Last weekend I spent a lot of time editing video — on three different films with three different editing programs.
Who does that? Call me crazy.
But I have my reasons. I’m working on a few different projects and am testing out filmmaking processes. I kinda geek out over efficiency.
I love testing things out and figuring out the most efficient way to get something done. There’s good reason for that: I have a long list of stuff to do and not a whole lot of time to do it. So I’m testing and experimenting, trying to find a better work flow.
For years I worked in FCP and it served me well. But when FCP X came out, it wasn’t backwards compatible. So I slowly started to switch to Adobe Premiere.
When I switched back to FCP to work on an unfinished project last weekend, it was totally jarring. The differences are significant. It took me a while to get over the shock, and dust off my memories of working in the program — even though it wasn’t that long ago that I last used it. That makes me realize how comfortable I am in Premiere now, which is pretty cool. For those keeping track, that’s two of the three editing programs.
The third video editing program I used over the weekend was iMovie — the app on my cell phone, not the software on my iMac. Obviously, editing on a phone is a big switch from editing on a computer. But the switch from a very beefy program with oodles of control to an over-simplified app is, well, frustrating. (That should’ve been expected, I suppose.)
I’ll continue exploring the iMovie app as it relates to my iPhone filmmaking efforts. After spending some time in the app editing a three-minute short film, I found that it actually gave me more control than I thought possible on an iPhone. If I’m committed to an all-iPhone production, I’ll have to fight the urge to bring video into Premiere, where I can move quickly and have the control I want.
Video editing is a complex, beautiful art. I’ve written about it plenty of times. I’ll likely write about it plenty more.