Long Form Edit Methodology

Been using FCPX for some small protects and am now trying a bigger project. It has a mixture of actuality, sit down interviews and B-roll and a fair amount of footage. I am wondering if my approach, which I will describe below, makes seance. This is mixed with a number of questions.

The first question is how to use events. Apple seem to of designed them as time based (i.e. Day 1, Day 2 etc.) but as keyword collections seem only to be able to reference the current event this is extremely restrictive. Currently I have everything in the same event but I am sure there is a better way to use them. Maybe putting b-roll in a event, interviews in another and actuality in a third. Maybe one for stills and one for archive if there is a lot of this. I also create a event for projects and one for sync pools (director sometimes wants to see everything a character talks about and I can export these as a mp4 and send then to him ).

Dealing with the non sync stuff seems fairly straightforward using keyword collections. I am using reject to get rid of stuff which is not useful (the camera is often left running so rejecting the shots of feet etc.). Turning on Hide Rejected leaves the useful stuff as clips (ie. Breaking the clip that was a media file into several clips with the same name that are the non rejected bits). It is a real shame these new 'clips' can be renamed individually.

With sync (interview) material I am also going through it rejecting non-useful stuff but also splinting it up into question/answers. After each question has been answered I am hitting I then O to mark a single frame and hitting Backspace (to reject). This is creating a 'clip' for each question/answer. Logging the answers is what I was struggler with. Using favourites is what everyone was advocating but it is far to time communing. Mark selection, F, mouse down to favourite, double click, type favourite names, return, mouse back to clip.. Markers on the other hand are very quick to use. Command+M, type label and press return. Really need a similar thing for favourites.

Actuality is the really tricky one. I first reject total rubbish. Again markers seem useful.

It seems doing all the media organisation in the library before starting editing is the way to go. In FCP 7 I used to use sequences rather than bins as they allowed scrubbing but the browser scrubbing in X seem to work well.

The next bit is where I am unsure. Previously I would start cutting sequences but it looks like FCPX way of doing things is do everything on a single project, or do I create a project for each sequence. One solution I have found it to assemble everything and break sections as compound clips. This the advantage that I can easily see how things are layed out on timeline, and move sections around in groups. I can label the sections and easily find stuff. So I have compound clips called things like Hobblers, shipwrecks etc. I also sometimes spit clips and change there name or just rename clip if the bit I want to label is a clip or less. This seems a lot more flexible than doing it the library for some things as by this time everything is very timeline specific.

That seems to be it, any advice gladly received.

Ben

I would suggest making smart collections and using keyword collections, Final Cut Pro X is more about pre editing, than editing. The better you sort clips before editing, the smoother the editing process.

I would range out as you have been doing, then for day 1, create a keyword collection, have this keyword collection be part of a smart collection, so that as you create each range, it appears in the day 1. day 2 smart collection.

There is no limit to the number of smart collections, maybe do a number of passes, if you find you have way too many clips, then a 2nd pass, say a rating, 1 star--5 star, again smart collections, this allows for tight control of media.

Using the single frame method is really bad use of the tools, if you have rejected media, range this, press back delete, then select hide rejected range.

Use Favorites to start the process, in out good or bad clips. Once you have narrowed down, you will find the media much better.

With Smart collections you can create collections based on keywords, type of media and so on.

Agree with MsJustine. Keywords are the base to start from.

I create events for doc work based on location or shoot. So the shoot in the Bahamas goes in one event and the shoot in Australia goes into the next etc. You can do this by cities or location within a city etc. depending how the film is structured or shot.
I also create events for music and SFX separately. Makes it easier to find stuff.

Then I create Keywords per Event. There is no real rule but what seems logical for me for the film I'm editing. Once I finished one event I might copy keywords that I can use in the next event to that event before I start gain. Make use of the Keyword favourites for often used keywords that you can then apply by pressing control-1 to 9.
I also group those Keywords into folders. So all people keywords like Paul, Mary and Tim go into the people folder. Same as the interview keyword.
I mark every clip as a whole (we shoot file based) with the keyword for that person, even if he or she is only partly in it. The reason is speed and overlaps. Say Paul enters a room followed but Mary and she stays longer after he left. I would need to create several overlapping keywords if I would want to mark the exact section for each person. I would have to mark one section, keyword, mark another, keyword..Way too much work for very little gain. Select to whole clip and keyword it with Paul, Mary, location name etc - done.
Another folder might contain activities. Drive to work, at work, playing football etc. Another folder could be B-roll like city scape, spectators, work colleagues etc.

I can't stress enough that key is not to just mark the section the person, activity etc within the clip but the WHOLE clip. Think of it like you would tag archive footage. What keywords describe best the content of the whole clip. Important is that a shot can have multiple keywords to allow you to get to it from different queries without the need to mark all those different keywords separately by creating a multitude of sections for each clip.
As I go through I add keywords as I see fit. So the footage does inform my keyword choices. I do not use predefined ones. I also have a technical keyword folder with Audio, Video, HD, SD, GoPro etc. might be handy sometimes when the director asks for that GoPro shot.

Once I have all this I go through the footage and mark favourite sections of each shot and reject completely unusable shots (but only if the whole shot is unusable)
Marking whole clips doesn't work of course if you shoot on tape and have one 30 min clip...(or a lazy DOP who never buttons off. In this case find the logical points you would have buttoned off

Seems a lot of work but it makes the edit really fast because say I want to edit Paul at work I select the keyword for Paul or Work (or start a search where I select the keyword Paul and Work, Include all. If you do this often save as smart collection) and say show favourites. The resulting clips in the browser replicate what I have done before with select reels (sequences). I always look at these 'selects' in thumbnail view because I find it now 10x faster to find stuff visually than by written description or some clip name. And using the system more visually saves me tons of time clicking and typing!

If I need to look at stuff that I might have rejected I choose rejects only. Basically my base browser choice is between show favourites and hide rejected for a given keyword or smart collection of keywords. The other options are only used when needed.
Now that you can create smart collections at the library level you can also look for all shots with Paul even if he was at different locations.

Interviews we get transcript based on TC because thats the only way to work with them efficiently. Marking answers by keyword or favourite is just too much work and you still have to listen to the whole answer to find the best bit. And if you need a word to fix something you're in for a long search. And trust me if you need to find a person saying something on a topic that was possibly covered several times in the interview you are a million times faster reading or searching through a text doc than any software tool I have tried! Worth every penny and saves lot of editing time (hint for the producer)

I edit in scenes first. Whatever is a logical scene within the film. Once we get to next stage we copy-paste those scenes into longer timelines ( I use compounds as little as possible mainly because of the history of them not working well and I find it easier to work with individual clips rather than blocks of them. And I never had a real problem of large timelines bogging down) and build up the whole film eventually. You can put markers on the scene starts to find them quicker but by the time I get there I personally don't need them. Using markers for scenes and using the timeline index could be really helpful though.

Hope this is not to confusing and gives you some ideas. Please feel free to ask any specifics if something is unclear. Always find it hard to describe this stuff because it somehow is fluent process wile working and I adapt a lot on the go.

Happy editing
Carsten

Also remember we can now apply Smart Collections to a Library, which will search and filter all Events at once. Thus, you can collect all the same Keyword Collections in each Event in one place.