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ACE Tech Day this Saturday…
Anyone going? More WTF workflow info, and then Michael Yanovich and Billy Fox, who’ve been learning X for a month or so, (!) will give their thoughts. Nobody really knows what they will say. Should be interesting. 🙂
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~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~ -
26 Replies
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I will be there, and I’m excited to hear what they have to say. I really love the push Apple has been making to get the word out there about FCPX’s role in Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.
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NickZimmerman.net
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This is interesting in a number of ways. ACE used to do an annual Equipment Survey of what their members were using every year, and needless to say, Avid cleaned up. In fact, the numbers were so consistent during the latter aughts — Avid FCP at 20%, a couple of projects on Lightworks, and the rest on Avid — that ACE stopped doing the survey. They didn’t feel there was additional insight to be gained.
The most recent year whose results I found is 2009, when there were 350 members — obviously a subset of a subset of the class “Hollywood editors.”(Here’s the link), but I’ll save ya the step: 19% FCP, 4% unspecified “Other” (presumably including some Premiere projects by then), and the rest Avid.
The number that really struck me from that survey was the trajectory of who was making the edit system choice. In 2004, over 60% of the editors surveyed were making their own choice of what to use, but by 2009, it had dropped to 38%.
This led to the creation of the ACE Technical Excellence Award, which was given to Avid Media Composer. A lot of the language appears to be little more than boilerplate.
This distinguished honor hails Avid’s unparalleled innovation, the company’s commitment to working hand-in-hand with editors, and its role in evolving the art of cinematic storytelling. The honorary award will be presented to Avid at the 60th Annual ACE Eddie Awards in February 2010.
Hmmm, part of the honor is for “the company’s commitment to working hand-in-hand with editors.” As opposed to say….who? As the press release continues, they double down. My bold added.
“Editors know that the art of filmmaking is as much about storytelling as it is sharing a mutually-beneficial dialogue with other members in the industry. Avid shares our passion and vision for nurturing the motion picture community and the integral role that editors play in bringing entertainment to life,” said ACE President Randy Roberts, A.C.E. “One of Avid’s unique characteristics is the fact that many of its employees are also experienced artists themselves, and so like us, they are obsessive about solving real challenges that actually make a difference in the editing room. We appreciate the company’s ongoing commitment to talk with us and to understand how we want to improve the way we tell stories. The Board is pleased to distinguish Avid — and Media Composer — with this first-ever mark of distinction.”
To their credit, Variety (no byline) dug deeper. ACE dropped the coy poses, too.
Harry B. Miller III, an ACE board member and head of the org’s technology committee, said Avid “has always had the superior product” among editing software packages, but recently the company has also gone out of its way to solicit feedback from editors and shape the product to their needs.
Apple, by contrast, has been slow to improve Final Cut Pro. Miller said, “Apple and Final Cut Pro doesn’t listen, doesn’t respond, doesn’t solicit our opinion.”
So ACE basically created an award for the specific purposes of saying, “We prefer Avid, and we should be free to choose it.”
Nothing wrong with that. ACE is a membership organization, and it’s the board’s job to spearhead advocacy that represents the largest part of the group. I’m certainly willing to be that the FCP (and “other”) members would prefer to be making choices about their toolset, rather than leaving it in the hands of producers, the studio, etc.
But man o man, has the world changed since 2009!!!
My guess is that the launch of X didn’t do much at all. Hollywood in general is in no hurry to change what’s working. It’s a shame that the values of solidity, reliability, and deep user mastery of the toolset have come to be viewed as perjoratives, but in fact, crafts-person-ship matters, and the ability to deliver without disruption is rewarded.
I’ve always suspected that FCP never really moved the needle because it wasn’t substantially better at anything significant in Avid’s core toolset. There has to have been a REASON to switch, and quite frankly, FCP never made its case.
I said in this very forum 5 years ago that X was much more interesting in this context, because it at least offers a reason to consider switching. There are potentially substantial benefits that FCP never even attempted to offer. I have no doubt that there was a bit of, “HA! I TOLD you that Apple wasn’t committed to pros” with the advent of X….but as it comes time to turn the crank on new systems a few years down the road, X continues to mature, and I think if anything, it has the potential to move the needle in ways that FCP never could have, and certainly never did.
