This year was the 30th anniversary of the Bioneers conference held annually at the Marin Civic Center in San Rafael, California, just a short drive up the 101 from my home in Mill Valley. For three days there are 4-hour sessions of 20-minute talks in the 4,000 seat auditorium. These presentations are shot with 3 main cameras – two in the middle of the room, stage left and and right, and one roving audience reaction camera, plus 2 Go Pro cameras mounted on the stage. The show is live-switched from a production trailer sitting just outside the auditorium and projected on a large screen above the stage. When you add in the live switch and the graphics feed – the presenter presentation materials – you end up with a total of 7 angles to work with.
For the past 6 years, I’ve been the lead editor responsible for re-cutting each day’s 4-hour show for online distribution, which takes me and my assistant about 2 weeks to completely review and clean up 12 hours of material, including adding title cards, lower thirds, addressing director and producer notes, break out presentation sections, etc. All 6 years we have used Final Cut Pro X to cut this show and it’s been a smooth process, including passing libraries back and forth from different locations after the show ends. After the first year, I did a detailed write-up of our process for Provideo Coalition which you can see here.
In today’s MacBreak Studio, I break down 10 tips for editing multicam projects that I’ve learned from cutting this show. I hope you find them helpful for your own work.