The Craft of the Cut

Marios Chirtou and Mark Riley are London-based filmmakers with more than 20 years of experience in the broadcast TV industry. Their movies and music videos have been screened at numerous film festivals around the world and broadcast on BBC, ITV, and MTV. They designed The Craft of the Cut for aspiring editors to develop their skills using the short film Pranks.

Foreword xix Introduction 1 Who This Book Is For 1 What This Book Offers 2 How to Use Th is Book 3 Part 1: Preparing to Edit CHAPTER 1 Familiarizing Yourself with the Film 7 Reading the Script 9 Story and structure 9 The characters 11 Working with Reports and Logs 12 The continuity shot list 13 The continuity script 16 Your Role as Editor 17 CHAPTER 2 Final Cut Pro X Essentials 19 Getting Up and Running 20 Locating your fi les on the Mac 20 Considering media storage 21 Copying the media to your hard drive 22 Exploring the Interface 23 The Event Library 25 The Event Browser 25 The Project Library and Timeline 26 The Viewer 27 The Toolbar 28 The Inspector 29 Working with Keyboard Commands 30 Essential keyboard commands 30 The Command Editor 31 CHAPTER 3 Importing Media 35 Setting Import Preferences 35 Organizing 36 Transcoding 37 Video 38 Audio 39 Importing the Rushes 40 Creating new Events 40 Importing files 42 Keeping an eye on background tasks 44 Understanding how Events are organized 45 Grouping Events 46 Importing Media from Other Sources 47 File-based cameras 47 DSLRs 49 Tape-based cameras 50 iMovie Projects 52 CHAPTER 4 Organizing and Preparing Media 53 Viewing Media in the Event Browser 53 Working in Filmstrip View 54 Working in List View 56 Skimming clips 58 Playing selections 59 Marking In and Out points 61 Evaluating the Rushes 62 Developing a strategy 62 Selecting Favorites 63 Rejecting clips 65 Removing ratings 65 Naming clips 65 Filtering clips 67 Using Collections to Organize Your Footage 69 Working with automatic collections 69 Assigning keywords 71 Deleting keywords 72 Working with Keyword Collections 72 Finding your footage 73 Creating Smart Collections 74 Organizing Collections into folders 75 Working with Metadata 75 Working with metadata in the Inspector 75 Customizing metadata views 76 Customizing metadata properties 78 Assigning Roles 80 Part 2: The Edit CHAPTER 5 The Assembly Edit 85 Understanding Projects and Timelines 85 Creating new Projects 86 Duplicating Projects 89 Understanding Storylines 91 Compiling the Assembly Edit 91 Appending clips 93 Performing overwrite edits 94 Performing insert edits 95 Working in the Magnetic Timeline 96 Navigating in the Timeline 99 Changing the clip appearance 100 Using the skimmer and playhead 101 Keyboard navigation in the Timeline 101 Finding clips with the Timeline Index 102 Using markers and to-do's 104 Using placeholders 107 CHAPTER 6 Editing the Rough Cut 109 Trimming Clips 110 Performing a Ripple edit 111 Performing a Roll edit 113 Performing a Slip edit 114 Performing a Slide edit 115 Using the Precision Editor 116 Manipulating Media in the Timeline 118 Cutting clips with the Blade tool 118 Performing a three-point edit 119 Replacing clips 120 Auditioning clips 121 Mind the Gap 124 Working with the Position tool 125 Making the Connection 126 Connecting clips to the Primary Storyline 127 Working with Connected Clips 129 CHAPTER 7 Completing the Cut 131 Adding Cutaways 132 Secondary Storylines 132 Manipulating clips in a Secondary Storyline 133 Working with Secondary Storylines 134 Breaking apart clip items 136 Adding audio clips to the Timeline 136 Compound Clips 137 Working with Compound Clips in the Timeline 138 Working with Compound Clips in the Event Browser 143 Adding Transitions 145 Adding simple dissolves 146 Changing transition durations 147 Selecting transitions in the Transition Browser 148 Manipulating transitions in the Inspector 149 CHAPTER 8 Editing Audio 153 Accessing the Music and Sound Browser 154 Working with Audio 154 Using the audio meters 157 Controlling audio volume 159 Expanding and detaching audio 160 Syncing double-system sound 162 Creating audio fades 163 Making Audio Enhancements 165 Using equalization 166 Fixing audio problems 169 Part 3: The Craft of the Edit CHAPTER 9 Setting Up the Story 175 Th e First Act 176 Evaluating the footage 178 Exploring the edit 178 Scene 2 179 Scene 3 189 CHAPTER 10 Cutting Dialogue 199 Dialogue Scene One 200 Evaluating the footage 200 Exploring the edit 202 Dialogue Scene Two 210 Evaluating the footage 210 Exploring the edit 211 CHAPTER 11 Editing Action 223 Th e Staircase Sequence 224 Evaluating the footage 224 Exploring the edit 225 CHAPTER 12 Building the Climax 245 Th e Final Act 246 Evaluating the footage 246 Exploring the edit 247 Part 4: After the Edit CHAPTER 13 Building the Soundtrack 265 Replacing Dialogue with the ADR Files 266 Cleaning Up the Audio 268 Adding Ambience and FX 273 Incorporating the Music Cues 274 Constructing Your Own Sound Design 276 Creating a Surround Mix 278 CHAPTER 14 Working with Effects 281 Exploring the Built-In Eff ects 282 Transforming images 283 Trimming and cropping images 284 Creating the Ken Burns eff ect 286 Distorting images 287 Animating with keyframes 287 Working with the Animation Editor 289 Creating Effects for the Movie 290 Flipping Shots 291 Creating a camera flash effect 292 Creating freeze frames 293 Retiming Clips 295 CHAPTER 15 Applying the Finishing Touches 299 Color Correction and Grading 300 Fixing color balance issues 300 Color matching between shots 301 Manually Color-Correcting Shots 302 Working with scopes 302 The Waveform Monitor 303 The Vectorscope 303 The Histogram 305 Working with the Color Board 305 Using color masks 308 Using shape masks 310 Adding Titles and Credits 313 Working with titles 313 Adjusting titles in the Inspector 314 The Title pane 314 The Text pane 315 Creating the opening credits 315 CHAPTER 16 Sharing and Exporting Your Movie 319 Working with the Share Monitor 320 Sharing Movies 321 Sharing to the Media Browser and Apple devices 321 Creating DVD and Blu-ray discs 323 DVD 323 Blu-ray 324 Publishing to the Web 325 Exporting Movies 327 Exporting with Compressor 329 Understanding the Compressor workfl ow 330 Creating chapter markers for DVD and Blu-ray 331 Exporting to XML 333 Part 5: Appendixes APPENDIX A Resources 337 Red Giant 337 CrumplePop 337 Noise Industries FX Factory 338 Intelligent Assistance 338 X2Pro Audio Convert 338 APPENDIX B What's on the DVD? 339 System Requirements 340 What's on the DVD 340 Using the DVD 341 Troubleshooting 342 Customer Care 343 Index 345