#28 Wk20 - Editing Lab 1

Episode 28 begins with comments from episode 27 regarding the idea of context

I offer my Ballpark view philosophy and consider some ideas for adding variety to the podcast thru

• Interviews
• Editorials

Audio Mixer

We get a quick introduction to the audio mixer in FCP including how to
organize the tracks in the mixer environment without changing the order of the audio tracks in the timeline
recording on the fly mixing changes using keyframes
adding Audio Mixer buttons to the timeline
axporting audio to Pro Tools and Soundtrack Pro

Firewire Firewire Firewire

I note a couple pitfalls to avoid when dealing with external drives
No USB capture in FCP
Reformat your drive when you get it out of the box

• Use the Disk Utility in Applications/Utilities
• It's simple and fast

Finally, I mention visiting the Bison and Alpaca ranches of New England for some B-roll

#25 Wk17 - Final Cut Pro

This is the first week of the Final Cut Pro module. Tuesday night was a special topic class, separate form the module.

Our speaker was Robert Patton Spruill, director of Squeeze and a documentary on Public Enemy which is in final production.

He brought some fresh perspective on how to live your life as an independent filmmaker. I also appreciated his perspective on the program at CDIA versus, Emerson College, where he teaches as well.

Federico Muchnik, the video program director is our instructor for the Final Cut Pro module. He has an easygoing style that he uses effectively to cut through all the mucky details and focuses specifically on the need to know stuff for filmmakers. We’re covering a lot of ground in a short time, the point is that we’ll do the real learning once we start cutting. I cover the things I think are most important to the editing workflow.

Somehow I got into a rant about archiving files. It’s definitely something you need to consider before you go to far into a project. Finally I bring up an important point about capturing video. Don’t capture video to an external drive connected via USB. Just don’t’.