The question is, WILL it? And when? The answer is clearly farther out than “5 years after its launch.”
(I hope I don’t have to remind anyone that I’m speaking strictly about this particular subset of a subset of editors, but I will anyway. I’m NOT talking about the world of editing at large.)
In the time since 2009, I think Adobe Premiere has graduated from membership in “Other.” At least one member of ACE, Kirk Baxter, has been a high-profile user of Premiere for the last couple of Fincher products.
The last thing that struck me is that the percentage of Macs at use among ACE members went up in the 5 years mentioned in the 2009 survey, from 73% in 2005 to 88%. (I’ll note that surveys I was involved in around the 2005 timeframe also confirmed Windows usage around 30% among Hollywood elites, far more than I think is typically assumed around here, if also dramatically less than for the world at large.)
That’s pretty substantial. I wonder how the tardiness of the Mac Pro and its eventual configuration affected things. I know that here in the COW we saw a substantial uptick in Windows adoption, but knowing how much more slowly the ACE ecosystem moves, I wonder.
So the fact is that NOW, I think there’s a lot of insight that could be gained from a new ACE Equipment Survey….although frankly, maybe not. Does anyone really really REALLY expect Avid to have dropped much below 80% On what basis?
And really, it’s only idle curiosity. 350 editors is statistically significant only for its own cohort…but it’s a cohort that’s responsible for editing a disproportionate amount of the content actually viewed by audiences worldwide.
Besides, what else are we gonna argue about around here? LOL
So Charlie, I’m expecting a spectacularly full report from you. LOL
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[Tim Wilson] “So Charlie, I’m expecting a spectacularly full report from you.”
🙂 I’l try not to disappoint, though I probably will. lol
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~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~ -
[Tim Wilson] “Does anyone really really REALLY expect Avid to have dropped much below 80% On what basis?”
Probably not much, but is this the ACE you are talking about? The organization with FCPX tips on it’s home page?
https://americancinemaeditors.org/
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
[Scott Witthaus] “Probably not much, but is this the ACE you are talking about? The organization with FCPX tips on it’s home page?”
A nifty confirmation of my theory first posited here almost exactly 5 years ago, that FCPX would move the needle in ways that FCP did not.
Of course, it has indeed taken almost exactly 5 years. 🙂
But I thank you for providing perhaps the first confirmation that I’ve been right about ANYTHING. LOL
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[Tim Wilson] “A nifty confirmation of my theory first posited here almost exactly 5 years ago, that FCPX would move the needle in ways that FCP did not. “
Cliff notes version of how you thought X could move the needle in ways FCP Legend did not? Like in terms of different workflows? In terms of eventual uptake at the ‘top of the pyramid’?
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https://www.fcp.co/final-cut-pro/articles/1783-replay-the-fcpx-demos-from-fcp-exchange-session-2
EDIT: I see these have been posted in Sam Mestman’s thread already. Sorry for double post.
https://mathieughekiere.wordpress.com
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[Andrew Kimery] “Cliff notes version of how you thought X could move the needle in ways FCP Legend did not? Like in terms of different workflows? In terms of eventual uptake at the ‘top of the pyramid’?”
Dude, where have you been for the past 5 years? LOL I mentioned it in my post above, as well as my epic WTF article too.
FCP was, frankly, boring. LOL It didn’t ACTUALLY do much to solve the most meaningful issues that Media Composer users had in these top-of-pyramid feature film workflows, and didn’t offer compelling advantages of the sort that said, “Hey, this is really worth looking at.” It actually looked too much like MC, with some profound deficiencies.
(Speaking STRICTLY for these kinds of workflows, NOTHING MORE. After all, I was an early enough adopter of Final Cut that I still have MY WINDOWS DISK of it, and my Macromedia Final Cut t-shirt direct from HQ.)
The book on editing with Cold Mountain highlighted a lot of the aforementioned deficiencies I don’t need to recount here, and did more than anything else to cement Avid’s hold on that admittedly small slice of the market. Look it up: Avid’s revenue skyrocketed in the next few years after that, and it was virtually entirely based on Media Composer uptake, followed soon after by ISIS.
