Loreak, the official Spanish submission in the best foreign language film category for the 2016 Oscars has already received many great reviews. The editor, Raul Lopez Romero tells us how the film was shot on a Red Epic at 5K, then ingested and edited with Final Cut Pro X running on a previous generation 2009 Mac Pro.
There are a few things that make this film worth noting. It is the first Basque-language film that Spain has selected for its official submission to the Ocars. It was also the the first Basque-language film to screen at the prestigious San Sebastian film festival and that success has led to many impressive reviews around the world.
And of course, the interest for us is that Loreak was cut on Final Cut Pro X. The editor, Raul Lopez Romero very kindly put together a short description of his FCP X workflow on the film.
Before we get into Raul's post production process, let's take a look at the trailer for Loreak.
My Journey to Final Cut Pro X
In the past, I worked with Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere on Windows and, even though the apps were not bad, I had a lot of problems with the PC OS itself. I’m talking about 10 years ago, 2005 approximately, that’s when I switched to Mac and I started editing with Final Cut Pro until today.
In April 2013 I started working on the movie “Loreak” and I considered editing it with FCP X. I had been working with this new version of the app and it looked like a good option for this movie. The producer didn’t see it that clearly since we didn’t have any other films to reference that had been edited with FCP X and, at that time, the app was lacking some functionality. It did look like it was coming together quickly with the fast pace of the updates.
Coming from FCP 7, the advantages that FCP X was already offering looked interesting to me because of the simplicity of executing edits and that made it really accessible to the directors of the movie. I like that at any given time the director of the movie can get in front of the computer and change any take and FCPX, because of its simplicity of execution, makes that possible.
Although I had already worked on several projects with FCP X, I had not edited a feature length movie with it yet and I didn’t know how the app would behave with larger sequences.
A month before we started editing the movie we made sure that once it was finished in FCP X we wouldn’t have any problems exporting it to any other application that was going to be used to grade and finish the movie. We looked for a way to export an FCPXML of the project for video and to export an OMF/AAF for audio. I used Marquis X2Pro Audio Convert for that, because with FCP X you can’t export AAF straight from the app.
I had a 2009 Mac Pro 2.26 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon with 20GB RAM — enough to edit with ProRes Proxy. I was lucky enough to work on the assembly of the movie with 2 other editors, Laurent and Egoitz. We all prepared a first assembly of the movie and they worked with FCP X on an iMac and a Macbook Pro connected to USB3 hard drives containing the media. They were basic setups, but enough to edit single scenes of the movie.
The movie was shot on RED Epic 5K. The files were imported straight to FCP X and then all converted to ProRes Proxy to start work. That process was achieved at the end of the day so as to not slow down the editorial process. It was better to let the footage transcode overnight and have everything ready the next morning.
We started the assembly on the very first day of shooting. The three of us worked throughout the 6 weeks of shooting. We received the RAW files everyday from the previous day, checking everything from that day of shooting. We synchronized audio and video in FCP X and we were quickly editing the scenes shot on the previous day.
A week after shooting was over, we had the first assembly of the movie to show the directors. Weeks later, we were able to finish the movie in FCP X without any problems, exporting an XML and creating an AAF as expected.
All post of the movie was done at the post house IRUSION where they graded and made the VFX for “Loreak" with Autodesk LUSTRE.
At that time FCPX 10.1 still wasn’t available. The app has changed a lot in these last 2 years, and now it’s even more comfortable to work with 10.2. I hope it keeps going this way!
Many thanks to Raul for his story and we must also mention Marc Bach who very kindly did the translation.
I am the Editor-in-Chief of FCP.co and have run the website since its inception ten years ago.
I have also worked as a broadcast and corporate editor for over 30 years, starting on one inch tape, working through many formats, right up to today's NLEs.
Under the name Idustrial Revolution, I have written and sold plugins for Final Cut Pro for 13 years.
I was made a Freeman of Lichfield through The Worshipful Company of Smiths (established 1601). Though I haven't yet tried to herd a flock of sheep through the city centre!
Current Editing
2020 has been busy, the beginning of the year was finishing off a new property series (cut on FCP) for Channel 4 called The Great House Giveaway. I also designed and built the majority of the graphics as Motion templates. It has been a great success and the shows grabbed more viewers in the 4pm weekday slot than any previous strand. It has been recommissioned by C4 for 60 episodes, including prime-time versions and five themed programmes. The shows have also been nominated for a 2021 BAFTA.
Although both were postponed to later in the year, I worked again on ITV's coverage of the Tour de France and La Vuelta. 2020 was my 25th year of editing the TdF and my 20th year as lead editor. The Tour was the first broadcast show to adopt FCPX working for multiple editors on shared storage.
BBC's Snooker has played a big part in my life, I've been editing tournament coverage since 1997. I'm proud to be part of a very creative team that has pioneered many new ideas and workflows that are now industry standard in sports' production. This is currently an Adobe Premiere edit.
Covid cancelled some of the regular corporate events that I edit such as trade shows & events. I was lucky however to edit, from home, on projects for Amazon Kindle, Amazon Black Friday, Mastercard and very proud to have helped local charitable trust Kendall & Wall secure lottery funding.
As for software, my weapon of choice is Final Cut Pro and Motion, but I also have a good knowledge and broadcast credits with Adobe Premiere Pro, MOGRT design and Photoshop.
Plugin Design & Development
I'm the creative force behind Idustrial Revolution, one of the oldest Final Cut Pro plugin developers. It hosts a range of commercial and free plugins on the site. One free plugin was downloaded over a thousand times within 24 hours of release.
I also take on custom work, whether it is adapting an existing plugin for a special use or designing new plugins for clients from scratch. Having a good knowledge of editing allows me to build-in flexibility and more importantly, usability.
FCP.co
Now in its 10th year and 4th redesign, running FCP.co has given me knowledge on how to run a large CMS- you are currently reading my bio from the database! Although it sounds corny, I am pretty well up on social media trends & techniques, especially in the video sector. The recent Covid restrictions has enabled live FCP.co shows online. This involves managing a Zoom Webinar through Restream.io to YouTube and Facebook.
The Future
I'm always open to new ideas and opportunities, so please get in touch at editor (at) fcp.co. I've judged film competitions, presented workflow techniques to international audiences and come up with ideas for TV shows and software programs!
