Lee Herbet has some good advice for cinematographers that need to edit, putting together a showreel for example.
Whilst editing video may not be the primary skill set for cinematographers, it certainly is handy for someone who shoots the footage to have an idea of how that footage is going to be manipulated.
Most cinematographers have a really good high level view of what goes on in post, after all, it’s an essential part of their jobs. But they may not do much editing themselves.
I was asked to create a short overview of Final Cut Pro for the Australian Cinematographer’s Society focusing on things that they may need to do in FCP.
The two main purposes I focused on where how FCP is really great for cutting showreels and data management.
For showreels, FCP is great because a cinematographer may have 2-3 years worth of footage that they’ve worked on that has been shot on multiple cameras, in multiple formats, in different frame rates and various resolutions. As you know, this is no problem for FCP.
As for data management, the new-ish proxy options and being able to easily decide where your data lives, or where you want to move it to makes it nice and easy for cinematographers to put all their footage together to send to editors.
I think we can all be better at what we do, if we walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. So hopefully this gives cinematographers a better insight into what we do, can’t be a bad thing. Now editors just have to spend a few weeks on set trying to light and shoot scenes and then we can all live in harmony. 😉
