The new buzz words of the day are self isolating and social distancing. Something picture editors are very good at. As I write this we are day 14 into our self imposed exile here in Ireland. Schools have been shut for almost 2 weeks and pubs and restaurants for about the same time. Funny thing …
Apollo 13
I loved the film Apollo 13. The claustrophobic, never sure if they gonna make it suspense was brilliant. But what struck me the most was that they had to basically construct a duplicate version of the space module and recreate the problem on earth so they could figure out how to fix it in space …
Captain Underpants
Or more accurately My Continuing Adventures Using The Underpants Of DOOM aka Premiere Pro I'm not averse to change, nearly four years ago at the age of 52 I dragged my wife of 17 years and 2 of my 3 children aged 12 and 15 and our dog Pixie all the way from the south …
Killing Them Softly
Or more accurately How Adobe Premiere Pro will be the death of me. I am an FCPX editor. I fucking love the freedom of X. But I have recently been forced into moving to Premiere. Anyone who has read the previous posts on my experience in working with a Avid after so many years will …
Peggy Sue Gets Married
So it's been a month of Avid. And while I have gotten better at finding things I have become much faster and more proficient as a result. The biggest timesaver was discovering that I was able to switch of select filler in the timeline when grabbing stuff. Result! So how are things really after a …

Baby Driver
Well, I made it. And by that I mean I survived 2 weeks of very intense Avid editing. On a very intense show. Having not touched Avid since the mid 1990s it was always going to be intense. So without further ado here below be my experience over the last 2 weeks of intensity. But …
Back to the Future !!!
Yes it's been a year since I last posted and yes a fuck load has gone on. Currently life is getting even more exciting as we move once again but this time to the real world where internet speeds are back to normal. Hooray. About bloody time. A year of dealing with 16 meg speeds …
Back to the Future II
I live in Ireland and work in South Africa which means I rely on a solid internet backbone and decent speeds. We have had to move out of our rented house as the owners wanted to move back in after 2 years of living in France. We had good internet and a decent workspace, plenty …
Home Alone 2
No sooner had I sat down and updated everything when the bug bit and I finally legitimised my blog and splashing out some cash on a premium contract. Added a gallery and updated some of the info. And while I was updating my gallery/Slideshow I realised that in all my travels I have lost so …
Home Alone
It's a new year and usually this means me getting my pooh in a pile and doing some catch up on the things I haven't had time to do in the big end of year rush, like updating my website, writing new blog posts, cleaning up the office, cleaning out the Trash Bin on the …
Snow Day
It's snowing outside so fuck it. Work can wait. I lived and worked in South Africa for most of my life having emigrated there from England in 1970 at age 5 and now do all of my editing for my South African clients sitting in a fairly comfortable chair in Youghal, on the Irish East …
The Postman Always Rings Twice
I've cut a lot of television in the last 7 years, and I mean a LOT! But my feature film editing resume has always been patchy at best. Starting in the early 90's when I cut a couple of French soft core porn films in South Africa on an Avid (which I still hate, both …
Why? Why on earth? Why on earth are editors still using FCP7? ?
Last Night a DJ (FCPX) Saved My Life
Just over a week ago my family and myself were involved in a home invasion. Unfortunately this is a reality of living in one of the most dangerous countries in the world, South Africa. It was late, almost 2am, the family was sleeping and I was working on finishing off a project that I needed …
Back to the Future
I'm 51 years old in a physical sense, in that I was born 51 years ago. Mentally I'm nowhere near as old. The wife says 18 but I like to think I'm not the arsehole I was at 18 but more the child of 19 or 20. I was much nicer then. I helped that …