Process of Elimination

About six months ago I decided that I was going to learn how to edit film and video and after a few weeks of intense research I narrowed my options down to Avid Media Composer and Final Cut Pro by Apple Inc.

This post will be less about the whole Avid vs. FCP battle and more about learning and how immediate feedback is essential to learning. An immediate feedback is the one key thing to me that Media Composer lack. While FCP has this perfected to be honest at this point with my limited experience I can take two five year old kids and have them run around with a camera filming any and everything for 20 minutes set them in front of an Apple Computer using FCP and within minutes have them editing their own work.

Media Composer on the other hand there is no way that this could happen which could explain why more and more people are embracing FCP. This has nothing to do with who has the better software to be honest I like them both and my decision to purchase FCP well actually Final Cut Studio Pro 2 had more to do with price and what was offered more than anything else.

Getting back on point here... FCP is a perfect example of deliberate practice, which is a process where one receives immediate feedback, and knowledge of results of their performance...

Without even reading through the manual I was able capture my footage get them into the time line and start editing on the spot. Immediate feedback... if I wanted a clip to be certain length all I had to do was set the in and out points and before long I had what I wanted.


Now once I had the clips adjusted to the length and order I wanted them place into the timeline it was time to view my work. Not to bad but my feeling of euphoria quickly began to wear off after doing this a few times.

In deliberate practice you repeatedly perform the same similar steps or task, which over time improves accuracy and speed among other things. Plus the results are not random you are learning what works and what does not and adjust accordingly.

It is this improvement that eventually led to my moment of bliss fading away because I had become use to my level achievement and I wanted to no I needed to do something better or different to recreate my initial excitement, rush or high you pick.

That’s what led me into adding transitions and a throwing a few effects to make things splashier.

Four months later, I am learning about trims, rolls, 3-point editing, backtme edits, etc... now does this make me Walter Murch? Emphatically no! Being an editor is far more than dumping clips into a time line and adding transitions. It is the ability to tell a story and as an editor your presence should not even be noticed but that’s another story.

The point is if I had to spend a whole weekend reading a manual just to launch an application and perform the most remedial task that would have offered me no satisfaction or made no sense at all to what I was trying to accomplish more than likely I would not have learn anything and that my friends is the Final Cut...