Mike Matzdroff, assistant editor and and author interviewed award-winning editor Sean Lander for his new series about Final Cut Pro X for Provideo Coalition

WHY FINAL CUT PRO X? A PREDITOR’S POV

Mike Matzdorff begins a new interview series about FCPX in real world post-production workflows which impact the bottom line

Sean Lander is an award-winning editor and producer from Melbourne, Australia. He has also been an accredited Avid trainer. Sean is part of a team working on a four-part prime-time investigative documentary television series. He says his fellow producers are “highly skilled with decades of experience.” To produce the series, Sean’s company, Rednail, was brought on by Network Seven, Australia’s highest-rating commercial network on free-to-air television. The show is in-progress, and some of its details must be kept private. Why are we talking about this show? The producers decided to veer from long-standing television tradition and use Apple’s Final Cut Pro X as the center of their post universe. Sean chose Final Cut Pro X because of its speed, ease of use, versatility, and power. Their show is multi-faceted and works with multiple video formats, high-speed cameras, and complex graphics. An entire staff of producers and post-production crew members contribute to the logging, building, and refining of the show. Excellence is demanded on a short schedule. I have written a lot about Final Cut Pro X (workflow, opinion, evangelist and a few tweets), but my experience has primarily been with feature films. I am less qualified to speak about the special needs of a multi-cam, multi-format network television series and how Final Cut Pro X meets the challenge and impacts the bottom line of a production. Sean was kind enough to have a dialog with me about these aspects of his current project. Mike Matzdorff: I know you cannot share the name of the show and certain details. Can you share the scope? How many episodes? How long is each episode? Sean Lander: We are working on four episodes of an investigative documentary series: two sixty-minute episodes and two ninety-minute episodes. They are to be aired on Australian prime time television in 2017. MM: What is the total membership of your team—editors, assistants, producers, etcetera—who are using Final Cut Pro X? SL: We have two editors, one assistant editor, three story producers, a series producer, and an executive producer. MM: You used to be an Avid user and trainer, what made you choose Final Cut Pro X for this show? SL: There is nothing as fast and flexible as Final Cut Pro X out there. On this job, the budget is tight, the timeframe short, and yet they want a premium look—something that is impossible to achieve with Avid Media Composer, the conventional NLE of broadcast television. Read the full interview here.