WHAT THE J-K-L!

I  have blogged about shortcut keys in the past and I am of the camp that customization  is more productive than using default keyboard layout, if you primeraly mouser this is probably not something that you need to read since your riding a horse and carriage in a Nascar race.

When I was recently on the FCPXGRILL I got lots of great feedback but the squeaky comment creates the most thought provoking. The honorable Chairman Meow had a reaction to my "normal" that made me re-examine a choice that I made years ago. This in turn got my brain churning on why some of the older folks in post have been so reluctant to explore some new approaches to FCPX. (let's not be clear I am not lumping Meow in the Old post hater group listen to his FCPXGRILL interview to be understand and be entertained simultaniously.)

His reaction to me changing the location of the JKL keys made me feel initially that I have been living in sin with FCP in my dark office space. This decision to move the transport keys all started when I took the avid bootcamp and the instructor, like most of the avid editors at the time, boosted that Final Cut Pro  (FCP 3 at the time) was great but the true power of Avid; after the hardware, was the ability to customize your keyboard. He made me take a bite of that "apple" and I have been using SDF for my transport ever since you could customize the keyboard in FCP. Ironically or weirdly enough, this comfort with this keyboard mod is from learning to type on a real physical keyboard, where you should rest your hands, left on the ASDF and right on JKL; . Since, most keyboards still have index nipples in the F and J keys, it is very easy to locate them in a dimly lit room. If you have ever typed on keyboard that has been manufactured without the F-J grippies, you understand how important they are to hand positioning every time your hands land on the wrong keys. So frustrating.

All this to say, moving these keys do affect and open you up to new ideas when it comes to increasing keystroke productivity. I slowly started to shift other keys like I and O keys to W-E to accomodate my marking ins and outs. Basically, any function that is a bread and butter function like zooming in and out, track size, next and previous edit; I would shift to my left side of my keyboard and lesser functions or functions that I like to slow down the speed of my editing I put on the right side. This forced me to pause and let my brain rest from the tendency to go really fast sometimes in NLE editing, which is a pro and a con of being a keyboarder. Not because you can go this fast means that you always should, thatjis why I build in some keyboard obstacles.

I know JKL has been a standard but the real question is why? Is it that maybe the programmer that layered out the first NLE was a vindictive lefty who stuck it to the man for living in this right handed world.  Maybe. I just know that having my left hand on the left side of keyboard and right hand on the most natural position for me.

Chris Fenwick, the host of the FCPXGRILL, does talk a lot on his podcast about bending to the keyboard shortcut that the programmers have layed out because " they must have thought about it". I'm not so sure that they are not just bending to legacy of previous NLE programmers. Moreover, I would argue that this is not necessarily the most the right way of do things. The programmers have made bad choices in the past, just look at  fcpx 10.0, clearly some bad choices have been made. Decisions that are from a non-editor perspective. So, I wouldn't assume that the motivation is one of functionality. It is clear to me that their should be at least 2 default keyboard layouts one for lefties and righties.

All this all made me think about FCPX and how some people in post still react to the newer way of thinking that just drifts from the common practice. There is still some pushback because it's not the way things have always been done, but does that mean that it's wrong to try to think different. Sometimes when you think different, try something completely different, you discover that there is a much better way of doing things. And soon, you'll be talking like an old man about "remember when we use to" ... cut physical film, output to magnetic tape, track based editing etc.

I am not saying that my way is better. For the way I work, trying something new makes me constantly rethink my way. I have thought about moving the JKL back but I am better of with SDF just where they are, on the left hand.

R is for REVIEW

Here is the last of my letter "R" Blogs, don't ask me why the letter "R".

Rarely in our business do have a chance to produce something that has a one-to-one effect on people. However, this project I could bring what we do best, entertain; and on top of that, this might actually help and educate new dads about being a 21st century father.

So, 2014 started with a bang, 3 and a little 1/2 projects, back to back, with lots of overlap,very busy at the Gorilla Productions. The one, I want to focus on and which I am very proud of is the Cribside Assistance website. 

