'Severance' editor was all-in on Apple hardware, but not Final Cut Pro

AppleInsider

Apple has focused the spotlight on how a "Severance" film editor primarily uses an iMac in conjunction with just about every shipping Mac there is to get his work done -- but chooses not to dwell on his choice of video editing software.

Geoffrey Richman editing "Severance" -- image credit: Apple

Apple has shown before just how much work went into editing solely the title sequence for season two of "Severance." Now it's detailed the work of editing the episodes themselves, with an in-depth look at exactly how one of the show's three editors work.

"For the finale, there was a lot of experimenting with structure and testing out different ideas about how to play out different scenes," said supervising editor Geoffrey Richman in a statement. "It was a constant flow of ideas and my Mac setup allowed for such a smooth experience."

It is a setup to drool over. Back in the day, if you wanted a complete one-stop TV drama editing solution, you made your show at BBC Television Center in London. Now you can go anywhere.

Richman works on his an iMac, but uses it to remotely connect into a Mac mini. Or he does when he's not using his iPhone, or taking his MacBook Pro to hotels to work with executive producer Ben Stiller

"I can work on my laptop and I can work on my iMac, and I can work at the post facility or I can work at Ben's office, and as long as I'm logged into my account, everything I do shows up everywhere," he says. "I could be lying in bed and I have a thought, and I'll type it into my iPhone, and then the next day, it just shows up in the Notes app on my desktop."

Richman talks a lot about this seamless workflow and how much he prefers the Mac to PCs. He talks a little about how much he enjoys having multiple apps open at once to get his work done.

But then in the detail of how he edits "Severance," Apple lets him get into the weeds about precisely how he performs shot selection, precisely how he matches video frames to audio music tracks. But then Apple does a cough coverup as it admits he uses Avid instead of Final Cut Pro.

"In cutting the marching band, there were about 70 angles and takes to choose from, so we synced them all up in one multicam clip with banks of nine [3x3 arrays]," continues Richman. "Being able to play nine angles simultaneously in real time -- and switch quickly between all the different options -- made it a whole lot easier to find what we wanted at any given moment."

Apple's spotlight on editing "Severance" does admit that Avid is "the industry-standard video editing software." But it's almost as if it's an excuse, as if Apple is saying Richman only uses it because that's what the industry requires.

It is what the industry requires. Yet here's a video editor working on an Apple TV+ drama, doing so using three Macs and an iPhone, and saying these are the best tools he's ever had.

There's also Apple's own Final Cut Pro video editing software which was a key player in bringing NLE (non-linear editing) to television and film production. Richman doesn't use it.

Geoffrey Richman and Ben Stiller (far right) reviewing an edit of "Severance" -- image credit: Apple

The saddest part is not that Final Cut Pro could do everything Richman describes, but that it might well have become the industry standard if Apple hadn't launched it the way it did. The original Final Cut Pro was a staple in Hollywood until 2011, when it was abruptly replaced by the entirely different Final Cut Pro X.

It would ultimately make Final Cut Pro a better app, but at the time it was such a huge change -- and there were initially so many missing features -- that video editors switched to Avid and Adobe's Premiere Pro.

Today there are production houses that solely use Final Cut Pro, and there are increasing numbers of television dramas that use it. But for all that Apple can rightfully boast about how its hardware is what the editor of "Severance" needs, it's a shame the software isn't there too.

AppleInsider has been told before by producers that Apple TV+ is very hands-off when a show is working -- and very hands-on with it isn't. Most recently, Ben Stiller revealed that Apple had never given the "Severance" team any notes at all.

That is remarkable compared to the rest of the television industry, and it is this kind of working relationship that will keep drawing talent to Apple.

Just, perhaps nobody would've objected too much if Apple had given them a note suggesting they use Final Cut Pro.




Read on AppleInsider

randominternetperson

What proportion of Apple's revenue comes from Final Cut Pro? I suspect they could gain a complete monopoly of the market and it wouldn't make a material difference to Apple Inc.

I mean, sure make the best software you can, but if some people choose to use an alternative--even working on an Apple-funded project--it's not a big deal. Now if they were using Windows PCs and Android phones...

paisleydisco

"The saddest part is not that Final Cut Pro could do everything Richman describes, but that it might well have become the industry standard if Apple hadn't launched it the way it did. The original Final Cut Pro was a staple in Hollywood until 2011, when it was abruptly replaced by the entirely different Final Cut Pro X."


14 years on and we're still revisiting this.

Apple's relaunch of Final Cut Pro was amazing. It what necessary. To move forward. 

neoncat

FCP is an afterthought in the general video production industry at this point. It exists as fanboy service for people who absolutely have to have an entire Apple stack. There are much better, more faster moving options with far more aggressive and interesting development pathways and much larger and more active support communities that run just as well, if not better, on Apple's excellent hardware. The profile in this video doesn't surprise me in the least. 

owen35

I was a FCP user since the 7.0 days, finding it to be terrific video editing software.  I even weathered the transition to FCP X and was still impressed as it continued to gain in features and power.

