Making a standard film takes about the same time as birthing a baby – about nine months. While I’ve found that generally to be true, some take longer – a lot longer. And that’s without being some huge sci-fi or superhero extravaganza.
I started the edit on a film called Heartbreak in 2013 during the early days of Final Cut Pro X (the X was eventually dropped). Had the schedule followed that nine month rule-of-thumb, it might well have become the first dramatic feature film edited on this relatively new version of Final Cut. But sadly, for a long list of reasons having nothing to do with the film itself, the producers didn’t truly finalize the film and lock in a distribution deal until five years later. Of course, Focus had long since made its debut, deservedly marking it as the first film cut using FCP X.
Heartbreak is the story of a down-and-out pool player, who makes a living by hustling pick-up games. He reluctantly takes on a female protege with the challenge to turn her into a championship player. She needs the money to get medical treatment for her son back in South Korea. That experience and its emotional journey helps him to turn his life around.
The production was a collaboration between the Valencia College Film Production Technology program and the film’s producers. As with many of the films that Valencia partnered on, all key departments were headed up by working professionals with a balance of students rounding out the crew – roughly in a ratio of 1/3 pros to 2/3 students. Actors were all professionals working under their guild’s special ‘low budget/experimental’ provisions.
Whatever the school had available (grip, lighting, camera, offices, editing, etc) was available to the producers. This significantly reduced actual paid budget items – often by half. In the case of Heartbreak, the film was directed by Ralph R. Clemente, who was the program director at the time and a talented filmmaker in his own right. Anthony Realmuto was the director of photography for the film, which was shot on a pair of RED Ones.
I came on board to edit the film, as I had done with several others through the program. However, I never wrote about it at the time, because it took so long in getting distributed and I didn’t want to discuss it prematurely. Ultimately, I handled the creative edit, color correction, assembly for distribution, and interchange with the mixers. The final mix was done by Dave Howe in Seattle and some visual effects shots were done in South Africa.
That early version of Final Cut Pro X lacked a unified Library file. Events (bins) and Projects (edit sequences) were set up as separate data files on the computer. FCP X was eventually revised to integrate these into a common Library file for a production. That occurred after Heartbreak had largely been edited. Of course, I didn’t wanted to update FCP X midstream, opting to wait until the cut was done and approved by the producers. Fortunately, even that early version of FCP X dealt with the RED camera files without any major issues, because I used their REDCINE-X application to create proxy files for the edit. The final color correction was done in DaVinci Resolve.
There are always some holes in small films like this one. But overall, Heartbreak hit the right emotional tone. Sadly, Ralph Clemente did not live long enough to see the final version of his film. He and a couple of other key members of the crew passed on from medical conditions before the film was finally completed. It’s too bad that Heartbreak didn’t achieve the honor of being the first film edited using Final Cut Pro X. Nevertheless, it’s still available for purchase or rental and on some streaming services. Filmmaking is always a journey with a path that is often quite different than it appears at the beginning.
©2026 Oliver Peters
