final cut pro
“When I’m playing back an edit for a
director, they’ll say, ‘Okay, let’s go and make those changes I talked about.’
I’ll say, ‘Oh, no, they’re already done,’ and we’ll jump back and watch it
again. People can’t believe that I’ve magically done the change before we even
finish playback.”
Editor Thomas Grove Carter
From an open creative space in East London, Trim Editing
develops bold messaging for the biggest brands, including Audi, Nike, Adidas,
Guinness, and Perrier. Their work has earned critical acclaim, highlighted by
the ingenious interactive Honda spot The Other Side that won
numerous awards including two Cannes Lions and the prestigious Creative Circle
Gold of Golds. And their projects are viewed across the world, including the
hugely popular 2015 holiday ad for John Lewis department stores that has been
seen over 24M times online. Yet Trim’s home is miles from the bustling
film-business hub of Soho. With just a few edit suites, seven editors, and
off-the-shelf hardware and software, the company has become a leader in
creative editing in just over a decade.
For visionary directors, Trim is the go-to resource for
putting their dreams on the screen. “At Trim we focus quite strongly on working
with directors, and doing the best work with the best director regardless of
budget,” says editor Thomas Grove Carter. “If you do good work, eventually
you’ll be doing the good work that pays.”
Today, Trim does the good work that pays, thanks in part to
the flexibility of Final Cut Pro X, its go-to video editing software. The app
allows Trim’s editors to work closely alongside its director clients, quickly
finessing creative visions with maximum experimentation and minimum busywork.
In client sessions, Final Cut Pro X allows editors to make changes on the fly
while the timeline is still playing. Faster editing means Trim clients can see
their new ideas realized more quickly on screen.
Dominic Leung reviewing and making
changes to an edit on his MacBook.
Focused on
creativity.
Trim formed in 2004 almost by accident. Current partners Tom
Lindsay and Dominic Leung joined forces with founder Paul Hardcastle, largely
to share a workspace for editing music videos. “It wasn’t started with a pure
intent of being an editorial company,” says Lindsay. “It was a way of sharing
the rent.” As the in-demand trio moved into high profile commercial work,
bigger clients required a more formal business structure.
Trim’s tech infrastructure is built on Apple hardware and
simple third-party accessories. “We’ve stayed away from expensive outboard
gear,” Leung says. “We’ve got stuff you can pretty much pick up anywhere.” By
using affordable, powerful Mac computers that simply work, the team has more
time and money to invest in the best creative ideas.
Editor Thomas Grove Carter introduced the Trim team to Final
Cut Pro X, having worked with Final Cut Studio while in University. The
addition of crucial new features in Final Cut Pro X finally convinced Trim to
fully embrace the system. “At 10.1, when the file management changed [to
include libraries], that was a massive thing. It was so logical and it made so
much sense,” says Lindsay. “It really opened up bedroom editing in a lot of
small companies, and Trim was definitely a part of that.”
Thomas Grove Carter and Dominic
Leung trying out different approaches to an edit.
Truly
collaborative edit sessions.
As Trim’s business and income have grown, its editing
workflow has evolved as well, helping the team work faster and more
productively. “You have an idea and you can execute it 20 percent quicker and
that just helps the creative flow,” says Leung.
Rather than building edits beforehand and presenting them to
directors, Trim’s editors can work in real time alongside directors and
clients, making the process unusually collaborative. “Sometimes there’ll be up
to ten people or more in your edit suite,” says Leung. “For us, editing is a
collaboration.” Carter adds, “If someone suggests something, there’s no reason
not to try it out, because it’s so easy to do it.”
Final Cut Pro X speeds up the basic tasks of organizing
media, allowing editors to tag, filter, and find specific shots much more
quickly than ever before. “Clients say, ‘Oh, what about this shot? What about
that shot?’ And almost by the time someone’s said it you can find the shot,”
says Leung. Once a workable edit has been created, the system helps editors try
new ways to make it even better. “With Final Cut Pro X, the time I save gives
me more freedom to experiment, to investigate what the edit is—or what it can
be,” says Carter. “It leaves you in a better position to just try
stuff out.”