FCPX otoh offers some profound upsides that FCP never did. I think the reaction that Charlie reported — “Wait a minute, this looks really interesting, and vastly more capable than I thought” — is the same KIND of reaction that MC saw in the beginning. This is DIFFERENT. I see OPPORTUNITY here.
And now that Sam Mestman, Ronny Courtens, and other big brains are cracking the nut of Avid ScriptSync-type workflows for FCPX (I don’t think most people get what a big fgjking deal this is), and they’re working better than the previous wobbly attempts in the FCP era, X starts to look like an actual THING.
The next nut to crack is cracking as we speak, which is the KIND of shared storage experience that MC customers have come to rely on. Not just shared storage — that’s easy. The KIND of shared storage EXPERIENCE that apex Hollywood film workflows RELY on.
I was also struck by Charlie’s report that some in attendance felt misled by the anti-X hype they’d heard. In fairness to them, early reports of FCPX not being ready for highest-end feature workflows were 100% accurate. Apple acknowledged as much when they announced a roadmap for the first time in the company’s history. The fact that Apple is continuing to deliver on those promises is further confirmation that, in fact, it wasn’t ready FOR THOSE SPECIFIC WORKFLOWS upon launch.
Again, I’m just agreeing with Apple.
Which brings me to the concept of moving the needle. It really was dang near 10 years from Avid’s launch to critical mass. Given that FCPX hasn’t really REALLY reached maturity FOR THESE WORKFLOWS until quite recently, and that some critical workflow components are just now gelling, it’s not shocking to me that, so far, Ficarra and Requa are about it for major FEATURE FILMS of the sort that ACE members are looking at as the cream of the cream.
Emphasizing again, that’s all I was ever talking about when I’m talking about this. I have ALWAYS been positive on the potential of X, Apple’s commitment to it, etc. That doesn’t mean I won’t make a cheap joke at their expense now and again (this is one way you know I haven’t been possessed by a pod), and I’m emphatically high on Creative Cloud for VFX-intensive workflows, and resolute in my firmness that Avid remains the state of the art for some SPECIFIC shared workflow EXPERIENCES….
…but I’m not shocked to hear ACE skeptics seeing the CURRENT state of FCPX and saying, “Wow, I’ve been thinking about X all wrong.” Given the pace of MC adoption in the first place, though, we’re probably still talking about another 3-5 years before we see if X actually DOES go farther than FCP.
That is, my feelings about its POTENTIAL to go further than FCP doesn’t mean that it actually will. LOL And I do think that Avid at 75%-ish sets the field of play for everyone else.
I am admittedly a little surprised to hear that X tips are on the ACE home page — thanks again for pointing that out, Scott!!! — but I’m not AT ALL surprised that there are *X* tips. There were too few reasons to take FCP seriously FOR THESE WORKFLOWS, and too many reasons for X NOT to be taken seriously.
And Premiere should be too for VFX-intensive shows, including VFX in the Fincher-esque sense of reframing and grading every shot. And Avid will probably stay roughly at 75%+. 🙂
But I wanted to hear Charlie’s color commentary because I was interested to see if ACE is catching up with my prognostication for them, and indeed they are.
I was also looking forward to being right. It’s rare enough that I still relish it every single time. LOL
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[Tim Wilson] “Dude, where have you been for the past 5 years? LOL I mentioned it in my post above, as well as my epic WTF article too.”
Dude you mention a LOT of things in a LOT of posts which is why I was trying to narrow it down a bit. 😉
With regards to moving the needle in terms of “hey, this is a different way to approach things” I agree that X does that more than Legend. With regards to moving the needle in terms adoption in this specific market space, I think the hypothetical FCP 8 shoves Avid all the back on its heels and 9 sees the king slipping off the top of the hill. Apple releasing X gave Avid a reprieve and PPro an opening (both things those NLEs desperately needed).
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[Andrew Kimery] “Apple releasing X gave Avid a reprieve and PPro an opening (both things those NLEs desperately needed).”
I think we’re approaching a “tipping point”… Maybe. Or not. 😉 However, in the last 2 weeks WTF has appeared at a Producers Guild sponsored screening Q/A, At ACE, And on Wednesday at the DGA for a screener and Q/A. People are… interested.
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~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
~”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented”~
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