Apple’s Color, my thoughts

[Craig Sommerer]

Read your blog entry and I have to say I couldn’t agree less. As an occasional da Vinci 2k operator and more colorist than editor, I’m ecstatic about the addition of Color. I don’t understand the argument against the democratization of media tools. Talent will always prevail and Walter, you’ve shown you have talent. I’m hoping this just isn’t a case of sour grapes. I’ll stop by AJA today and say hello.

[Paul Nevison]

hey Walter,

as always good to read your thoughts on the industry, I see your point, but like craig I have to disagree with you.

“Apple makes it very hard for those of us who have invested greatly in our skills and equipment to differentiate ourselves from the pack, both in the tools used and the rates we can charge.”

For me the great artists will always rise above the pack regardless of the tools. Great editors, composers, camera ops and colourists earn their reputations on the standard of their work not the tools they have installed on their hard drives.

rather than charging premium for programme XYZ that you have in your shop, shouldn’t you be charging that premium for the skill and experience of the operators?

it is not the responsibility of the the software/hardware companies to “make us shine’ just because we can afford the latestest and greatest high ticket products…surely it is our responsibility as professional creatives to master the tools and then produce great work which alone should dictate our price.

In the audio world i will pay the big bucks for Harry Gregson-Williams to score my feature, not for the Pro Tools HD rig that is used….the real value is in, to coin a phrase from biscardi media – the “creative genius” of the skilled and talented operators. the likes of apple and now RED are putting the tools in our hands – it’s now up to us to be the best we can.

G5 DP 2.0 (Power PC)
4.0G RAM
OS 10.4.8
QT 7.1.3
FCP 5.1.2
BMD Decklink Extreme 6.0
PAL Land

[Dave Jenkins]

Walter, I agree with Craig. I have clients come into our shop all the time with there FCP projects because they are stuck at a point and can’t move forward because of there knowledge base in FCP. We are editing (fixing a project) this week that can’t be finished by our client. I think we will see this even more with Color. People will try to use this and find it is beyond them and have to turn to a production company who has the skill set. I also think we will have a new group of colorists come out of the schools with an understanding of color grading. A good resource for a small company like mine.

Dave

[Paul Nevison]

another thing to take into account that while there are plently of “hacks” out there….in the long view this does bode well for the future of our craft….think of all the students who can now get their hands on these high end tools. What an amazing head start they get and in 10-15 years time when we are all thinking of retirement, they will be at the helm of the industry and think of the quality of work they could be pumping out with all that extra hands on experience.

What student ever gets to sit behind a Da Vinci? Maybe a sneaky film student that gets a contract cleaning job overnight at a colour facility – but other than that it just will not happen.

i feel the pain of those of you that shelled out good cash for this last year….but i think in the long term it bodes well for our industry – hopefully securing some compelling viewing when we are channel surfing in our retirement homes!!!

G5 DP 2.0 (Power PC)
4.0G RAM
OS 10.4.8
QT 7.1.3
FCP 5.1.2
BMD Decklink Extreme 6.0
PAL Land

[Andrew Kimery]

I have to agree w/the others in this thread in that I disagree w/your opinion about Color in this aspect. I’m sure when Final Touch was released there was someone that recently purchased a DaVinci who made comments about Final Touch similar to your comments about Color. The people “up the hill” complain that they will get under cut and the people “down the hill” are excited because they get access to tools they never thought they could afford.

Lots of people own pen and paper, but that doesn’t mean they can all be published authors.

-Andrew

[Martti Ekstrand]

I was going to say that Color will dilute the market for good colourists as much as Word has diluted the market for good novelists but then I remembered that with a snatzy title and clever marketing Dan Brown has sold millions worldwide of the horrendously badly written ‘The DaVinci Code’. Ominous indeed! 🙂

[Rocco Rocco]

Thank you for your insight. One line stood out for me in your post:

Apple has actually made it very difficult for estabilished professional artists to differentiate themselves from enthusiasts and beginnners

I mean no disrespect here, but surely your work and experience in the industry differentiate you from the beginners? It sounds like you don’t value your own artistry. It’s not the fact that you have the $25K color suite that makes you great; it’s your reel and reputation.

For decades the people at the bottom of post have been told to stand up straight, man the vault, make the coffee, work for free, and maybe just maybe we’ll let you watch an offline session or cut colorbars to black.

Well I’m thankful that times are changing because it means that skill and determination will drive these kids to create magic and it won’t be just the ass-kissers and cousins who are allowed into the club.

Tech comes and goes. Talent lives on.

[David Roth weiss]

Walter,

All of this technology is in the end is just a toolset that helps us to communicate ideas better. Everyone has the tools now, that’s a given, its those who know how to use them in ways that enable their clients to fully realize and communicate their ideas who are the ones who will command top dollar in this environment.

So, we can no longer differentiate ourselves by owning the tools, we can only differentiate ourselves by applying the tools better.

DRW

[Shawn Bockoven]

I own many copies of Photoshop. However, I am not a skilled artist. I can fix things with Photoshop, but don

[Nick B]

On the other hand we should all make more money !

Colour grading takes TIME a grading session could be an EXTRA day on the post budget so that is more billable $ hours so you need to sell the benefits of grading to clients who thought they could not afford it.

However the problem with the post business is that it has become commoditised which means you loose pricing power, from a business point of view it has little creativity as you hit a market resistance in how much you can charge no matter how good you are or what kit you buy.

I did a mind set change away from being a hired editor to being an ‘Investor in creative projects’ ie you need some ownership in the content you edit , ie we moved away from being an edit business to being a production business, still not easy but you have less limits on earnings and you can apply more business creativity to bring in more money, oh and you still get to Edit .

Oh and spare a thought for the guys at Avid their business model must surely be broken