Feb 24

Sharing Final Cut Pro X Projects

A lot has been written on the subject of how to share Final Cut Pro X (FCP X) projects. Some say it can’t be done. Others say it can be done, just with caveats. I’m here to tell you that after much experimentation, I have figured out how to make FCP X do pretty near precisely what FCP 7 does for media management.

Let me set up what I need to do. My upcoming project, Month of the Novel Season 2, is planned to be edited on FCP X by two editors, myself and my co-editor Ruth. We are both long-time users of FCP 7, and we used it to edit Season 1 of the show. Before we could switch to FCP X, I needed to find out if a few things were still possible. Here’s our workflow from Season 1 that we’re hoping to keep for Season 2:

  • Shoot the series in Georgia. While there, load the footage to Ruth’s computer.
  • I travel back to my home state, Illinois, with a copy of the project and media on my external drive.
  • Ruth and I share project files back and forth as we cut episodes and review each other’s work, making changes on either end.

Ruth and I are very collaborate editors. We often make changes to each other’s edits, and we tend to divide work according to individual strengths when it comes to creating additional media such as titles, visual effects, and so forth.

This posed a problem where FCP X was concerned. I had been led to believe from the sharing tutorials I’d found that it was impossible to add media to a shared project after initially copying the event. I didn’t want to deal with making a new event to send every time I added another file to the project, but that seemed to be the only option. But it’s not! I recently spent a few hours extensively testing how FCP X handles sharing, simulating two different computers with a couple of external hard drives that I could completely unmount. Here’s what I found out.

Read More »

Posted in Editing, Tips and Tricks | Tagged , | 2 Comments
Jan 16

Help Fund Month of the Novel Season 2

We’ve been posting up a storm lately over at the Month of the Novel blog. There have been interviews with the cast and crew, concept art designs, and now it’s time to post about our Indiegogo fundraising campaign.

This is new ground for the Phantom Moose crew. We’re doing a fundraiser for the first time. We’d appreciate it if you’d help make our first time great, because we are really excited about the possibilities added by some extra production budget. Check out the full blog post, then head over to our Indiegogo page to see how you can help us make our best production yet.

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Nov 28

A New Website

Hello, everybody! I’d like to invite you to visit my new website, Fix My Story. It’s going to be the new home of Finding the Core of Your Story, and I’m also doing some blogging about storytelling over there. Right now, it’s the place to see the cover for the revised and expanded edition of Finding the Core of Your Story, so go check it out.

We’ll still be here on Phantom Moose blogging about our filmmaking adventures. This site isn’t closing down, not by a long shot. We’re still making movies and we can’t wait for you to see what’s next.

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Oct 11

Revised Logline Book on the Way

Ever have one of those days where you look at something you wrote and you think, “Wow, I could have done a whole lot more with this.”? That’s exactly what happened to me not too long ago. See, I was minding my own business when I suddenly thought of some things I didn’t cover in my book, Finding the Core of Your Story.

Things? Oh yeah. Like four chapters’ worth of things.

I couldn’t just let that lie. So I started writing new chapters. While I was at it, I revised a few things and expanded an existing chapter.

The long and short of this is that I will be relaunching Finding the Core of Your Story in the very near future with a fancy new revised and expanded edition. Read More »

Posted in Blog, Books | 3 Comments