The mix media project was a continuation of a passion project that started 4 years ago. I was a new dad with a newborn baby boy and I had just  went through all the prenatal classes, hospital birth and the crazy few months of new fatherdom. As most new parents do, I hunted around for information and advice on how to be a dad. There was a lack of information geared towards new dads. Coincidently, all my really talented creative friends had children around that same time and when I shared my experience with them, they understood some of my frustration. 

The frustration was that most of the material at the time was very mother centered. However, health professionals, doctors, wife, family and friends had an expectation that new dads need to actively participate in parenthood, basically not- Mad Men.

I approached my talented freelancer friends and we stated to research how to solve this problem.All our research lead us to Brian Russell's a Heath professional and fatherhood expert in Ontario. We got in touch with him and brainstormed a few projects. Finally,  Brian came up with an idea for a website with an automotive theme for new dads with articles and videos that were to become a resource geared to new dads. We had a tight deadline, since we were dealing with government funding but the team pulled it off with some cleaver filmmaker tricks to keep production value and quality. In 2010 we launched www.newdadmanual.ca with much praise and success.

Custom designed retractable USB key that includes all the videos from the site 

I was pleased when Brian came back with a proposal to do a phase 2 of the project. Working within his budget, I proposed that we revamp the website (overall new look, a restructure and some additional social media integration) and eventually we added some other media elements (USB keys and iBooks) to complete the package.     

Brian had assembled quite a group from a variety agencies that were involved in other branches of the same project. They were a great source of feedback and perspective on the content. The newer videos were focused on healthy relationships with you partner and the challenges of being a new parent. 

Also the in the new set of videos, we did 2 very powerful aboriginal pieces focussing on the challenges that this community is facing in North America. When we shot these videos the whole crew were very touched by the hard facts and realities that this community is facing. It was great to aid in giving the Aboriginal Dad a voice.

This project has gotten again some great feedback and I am very happy of me and my teams contribution to the project. Please share it with new families, I believe it is a great resource of quality information that is presented in an original way that I would of loved to have before I became a Dad.

* Oh and some under the hood stuff: Did this project start to finish FCPX. Since, I was producing it and I was going to be on set for the interviews. I was the DIT and Bcamera. So, I ingested with FCPX and at the end of each day too 20 mins to multi cam everything and rough organize the media. By the time, I got back to my suite, I was ready to screen and build rough cuts. Loving FCPX for this workflow. Finished, in Resolve my other new software mistress.

I was FCPX Grill -ed

If your feeling all alone as you edit successfully with FCPX on a professional level, you feel like your going against the grain, your the "Lone wolf" aka Bobba fett and everyone around you is snickering at your screen, well you should be listening to FCPX GRILL hosted by Chris Fenwick. Can't remember how I stumbled on the podcast but I did and became instantly a fan. Every week he has an ongoing conversations about the future of post productions with an obvious bias towards the future winner Final Cut Pro X. I must say that I agree. 

Chris Fenwick, was nice enough to invite me on his podcast to listen to my ramblings but I would have to say that you should revisit the past shows great discussions about the future of post workflows, old and newer editors experience with FCPX and even he has a Premiere editor on and they have a great discussion about the platforms. If your interested in post this is a must download. (2 other must check out are the Wednesday #PostChat  and the Red Shark newsletter that I have been loving these days)

So, as Everyone around you are flocking like lemmings to finalcutpro pro 8 (premiere) as Chris calls it and everyone is saying it can't be done in FCPX, as you can hear in the interview. This feels like deja vu for an older Post guy like myself. In 1999, I cut a 35mm short for Bravo! Canada on my final cut 2 system and everyone said "you won't pass the strict broadcast quality control", "this can't be done" and/or "you can't edit at home" said the Feature Film post house that transferred the Film to a Mini-dv deck that I had to provide because they didn't have on in house. After ignoring the nay sayers, it went to air without any notes from Broadcast. 

