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.

Duplicate the Project and Event Files

As was shown on an excellent episode of MacBreak Studio, the first thing you need to do is make sure you’re duplicating the event in FCP X, not in the Finder. You can do it the way they did it, duplicating the event and making a project later, or you can do what I did, which is to duplicate the project in FCP X. If you already have a project created, this is a good option, as FCP X will copy both the project and the event to the new drive, saving you a step. Also, this way, you can exclude the render files and speed things up a little bit (FCP X will just re-render on the new drive; not a big deal since it all happens in the background now.)

Reconnecting Media

Once you’ve shared the project file with another person, something happens that’s not covered in that helpful episode of MacBreak Studio. When you launch the project, you may end up with a media offline error, even if you have all the files in the same event. Don’t worry; it’s okay.

Go to the Project Browser and right-click on your shared project. Choose “Relink Project Files…” and step through the process. Don’t pick just one file; that’s the slow way. Hit the “Locate All…” button and navigate to the event on your drive. Pick the file FCP X is asking for and reconnect it. It’ll pick up everything else in the same file path.

Adding More Media

Let’s say I want to add a new clip to my project. I’ve put together a new opening title graphic in Photoshop that I’m going to us. I import it into my project and it goes into the default event.

I’ve chosen to create a new folder of additional media files for this project, where I’ll store all the new stuff either editor creates so I can keep track of it. When I bring in the files, I make sure FCP X isn’t going to copy the files into the event folder. Instead, it creates symbolic links to the original files in my other folder.

(Side note: Make sure your default event makes sense for the project! While I was testing this, I had some settings flipped and ended up importing media into the wrong event, which caused some chaos when reconnecting media.)

Now I can just add the new file to the timeline, then give the new version of the project (CurrentVersion.fcpproject) to the other person. Of course, I’ll also give them the new opening title file so they can import it in the next step.

Importing the New Media

Just like before when we reconnected the media, we’re going to go to the Project Browser and bring up the Relink Project Files window. Select the new files from the folder (once again, tell FCP X not to copy the files to the event folder), then reconnect. FCP X makes new symbolic links in the event folder, and you’re all set. The project should be reconnected.

Problems

I’ve only found one problem with this so far. Compound clips don’t seem to translate when sharing projects, and FCP X unfortunately requires both the compound clip from the event and the source files that are inside it. This is problematic, as to make FCP X happy, you need to copy the compound clip over to the other person’s drive from inside FCP X. So, as far as I can see, the only way around this is to avoid using compound clips in shared projects. I recommend using the “Provide Final Cut Pro Feedback…” menu item to tell Apple you want this fixed if it bugs you like it does me. I’m certainly planning to send them a report.

And there you have it! Once you know how, it’s simple to share a project between editors in FCP X. In some ways, it’s even simpler than FCP 7, because if you keep everything in the same event, you’ll be reconnecting media each time with just a few clicks, rather than searching over multiple locations for different sets of files.

I hope you found this helpful. Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

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.

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.

For the full announcement, check out the official Month of the Novel website.

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.

“Wait a minute!” you protest. “I already bought the book! I don’t want to buy it again!”

I’ve got you covered. See, not only am I coming out with a brand new, better-than-ever edition of the book, it’s going to be… Wait for it…

Free on day one!

Yes, you read that correctly! For the first day of the new edition’s release, the Kindle version will be available for the low, low price of zero dollars. As in you don’t have to pay for it!

Now, after that first day, it will no longer be free, so you’ll want to be ready on that first day to get your copy, right? So you’d really like to know what day it will be hitting the virtual Amazon shelves.

And, well… That’s the tricky part. I’m still working on the new edition and I haven’t nailed down the date yet. But I’ve created a handy-dandy form that you can use to sign up to get notified when I do have a firm release date. Just pop your e-mail address in there and I’ll let you know when the new edition will be available. Plus, I might even have some more surprises up my sleeve later, such as other books I may or may not be writing. (You didn’t see that!) I’ll only send e-mails very occasionally as I have news to share.

Oh, and feel free to spread the word to your friends! This freebie first day is open to all. Just send ‘em here so they can sign up too.

We had a story for Nearly a Knight (still known as Smoke and Mirrors at this point) going pretty well. There was still something missing, and we didn’t yet know how everything was going to play out from start to finish, but we were pretty optimistic about it. All that was required was someone writing a first draft.

Enter Script Frenzy 2011. *sniffle* I’m sorry, I need a moment…

(Script Frenzy was discontinued after 2012, sad to say. We miss you!)

Okay, moving on. In case you don’t know what Script Frenzy was (I’m gonna cry here), it was this great little challenge, quite like NaNoWriMo, where you had to write a 100-page screenplay in one month. The month of April, to be precise.

I’d done Script Frenzy in 2009, then taken a break for 2010. I was itching to get back to screenwriting in 2011, and I challenged Rebekah to go for it, too. My script was a contemporary drama called Bellwether, which I may tell you about later. But we’re interested in Nearly a Knight, which Rebekah grabbed for her project. We were off to the races.

