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“We shape our tools and afterwards they shape us”, or so wrote Marshall McLuhan.
McLuhan may have known how to turn a catchy phrase, but when it comes to editing software, the opposite proves to be true.
The tools we have before us are incredibly powerful, but most of us barely use 10% of what they can do.
That is because we tend to use new tools in old ways, even if the new tool was meant for a different way of working.
This proves true whether you are a solider in World War I being ordered to march in a very straight line directly into machine gun fire or you are an editor using FCPX.
Let’s stick with the FCPX and leave the sheer stupidity of First World War tactics for another conversation.
Final Cut Pro (and any non linear software for that matter) is an extremely powerful tool. Its greatest advantage is that it is non-linear. That is, that you can dip into and out of it at random any time, any place.
That’s a pretty amazing thing. Â It is phenomenal at manipulating video and sound with incredible plasticity.
Yet how many of us, sitting down to edit, start at the beginning of the piece and laboriously work our way through to the end? Â Would that be justa about everyone?
More often than not we end up using FCP and other non-linear edits as though they were linear edits – in a linear fashion, from start to finish.
This is crazy. But we do it
We do it because we have a 70 year history of linear editing and about a 70 minute history of non-linear editing. And history wins out.
Even worse:
How many of us sit down and write out a written script – on a piece of paper! – and then proceed to ‘translate’ that written script to video by way of FCP?
That is really crazy.
My 85-year old father in law sends text message. We taught him how to do it and bought him an iPhone. Â He’s pretty good at it. But before he sends a text message out, he sits down and writes out the text message longhand on a legal pad, then re-reads it, corrects it, and when he’s got it right, proceeds to type out the text message on the iPhone and hits send.
Crazy, you’re thinking. Well, in fact no crazier than your writing out your scripts and then transposing them to video on your FCP timeline.
He has a certain anxiety about the technology- it’s a kind of powerful thing and he wants to make sure he gets it right and doesn’t ‘break’ anything. Â You are no different. Â You want to make sure you get it right on paper before you approach the FCP for fear you don’t ‘mess something up’.
Be bold!
Go nuts!
Throw that stuff all over the timeline. Â Start in the middle. Jump to the end. Move the end to the beginning. You can’t break it and you can’t ruin it.
We tend to treat editing as though it is building a delicate house of cards  It isn’t.
We should treat non-linear editing as though it is a block of clay and you are the sculpter.
Use your hands.
Get them dirty.
Cut. Shape. Smoosh. Â Jam it around. Then try again.
Go ahead.
Nothing bad will happen.