SIDE BAR. I am Bobba Fett, so I have to stay up to date on all platforms and I was just about to do a deep dive into Premiere CC when the login situation happened. I tweeted back and forth with them (@adobeSupport) but they really didn't reassure me more than "they fixed the problem" but never did answer my question "what's the contingency plan for the next time". As I have blogged before, as a freelancer you don't have the option to not deliver, so my tools have to be available at all times, even when there is a "Log in" server outage. This might be the wake up call to all Adobe flippers. 

R is also for REVISIONS

The dirty little secret about Final Cut Pro X are the revisions. 

I didn't jump on board on FCPX-D-day when many average editors and all the machine operators cried about there precious tools death. I laughed, I blogged and like in any situation I didn't panic. Panic is your enemy, in post especially. I took it easy, tried it and said to myself "wow this is crap". Like Robert Deniro in Wag the Dog said so eliquently, "They just didn't think it through".

I put it on the shelf and prepared for the worst, brushed up on my Avid skills, learned the basics of Premiere and then I picked FCPX up at 10.4. I bought it (just 300$ Canadian) which gave me the incentive to learn it. Then I edited a pro bono job it, so that I didn't have time pressure. Armed with my lynda.com subscription, I powered thorough the new concepts and started wrapping my head around the new way. I discovered that there was some method to the madness and like I had predicted they seemed to be adding the features but only the features that we (old post pros) were yelling about loosing. In retrospect this is a smart way of going about it. It is like purging all your belongings into a box (fcp7) then setting up your house again but only taking out what you really need. I do that with my office and realize that some stuff just stays in a box for months then I know if I really need this anymore. 

FCPX-D-Day

Before I get to its real power... I have to be Honest, they had me at multi cam, I had just finished 2 years of projects that had minimum 2 cameras in fcp6-7. Sidebar to this sidebar, editing multi cam is great feature and make it easier to get through tons of footage with the rise of the GoPro, DSLR and digital workflows the pros outweighs the cons of using it even in FCP 6 & 7. I truly love it and it renders a better product at the end because you get to do more of the creative editing. However, archiving, xmls in general have been a problem in FCP classic. All that is gone in FCPX, in my experience. The multi cam is quick process, it will save you time and it is very reliable especially in FCPX 10.1. Chapeau Apple.

Now, the unfortunate thing about fcpx is that you won't see how awesome it is working with it,   until you get to revision stage of your project (with exception of Multi cam and maybe ingesting footage, fast process). When your knee deep with THAT client. Yeah THAT client, the one that wants to see it before they can decide or the one who always ends the conversation with "this is the last change", you get who I am talking about. Or maybe it's you who just wants to want to restructure a whole timeline in a drastic way, "flip it on its head". Well, revisions, revisions, revisions is we're in my opinion FCPX is absolutely badass. The first time I got a list of edit revisions, I sorta gasped thinking the old way: pause, "okay, this is going to throw this out of wack, then I'll check that to make sure the beats still hit...."  I did 2 moves in FCPX and the bulk of the revisions was done. Whoa. Another 5 mins had passed and I had tweaked it to my hearts content. The similar revision in 7 would have taken double or triple the time, I figure and I have all the keyboard/Timeline  "Ku-Fu" down in FCP 7 (thanks to FCPX Grill for that expressions where do I send the royalties? Great Podcast so you feel less on an FCPX Island). And I consider myself a Power Keyboarder in FCP7, I ripple roll, Shift-Delete and all that good stuff. I have a T-Shirt to prove it. 

Final Cut Pro 1 Thank You survey T-shirt from Apple

And that is the magic sauce FCPX, all my dialogue sweetening moves quickly, blocks of edits modularly moved preserving all the small things that I did to make the first "final". Unfortunately, if you don't dive in and work your way to the revision stage of a project, you'll never get to know the joy that FCPX can bring you.