“If I wanted to find
one shot buried in twenty hours of footage, I could probably find it in 10-15
seconds. And that’s a big difference.”
Dominic Leung, Trim Editing Partner
MacBook Pro allows the Trim team to
take their work with them.
Editing around the clock, around
the world.
Final Cut Pro X and MacBook Pro give editors the flexibility
to work offsite whenever they choose. “Sometimes you want to stop work at six
or seven, carry it home, and have some dinner,” says Lindsay. “Then you just do
another couple of hours of work to get ahead for the next day.” Carter adds,
“It doesn’t feel like a hindrance if I’m cutting at home. I would never think,
‘Oh, I’m going to have to go into the office to do this.’”
With other NLE apps, editors are forced to use multiple
monitors to track various menus and windows. Final Cut Pro X elegantly
consolidates all its functionality into a single user window. As Carter
observes, “The unified interface makes it more useful on a laptop. It feels the
same across all these different devices.” Leung says you can use Final Cut Pro
X on a laptop screen “and not really feel like you’re missing out on a
huge amount.”
By working while they travel, editors can be productive
during their downtime. Leung once edited a spot while returning from a shoot.
“I got the first assembly together on my MacBook while I was in the airport for
three hours. I showed it to the director after we checked in and he gave me his
notes. I tweaked it on the flight home. While I was waiting for my baggage, I
sent out the first EDL to post production with my MacBook hooked up to
my iPhone.”
“You have the
flexibility to be working wherever you want, at any time. It’s remarkable that
you can cut an entire heavyweight job with 4K footage [on MacBook Pro]—it’s
pretty amazing.”
Dominic Leung, Trim Editing Partner
Tools for the
perfect picture.
From beginning to end, the editing process is dramatically
streamlined by the powerful features built into Final Cut Pro X. Its skimmer
tool makes it faster for editors to view and evaluate incoming footage. “Final
Cut Pro X offers you a quicker way for that third pass on your rushes,” says
Lindsay. “You can scrub to the point of action and get the part you want.”
Sophisticated keywording for clips allows editors to mark clips by shutter
speed, shot type, content, and client preference, then instantly locate them
as needed.
Smart Collections simplify the process of sorting through
footage, too. “Rather than me trying to work out what we did on Friday, I often
will make a Smart Collection and just say, ‘Show me everything that was
imported on Friday,’” says Carter. Later in the process, alternate edits are
organized automatically in the Projects Smart Collection, so editors never lose
anything when they’re moving quickly.
The flexible Magnetic Timeline in Final Cut Pro X gives
editors a new way to structure sequences. For those used to working on
track-based timelines, the design and ease of use take some getting used to.
“Then one day, it just clicked,” says Lindsay. “Since that moment, going back
to something else just feels completely alien.” By keeping everything in sync
when editors trim or remove shots, the Magnetic Timeline simplifies the process
of creating cutdowns or alternate versions.
In Final Cut Pro X, the Filmstrip view displays clips in the
selected event as a connected series of thumbnail images, allowing editors to
see all the shots before and after a given frame. “I’m not just looking at that
one frame in time,” says Lindsay. “I have a wide-angle view of my rushes and my
footage. I feel like the blinkers are taken off.”
Finished edits from Final Cut Pro X are high quality, and
easy for editors to output. “In the time it takes for me to phone an assistant
and tell them what they need to output, it’s just as easy for me to make those
elements myself,” says Carter. And Final Cut Pro X integrates smoothly with
workflows involving high-end facilities. A collection of powerful utilities
make it simple for Trim to send XML, EDL, or AAF versions of their projects to
top finishing houses in London like The Mill, MPC, and Framestore.
“Once you learn how
the Magnetic Timeline works, you can just work a lot faster. Now I don’t even
think about it. I just work so quickly with it.”
Editor Thomas Grove Carter
The power of Mac Pro and speed of
Final Cut Pro X allow Trim to tackle complex 4K jobs.