Then Apple seemed to stop innovating with it and it became an outdated piece of software.  I transitioned to Davinci Resolve and haven't looked back.  It's a shame that they pretty much abandoned it to focus on YouTubers and weekend filmmakers of skateboarding clips.  It could have been the standard for video production, paired beautifully with the Mac Studio hardware and high-end monitors.  Frustrating.

bloggerblog

randominternetperson said:

What proportion of Apple's revenue comes from Final Cut Pro? I suspect they could gain a complete monopoly of the market and it wouldn't make a material difference to Apple Inc.

I mean, sure make the best software you can, but if some people choose to use an alternative--even working on an Apple-funded project--it's not a big deal. Now if they were using Windows PCs and Android phones...

Apple could learn a thing or two on when to iterate and when to disrupt. They became the risky option for professionals. Remember when they bought Shake then killed it?

jdiamond

Just another point of reference:  My daughter went to film school, and her instructor *used* to use FCP for most of the curriculum.  But after the FCP-X change, he dropped it from the program, and the students now learn using Davinci Resolve and other tools.  So Apple was as entrenched as they could possibly get and they threw it all away.  I think the main point isn't how much money Apple made from FCP, but how it enabled people to use Mac Hardware and have state of the art, fully optimized software for their needs.  I think Windows was the ultimate example of how it's the available software that sells the hardware. If you're making a film and you have to use software that doesn't run well on a Mac, then you can't use a Mac.

stabitha_christie

owen35 said:

I was a FCP user since the 7.0 days, finding it to be terrific video editing software.  I even weathered the transition to FCP X and was still impressed as it continued to gain in features and power.

Then Apple seemed to stop innovating with it and it became an outdated piece of software.  I transitioned to Davinci Resolve and haven't looked back.  It's a shame that they pretty much abandoned it to focus on YouTubers and weekend filmmakers of skateboarding clips.  It could have been the standard for video production, paired beautifully with the Mac Studio hardware and high-end monitors.  Frustrating.

You know there are far more YouTubers than there are professional productions studios right? Apple has gone with the larger market. 

welshdog

It is true that Apple pretty much had the video post software/hardware market locked up with FCP. They had undermined Avid's market share dramatically. Pretty much every post house and freelance editor had it. When Final Cut X came out, all these thousands of businesses felt betrayed and had to spend money on new software and equipment. Their opinion of Apple was completely soured by this move. FCP itself was not a huge income stream, but it did help sell plenty of top level Macs. The broad use of FCP in the industry allowed Apple to use that fact for marketing and promotion. They loved to brag about movies and TV edited on FCP. And then due to their own actions, they couldn't. I will never understand why this move was made so abruptly and with a clearly unfinished, unprofessional replacement. Sure FCX is improved now, but it's lack of widespread use in the industry is telling. No one trusts Apple to not pull the rug pout from under them again, even if they wanted to use the software. I would love to know the internal conversations at Apple around the FCP/FCX decision, before and after.

22july2013

At least nobody can accuse Apple of Sherlocking video editing software.

glnf

randominternetperson said:

What proportion of Apple's revenue comes from Final Cut Pro? I suspect they could gain a complete monopoly of the market and it wouldn't make a material difference to Apple Inc.

Apple doesn’t make much money with its professional software offerings like FCP or Logic Pro. That’s obvious (and generous from Apples side) since these packages are not only very affordable but not sold on a subscription base. I bought FCPX some 10 years ago and had all the updates without ever paying again. What a great offer! FCP makes Apple indirectly money by selling Apple Hardware and it also functions as a great platform to demonstrate the power of Apple computers.

quakerotis

I suspect Apple is quite content that FCP is positioned where it is. It is a piece3 of software that values efficiency above features. YouTube creators love it.

cheap. powerful, fast.

I'd be more worried about Resolve.

killroy

Before I retired the production area had eight Mac Pross all running Avid. But the editors used FCP at home. Because of licensing and training cost, and it being a government production center, management would only support one editing system software app.

coreycohen

Avid is the standard for editing in Hollywood.  The workflow makes sense for professional editors.  Final Cut is a good tool for editing if you are not a professional editor, but once I started using Davinci Resolve to convert BRAW to something Final Cut can import I slowly migrated over to not using Final Cut anymore because the workflow is not focused enough when you are working on a complex project.  I wish I could move to Avid next but for now I’ll stick with Davinci. 

mattivan

Oh, people would have objected. You have no idea what you're talking about here William.

Final Cut Pro is not professional software. It is not fit for this purpose. The editor needs to use Avid for multi-camera bank and timecode sync support (he may or may not be able to use Adobe Premiere, but Avid shines in multicam workflow so it's hands-down the best tool for the job he described).

Final Cut Pro is not capable of doing what Avid is in this case and using Avid is the right choice for the show. FCP 7.x was somewhat competitive with Avid for TV and film production in the distant past, but Apple abandoned the pro market with FCP X when it completely rewrote the software and threw out all the professional features, forced the trashcan mac on everyone, and made many other questionable decisions that abandoned the pro market in the 2010-2020 era. Apple has not been a serious competitor in the NLE software space since. FCP is a fancy version of imovie at this point. It's not a good fit for actual professional working on large projects. For small stuff, it's perfectly fine. The audience is now youtube editors and one-man-band productions, not professional TV/Film productions. 

edited April 5