Didn’t I tell you? Before Script Frenzy, we had a few more story discussions about Smoke and Mirrors. Not only did Rebekah come up with the current title of Nearly a Knight, but we also jointly rejiggered the story a little bit.

Mortimer’s carnival troupe from the previous version was tossed. They were a bunch of nameless, characterless people who were bogging things down. That, of course, left the evil magician hanging a bit, but we found a better way to work him in.

Instead of heading up the carnival troupe, the evil magician became the henchman of one of the king’s discontented former advisors. This advisor wants the king out of the way and he’s hired the evil magician to get the job done in a way that doesn’t implicate him.

Okay, now we’re up to date. Rebekah and I crawled into our respective writer nooks and banged out two screenplays. May rolled around and I got a look at what Nearly a Knight was like in a completed form.

My reaction? Nothing short of, “Wow!”

She’d knocked it out of the park, considering it was a first draft. Things had changed and characters had been added. The story was solid. Very solid. The magician and his boss had names and had gotten another henchman, and they’d all been ratcheted up several notches to believable evilness.

Not only was it solid, it was funny! And yet, it was touching, too. I laughed out loud reading some truly hilarious comedy scenes, nearly cried at the ending, and then wrote back to Rebekah with a lot of feedback for making the next draft better.

Well, the next draft didn’t happen for a little while. Rebekah got busy with other projects (for some reason, she likes to write novels, too), and I took Bellwether for a second-draft excursion around the end of 2011.

I was having all kinds of trouble with my second draft of Bellwether. The first draft had a lot of extraneous stuff that I had to weed out, and it was like pulling teeth. About halfway through the draft, I began eyeing the file for Nearly a Knight. Soon, I caved and started to use Nearly a Knight as a reward for working on Bellwether.

By the end of the year, I had two screenplays drafted. I sent Nearly a Knight draft 2 out to Rebekah and some test readers, and waited nervously for results.

I shouldn’t have been nervous. The test readers loved it. They nitpicked at details, but overall, they agreed that we had a good screenplay going. Rebekah read through my draft and took notes. While we were in the same place in early 2012, we sat down with her annotated hard copy of the script and all the test readers’ feedback, and we set to work hashing out details on a third draft.

One really cool thing that came out of that meeting was a couple points where I looked at a line or a gag and asked, “Was that in your draft or did I add it?” And Rebekah honestly didn’t remember. To me, that was encouraging. It meant we were writing the same story.

So, armed with notes galore, we left the meeting with plans for Rebekah to write the third draft. In July, she sent me a brand new opening that blew me away. It fixed many of the issues we’d seen with the previous draft and simultaneously brought all sorts of extra depth to the tale.

Then in early August, Rebekah asked me to take a look at the 44 pages she’d written so far. I’m thrilled with how things are going. This story is getting me more excited with every revision.

And now Rebekah is working on finishing the third draft. The process of storytelling continues, and I can’t wait to see what happens next with Nearly a Knight.

Nearly a Knight, at this point known as Smoke and Mirrors, was stuck. We weren’t sure what was wrong, but we knew we wanted to fix it. There was a great story here and we wanted to get at it.

So it shouldn’t come as too much surprise that surrounding our work on A House for Marge in November, 2010, we began once again to explore Mortimer’s adventures with Annette and Buckle.

Things happened all over the place. Rebekah got to work developing characters. She fleshed out Annette very nicely, but Mortimer was a sticking point.

Finally, we realized what was up: Mortimer was unlikeable.

In our original idea, we had a selfish guy who couldn’t tolerate his nephew, was tricking his carnival boss so he could keep extra profits, and was pickpocketing castle guests right and left. And we expected everyone to sympathize with him. Of course it wasn’t working!

Armed with this knowledge, Rebekah jumped into salvaging the poor guy. In the process, he almost lost his nephew, but Buckle held on tight and never quite got erased. That was good, because he ended up providing one of the ways to sympathize with Mortimer.

What we did was reform Mortimer from a shady magician into a scrupulous magician. He was still a very calculating person, and he still had a chip on his shoulder, but his backstory was now completely different. Instead of working as a magician to get money for going back to knight school, he was a down-on-his-luck noble who’d been kicked out of the family castle. Now the reason for saving money was to buy back his father’s land.

The knighthood thing was still around, but it was a little different. Because Mortimer had lost his father’s castle, he was no longer a noble and therefore no longer eligible for knighthood. He was awfully sore about that, especially since he thought he could have made a better knight than any of the selfish people wearing armor in the kingdom.

I said that Buckle became a sympathy point for Mortimer. Well, I mean that he became a point for the audience to connect. Buckle is Mortimer’s sister’s son, and due to some familial issues, he’s traveling with Mortimer. But Mortimer really would prefer to be on his own, without the accident-prone Buckle bogging him down.