There are definitely still lots of features that they can add that could improve it but this is the unsung hero that doesn't get mentioned enough. If you do lots of revisions and you will know by looking at your export files if they have names like " name_final_13.1", you should be on FCPX bandwagon. 

Final Cut Pro 1 Thank You survey T-shirt from Apple (front Badge)

Finally, I think if your fairly organized or like things organized you'll see another stregth of the initial set up with the keywords and smart collections. I have some bad habits that fcpx has adjusted. I think a lot of the initial frustration for some folks is that if you work sloppy, it doesn't let you get away with it. Things get real messy real fast as projects grows in FCPX. However, when everything is organized, you'll be inviting the revisions. Bring it.

R is for Remote Post

Recently, one of my old time clients moved out there office building in downtown Toronto and it got me thinking about location, location, location of work and do you need to have an official office space. And, completely unrelated, recently lnkedin sent me an and anniversary notification, 15 years of Gorilla productioning full time, creating some pretty compelling content that is most of the time on the creative, interesting and challenging. Time flies when your own boss (and you the only employee). 

So with these two unrelated things in mind, I reflect and thought about how now most of my clients work remotely with me. 15 years ago, working remotely was frowned upon it was like not having a home phone. People just loved see some one "Jabba da Hutting" it in a darkroom. I think, there was something comforting in seeing someone at the controls of all this heavy expensive machinery sitting in a big chair surrounded by monitors editing away. 

As a freelancer, I had to put lot of kms on my bike to get to the locations, fire up the strangers edit suite, "make it familiar", sit (I edit standing up like Murch) and then I would have a producer and/or director sit with me all day "watching the paint dry" to slowly realize. "Wow this is fairly complicated, slow process, tideous and mildly annoying look over a little section of footage 30 times." The editor's burden. 

Many of those hours in the edit suite were spent being distracted by other employees of my clients visiting this dark refuge, teaching the client some basic filmmaking/editing principals, executing long round about edits only to realize that what you had suggested originally would have saved them and you lots of times. Most of the time this process would gain some respect in the craft of editing and resulted in building their trust in my work. But most of the time it's like watching a baseball; the person behind you starts thinking "I could do that" or "I get how this works" because it looks easy. Then sometimes they would try to do it themselves then realize that this wasn't for them and call me to put some more kms on the bike to fix it. 

Thankfully those days are behind me...Nowadays, people are much more savvy about the process of post, my clients respect what I bring to the table and acknowledge the time it takes to get it done right, it's not the dark art that it use to be. Thanks Apple. (No sarcasm)

Speaking of Apple, they were instrumental in making it easy for me to work at home, back in my day, it wasn't just frowned upon to edit at home, it was laughed at like you just informed someone that you were building a rocket to go into space. Apple's tech made it all possible and it was quite a niche market when Final Cut Pro Classic was a healthy cost effective alternative to the high-end systems and post houses. (Thanks apple, no sarcasm) They made everything more accessible, easier to operate and made people think they could do it all. (Thanks Apple, sarcasm) As editing systems got more mobile, people realized that sitting in a dark room and look at a screen as there emails backed up, they realized that they could be putting out more important situations. 

So, most of my clients took my suggestions. I sold them on how I am more focused and productive in my own space and you would get a better overall result. I would occasionally come in and have a sit down and review the cut with them, take some notes then go back home and make the tweaks. 

Eventually, my clients got the review copy via email using vimeo password locked links. I think they enjoy that since you can watch it and process the edit without the pressure of instant feedback and if you need to get more peoples feedback you don't need to cram into a room and have a creative mosh pit where there is 15 conflicting suggestions at the end of the tornado of talking and no concise plan is really made. 

All this to say that, today the idea of me editing remotly is what my clients prefer and I do too. There are more pros then cons and it renders a better final result and faster turnaround.

The only time that I have worked in a suite in the recent past, has been on a project were the producers don't trust me for some reason and/or have some "control issues". Which now I am wise enough to decline those situations because if you don't trust me with your project I should not be editing it. It only took me 15 years to learn that one!