Sophisticated sound design, simplified.
Though picture is important, “half the job is the sound,”
says Carter. “Even though all of our work’s eventually going to have a proper
sound mix, we still have to push it as far as we can in our edits.” The
sophisticated audio editing features in Final Cut Pro X allow Trim to develop
incredibly complex audio beds. While editing one spot, Lindsay had to mix
dozens of individual music tracks provided by the client. “We built the (audio)
track and it was so complex. The speed with which we worked in Final Cut Pro X
definitely saved us days.”
One feature that helps editors work quickly is the app’s
high-resolution audio waveforms, which make it possible to locate specific
points and adjust levels without playback. “You’re not having to sit there and
listen to all three takes,” says Leung. “You can just go straight to the third
one because you can see where it is.” The Magnetic Timeline lets editors extend
certain clips without losing synchronization or deleting anything. “I’m always
safe in the knowledge that none of my audio has been overwritten, that none of
my audio will ever be out of sync,” says Carter.
Built-in effects help editors produce polished audio tracks
in a minimum of time. Fade handles provide a fast and highly visual way to
control audio dissolves, allowing Trim editors to quickly drag to the perfect
length and both see and hear the result instantly. Reverb, EQ, and other
effects can be added on the fly during playback. Thanks to support for Audio
Units plug-ins, favorite audio filters from Logic Pro X and third-party
developers are available directly in Final Cut Pro X—complete with their own
custom interfaces. And with high-quality pitch-shifting, editors can grab and
stretch an audio clip to change its duration without altering the pitch. When the
mix is complete, Trim exports the projects as a Pro Tools session in seconds
using the X2Pro Audio Convert app, for delivery to any audio finishing house
in town.
Powerade
This quiet, powerful narrative tells the story
of Jimmy Graham, one of the NFL’s most prolific receivers.
Tatyana Alexandra, Thomas Grove
Carter, and Dominic Leung reviewing the final stages of a commercial.
From start to finishing.
What’s next for the creative forces at Trim? For starters,
Final Cut Pro is paving the way for Trim to expand into finishing and sound,
thereby creating faster turnarounds and even greater creative control. “Final
Cut Pro X takes away a lot of the potential boundaries to growth. We love doing
sound and we want to keep control of that whole process right to the end.”
The software gives Trim a secure foundation for future
expansion, one in which talent and not technology becomes the focus. “We’re not
thinking, ‘we’ve got to invest fourteen million pounds in new equipment,’” says
Lindsay. “It’s more like, ‘Who are we going to get to help us (grow)?’ It’s not
about having better equipment than anyone else. It’s about the people.”
Thomas Grove Carter—
High-End Commercials Editing in Action
Learn useful tips, tricks,
and shortcuts as Thomas edits an Audi commercial in Final Cut Pro X.
“I feel like we’ve got an edge on a lot of
people, because we’re not relying on excessive technology or software. You can
just walk in with your backpack and you can outperform everyone else.”
Tom Lindsay, Trim Editing Partner
Workflow
Final Cut Pro X Workflow
Media is converted to ProRes 422 before ingest. Secondary
source audio is synched with the primary footage.
The Trim Editing team organizes and tags the media, chooses
selects, creates a rough cut, and performs basic sound design.
This is an iterative process with clients in which edits are
refined with constant feedback from the director and/or client.
Projects are then sent to specialized post-production
facilities for final sound mixing, visual effects, and color grading.
Sound is sent as an AAF for finishing in Pro Tools using the
third-party application X2Pro. The final sound mix is returned to Trim as
stems, then integrated back into the Final Cut Pro X project.
For visual effects, projects can be sent as EDLs or as FCPXML
for visual effects shots. For EDLs, the third-party application EDL-X is used.
The EDLs or XML is used to conform the edit to the high resolution camera
footage. When complete, the shots are returned as QuickTime files for
incorporation into the edit. This is an iterative process.
For final color grading and finishing, projects are sent as
EDLs and FCPXML to systems including Nuke, Flame, and DaVinci Resolve.
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·
MacBook
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