Final Cut Pro X

Pause/Record/Flatulate

I’ve always loved editing. The way a story can be told an infinite number of ways, how the power of music can change the mood in a scene completely, how 1/24th of a second can make a difference between a good and a bad edit… it’s all magic.

When I got my first camcorder in the early ’90s I did what any aspiring editor would do: make animations with tortured Lego pieces, Star Wars characters, Boglins and a flatulance-heavy narrative. The only way to do it back then was to press the record button quickly on and off to record a frame; move the hapless Lego man closer to the Boglin’s mouth and press record on and off again. Hardly Wallace and Gromit, but everyone has to start somewhere.

Editing these masterpieces was another challenge, involving an expensive VHS recorder and heavy use of record and pause buttons. It worked though, it was magical, and my parents still watch these tapes with misty-eyed nostalgia. Thankfully I didn’t record over them with late-night films from Channel 4.

Debt

The expensive old days. (Image taken from Wide Open Camera)

Fast forwarding about a decade, I started working and proceeded to spend all spare money (and more) on technological goodies previously unreachable to me. I bought my first Mac and a digital camcorder. Editing was still haphazard though. Luckily for me (and my credit rating) Apple then released Final Cut Pro.

It has the dubious honour of being my first toe in the water of debt since I maxed out a credit card to buy it (yes, all £800 of it – I’ve always been one to actually buy software). It didn’t take long to start editing everything I possibly could – a holiday to Florida (the video was aptly called “Debt”), wedding videos (which can be great when done well) and the finest corporate videos ever made (in my opinion) for the company I was then working for.

However, there reached a point where I was filming far more than I was editing. Editing still took ages and just getting the video off the tape was soul destroying (any gap between scenes would create a break in the timecode and create badly synced audio). FCP ended up rarely used and I continued to amass MiniDV tapes that remain unedited pieces of nostalgia.

Video Killed The Radio Star

If you ask “What’s the best camera?” the oft-repeated answer is “The one you have with you“.

The same is true for video. These days everything is available on the Internet the moment it’s been seen by someone (usually in rough, unedited form). People blog using whatever media they can get their hands on. Millions of wannabe video journalists blog on YouTube (usually about Justin Bieber) and make cringingly embarrassing videos of themselves in the hope they’ll be shared and linked-to around the world. We’re too busy to edit, and certainly too busy to “log and capture” scenes from camcorder tapes.

These people probably don’t want even want to edit (I wish they would in many cases) – they just want to add a fade, a tacky title and maybe their lovingly-crafted ‘logo’ at the end. iMovie and the like are perfect for this.

Then there’s me. When I edit something I want to tell a story, but I also watch films of David Fincher and The Coen Brothers and love the colour grading, the music and the pacing. That’s the kind of stuff I want to add to my mini epics and that’s what FCP delivered.

FCP was embraced (eventually) by an enormous amount of professional editors and some amazing films have been edited using it (including those by the Coens and Fincher). It’s also used extensively in the broadcast field where its multi-camera support is apparently very good.

The last release of FCP (version 7) was July 2009; that’s a long, long time ago. What’s changed?

Telling a story is exactly the same. The Shawshank Redemption could feasibly have been edited in iMovie; it wouldn’t change its impact.

What has changed is that we carry around portable HD cameras with us, that indie filmmakers can make a film like Monsters with a tiny crew (and a lot of talent), that hard drive capacity has gotten even bigger and cheaper, all our computers are now 64-bit and we can download apps directly from the App Store without needing to wait for delivery (an impulse buyer’s dream).

X Marks the Spot

Apple have started from scratch and focused on the amateur/indie market with the combined accuracy and tact of a shark with laserbeam fitted to its head.

FCP X is much, much faster than before, importing video is quicker and cleverer, it’s only $300/£180, available immediately to anyone with a Mac and it has a Share to Facebook feature. (The pros love that).

The lack of tact comes from the fact that Apple have removed many of the features professionals need, that they’ve stopped selling the old FCP, that the new version doesn’t import existing projects and that they presented the new software as being the best thing since sliced bread at NAB – a conference for professional broadcasters and editors. What’s worse than hyping all these professionals (who are dying to have a faster, newer version of something they know and love) and then releasing – in their eyes – iMovie Pro.

But, to paraphrase Armageddon – they’ve done it before, they’ll do it again.

Mac OS X started from scratch and threw away established features, as they did with QuickTime and iMovie as well. Apple bought Shake, dropped the price by thousands of dollars and then just dropped the product.

FCP must have been pirated a lot by budding editors like myself. By making it more focused to us, cheaper and available instantly, far more people are going to take the plunge. And Apple are betting on the future of film being led by these young, enthusiastic editors – the kind that make a film like Napolean Dynamite, not the kind that make a film like Eat, Pray, Love (both edited in FCP; I bet Apple would be prouder of the former).

End (I should have edited more)

Apple will, apparently, add in many of the missing ‘pro’ features but for now, FCP X has given me far more inclination to make some new stories – and perhaps I’ll rediscover and edit some of my old tapes, too. And yes, I probably will use the Share to Facebook button.