Just found this out via a tweet this morning from a guy called Jason Knox. Looks like this may currently be only available on the US iTunes store.
"Over the past five years Iâve worked on an exciting creative project / jigsaw puzzle for âŚâŞ@NeilFinnâŠ. Thank you, Neil, for the opportunity and for being supportive throughout the process. So many great songwriters / artists on that stage. itunes.apple.com/us/movie/7-wor⌠<https://t.co/agFhlN5 "
https://sixcolors.com/post/201...ing-final-cut-pro-x/
7 Worlds Collide: A fan edits his hero using Final Cut Pro X
Neil Finn is my favorite songwriter, and his 1980s band Crowded House is my favorite band of all time. (And their first album is my favorite album. And that album features my favorite song. You get the idea.) So itâs a pleasure to relay the story about how Finnâs 2009 â7 Worlds Collide - Live at the Powerstationâ concert video managed to show up on iTunes (and, soon, on other video outlets) this month.
It turns out that Jason Knox, a musician and video editor, is similarly a Neil Finn fan (as well as a Six Colors reader). Way back in 2013, Knox discovered that Finn was sitting on video footage from 7 Worlds Collide
, an all-star concert in Auckland, New Zealand from 2009 featuring Finn and his sons; Johnny Marr of The Smiths; Ed OâBrien and Phil Selway of Radiohead; Jeff Tweedy, Pat Sansone and John Stirratt of Wilco; K.T. Tunstall; and a bunch of others. A studio album of songs was released in 2009, but the live concert remained unreleased. According to Finn, he had simply gotten too busy to find someone to edit all the footage into a coherent whole.
Knox figured heâd take a shot in the dark and offer to edit the concert together himself in Final Cut Pro X, and sent Finn a DM. After sending Finn some links to music videos heâd edited for a friendâs band, Finn mustâve figured Knox was worth a tryâthey got him the footage and he and Finn collaborated on the project via Dropbox.
âWhat kind of blows my mind about this whole thing is that we now live in a world where a fan can reach out directly to one of their musical heroes on social media, edit a two-an-a-half hour concert film on a home computer, collaborate via email and file sharing services from half way around the world, and then have the final film distributed via streaming to anyone,â Knox told me. âNeil deserves a lot of credit for his willingness to take a chance on me and send terabytes of footage from New Zealand to a stranger in Chicago.â
Knoxâs professional work is largely focused on sound design, so there was a bit of a learning curve with the large, multi-camera project. âI learned a lot more about Final Cut Pro X while working on the concert video⌠I think itâs a great example of how FCPX has really put power into the hands of ordinary people who just want to accomplish a creative goal,â he said. âI think that Appleâs done an amazing job with FCPX-itâs designed so well that it allowed me to keep stumbling forward into a project like this, and Iâm really grateful for that.â
Knox says he feels grateful that Finn was willing to take a chance on a fan, and that he feels lucky that he was able to do something âto say thank you for all the great music throughout the years.â
Since he began working on the project more than four years ago, Knox has had a chance to meet Finn a few times when his tours passed through Knoxâs town. âItâs nice to know that the old adage âDonât meet your heroesâ doesnât always apply,â Knox said. âThe entire project has been a pleasure from the start.â
The final concertânearly two hours and 40 minutes long, featuring 32 songs from the Crowded House, Radiohead, Smiths, and Wilco songbooks as well as some originals and some covers of other artists (Iâll never get tired of âThrow Your Arms Around Meâ by Hunters and Collectors), is now available on iTunes, with other services forthcoming. And all thanks to one brave fan who offered to help make the project happen.