works to my knowledge on versions of Avid that use the MXF folder structure.  I have not investigated this on old (but still perfectly useable) OMF-based systems.

Kirby asked if I would create a video detailing Quentin Tarantino’s influences on Kill Bill, which he describes as QT’s remix master thesis.  He passed me some Quicktime files he had already pulled for his video along with some resources for me to seek out more information.  On a note about the managing of media and collaborating, it should be pointed out that since Kirby and I don’t live in the same city, we did all of our conversing online.  We’ve never met and never spoken on the phone.  We’ve only corresponded via email and Twitter, and passed cuts and source material back and forth only using Dropbox and his FTP.  I think that’s a pretty fascinating case study in modern filmmaking.

So without further adieu, Kirby’s video and my video.