Mortimer was no longer trying to con the carnival guys like he was in the original concept, and that made them less useful. They were simply there to give Mortimer some people to travel with. So we made Mortimer their main crowd-drawing act… And the evil real magician whose plot causes Mortimer’s quest became the leader of the troupe.

This made things easier as far as realistically getting Mortimer blamed for the disappearing princess incident. In this revision, Mortimer is pinpointed by the evil magician and forced into participation with the scheme.

We also played with the idea of introducing another villain in the form of an unwelcome suitor who is after the princess’ hand. This guy never quite materialized, but in several story discussions, we thought about how he would be on a rival quest, trying to get to the princess before Mortimer. Ultimately, we tossed it because it felt wrong and there wasn’t space, anyway.

So now we had Mortimer straightened out, we thought. He’d become a likable, down-on-his-luck carnival magician who gets in trouble with a king. His cynicism toward chivalry gets in the way of his quest at first, but eventually he comes around and does the right thing, gaining his knighthood in the process.

And about there is where we left it. Something still wasn’t quite working, but it was better than where we started. It was time to let it rest a little while longer before plunging in to write a first draft.

(To be continued.)

Almost every story begins without a title, and this one was no different. One day, back in November of 2009, we were all sitting around the table after a meal. The conversation turned to new movie ideas and somebody mentioned iSundae. We had sworn off any ideas of a threequel, but it kept on coming up. Something was drawing us to it.

In the midst of the discussion, we started talking about how it was too bad that two of our favorite characters from iSundae II never got a chance to interact in the film. Those characters were Gwenanda and Fonsuger.

In case you haven’t seen the iSundae films, here’s a quick bio of those two characters.

Gwenanda: A ditzy redhead who tends to act before she thinks.

Fonsuger: A cool, calculating villain who prefers clever scheming to doing the dirty work.

We were quite amused by the thought of the sparks that would fly if Gwenanda and Fonsuger ever had to talk to each other. And then we stopped, wondering, “Why not?”

What if we took those two characters, renamed them, tweaked them a bit (most notably to make Fonsuger a good guy), and then made them the main characters of their own film?

It was worth thinking about.

We ran with Fonsuger first. He quickly became Mortimer, a shady carnival magician with a money problem. In the beginning, Mortimer traveled with a small carnival troupe, entertaining at castles. He was in knight school (pun intended) but was forced to drop out before he could finish. The fee to get back in was huge, so he was slowly saving money. Unfortunately, he owed money to the carnival troupe’s owner… And he was also a pickpocket.

Well, our story discussions often quickly dissolve into silliness, and this one was no exception. We had a magician, right? Now he needed a nephew. The magician’s nephew. Ha!

For some reason, we kept that silly idea. Mortimer gained the companionship of Buckle, his young nephew who was traveling with him. Buckle loved the sound of adventures and he wanted to become a knight or a magician, whichever his favorite uncle ended up being.

With Fonsuger’s overhaul out of the way, we turned to Gwenanda. She was given a new name, Annette, and made into a princess’ nanny. Other than that, not much changed. She was already on the right side, so there wasn’t really anything else to do.

Princess? Yes. She was how Annette got mixed up with Mortimer. You see, Mortimer fell in with a magician who worked with real magic, not just those slight-of-hand carnival tricks. That got him into trouble when the magician unleashed a plot to get rid of the king by magically transporting the princess to an island to be held for ransom.

About this point, somebody said that something ought to happen to the king, too. That led to another silly rabbit trail, and by the time we emerged from that one, the king had been turned into a frog and Mortimer had been blamed for the whole shebang and thrown in the dungeon to await the gallows.

Now came the quest. Mortimer was broken out by Annette, who was desperate over the princess’ disappearance. She thought that she could get Mortimer to agree to bring back the princess in exchange for springing him from the dungeon. Of course, she botched it and he got out without making any such promise. But on the way out of the dungeon, they nearly stepped on the king, now a frog, and had to scoop him up before he called the guards.

This was to begin a quest in which Mortimer tried to get out of finding the princess while simultaneously keeping his cartful of money safe from his carnival boss. And that’s as far as the original idea went. Playing on the deceptions that were flying fast and furious between various magicians, we dubbed the new project Smoke and Mirrors.

That’s where we got stuck. Something wasn’t quite working, but we were in the middle of other projects and ideas, so we shelved Smoke and Mirrors for the time being and moved on.

(To be continued.)

The film is called Colordeath and I encourage you to head over to the official website and get all the details there. In the meantime, I’m busily logging footage and smiling at the beauteousness that Katie and her crew shot for this project. This is gonna be good and I feel very privileged to be a part of it.

Now please excuse me. I’ve got to get back to work.

But other vague news? Yeah. I know we’ve been quiet lately, but that’s not from a lack of projects. There’s been all sorts of interesting story development and screenwriting going on, but those things don’t make very interesting blog posts, so… More coming when we have something exciting to talk about!