A location shoot today, but unlike my previous proper work shoots, I had no crew. Well, Bob was there to lend his eye, but it was all me, baby. With a brand new camera that I don't really know how to use. Luckily, the auto mode on the Canon XH A1 (high def...although I shot SD for a variety of reasons) is really good, although I had to run it in shutter priority mode so I could get rid of scan lines (shooting indoors with tons of computer monitors). The footage looked really good in the camera, and I think we blocked out some good shots.
Of course the footage doesn't do you much good in the camera, so when I got home I went to log and capture in FinalCut. At first FCP didn't want to see the camera, but some fiddling got it to behave. Then I marked a clip, went to capture and crash went FCP. Oh, that isn't good. I did some searching and evidently there are some issues with this camera and FCP. Plus I'm one version behind (note to self: find budget and get FCP6). Oddly enough iMovie talked with the camera just fine so I sucked in all the footage that way. I have historically used iMovie for my editing as well as it is simple and quick. But the new version is totally new and frankly I don't like it. Oh well, all the more reason to finally get my FCP chops up.
At any rate, got the footage in using iMovie, then fired up FCP and imported the clips without incident. Then was learning how to do multiple screens on the canvas (2-ups and 4-ups ala 24). I've been doing my reading of FCP books, and I figured it out (hello, superimpose edit!). Then played with motion to move things around and fade. Cool! Got a segment to have one screen up, then fade in a second window, move it and scale it, then fade out. This is going to be fun...and a LOT of work.
