My First FCPX Short

Attached my first short made with FCPX. Mondo Safari - a short adventure documentary...

So, this is my entry for a short competition that is usually based around wildlife (I won the last one, strangely enough).

This time I decided to go out of my comfort zone and made a mondo style documentary (where some scenes might be creatively manipulated or staged) and this is the first documentary where I have a narrator (though the narration is sarcastically pithy, and hopefully a bit droll).

Anyway, the theme for this competition was to make your own TV episode in 5 minutes:

So, I figured that there is a real lack of Biker / Wildlife documentaries with an Italian Mondo (circa 1960's) sensibility on the TV at the moment....so thats my TV show. Yes, this is a Biker Wildlife hybrid documentary with a mild Mondo aesthetic influence.

In this, the first episode of Mondo Safari, the 'Expeditioneer' goes off in search of the elusive, prehistoric, man-eating, Whale Headed Stork. On a vintage motorcycle.

I used a number of effects from right here (split screens courtesy of Simon Ubsdell), plus some basic grading from mLooks (film preset and 16mm preset),

The footage was shot on a Canon XLH1 and a GoPro Hero HD, all converted to ProRes before editing.

That was fantastic!
What did you use for the graphics, such as the red line traveling across the map? Was that Motion?

Hi Ben,

Thanks; I appreciate that!

I actually outsourced the graphics (the 2 map sections) to a guy, who made them up in AE.

That said I bought the Motion 5 Apple Pro Training book a while back, and I'm currently working through the lessons. Motion looks like it could get most of my effects work done in the future (I still can't believe a program that powerful is been sold for $50!).

Cheers,

Simon

Yep, here's an old edition of my monthly column I used to write about how to do it. I'll be doing an updated, cleaner version of this article for macProVideo soon, too.

www.eventdv.net/Articles/Editorial/Tutor...ple-Motion-72056.htm

That was a lot of fun Simon. Did you find that editing in FCPX took more time while you were getting used to it? Or have you gotten past the "thinking about what your fingers are doing" stage, and had more fun with it?

That was cool!
Yeah tell use about your experiences with FCPX.

Well done my friend. I love Africa (I did three tv docs in Tanzania, Namibia and Kenya), and the way you have presented this topic really has put a pleasant smile on my face. I have visited your website. If I have to do a gig in Uganda I will contact you.

Thanks for the replies folks. This short actually just won the competition it was made for, so I am pleased with the results.

Mmorache: Cheers! This edit came together very quickly in fact. I had been messing with FCPX for a few weeks doing small projects, and I actually re-edited an old project I had originally done in Premiere last year. So this was the first new project with an actual purpose I guess. I still have to think about what buttons I am pressing, and rely on the mouse a lot, but it was still fun to do.

Scubelicious: Thanks! I would say that I am happy with the whole FCPX experience; I have not had any real problems with the software so far. I find that the magnetic timeline gets you building rough cuts very quickly, and then you can come back and work on the fine details. Thats how it seems to work for me anyway.

Ronny: Thanks! The Africa 'bug' is a life long condition, so no doubt you will be back sometime!