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Commercial advantages
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I think this clip is a good example of cost rather than mobility. There is nothing about this clip that couldn’t have been done in the 1980s with an Aaton 16mm camera and nagra playback. I was doing location doco work with two man crews in Africa, Asia and around Australia with little more kit that was needed to do this clip in the 80s. I also did location music videos with the same two man crew doco approach. Available light, a flexifill & exposure latitude of film….
But the cost of the camera and film processing & post costs have changed dramatically. Also any cameraman worth his salt wouldn’t have dropped focus as often and any old school editor would have avoided the few shots with drop focus & ugly reframes but these days? Even back then we played with home made steadycam stabilisers and polypipe skateboard truck dollies that we made on the spot after visiting the local hardware store.
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[Bill Davis] “In fact I said: This thread is about “commercial advantages.” I think mobility (whatever software you use to achieve it) is an increasingly big one.”
[Bret Williams] “We’ve been able to shoot and edit broadcast video on laptops and small cameras for 12 or 13 years. “
I think Bret’s point is that we’ve been able to shoot and edit broadcast video on laptops and small cameras for 12 or 13 years. In other words, mobility isn’t new. What is new is the level of quality possible for relatively low cost.
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David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
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The question posed in the thread was “what commercial advantages will FCP X bring?”
Jeremy mentioned clients weary of using FCP Legacy and how they were surprised he wasn’t using Avid.
I mentioned specifically how clients might be weary of X, so you should show the title tool off.
You apparently replied to my specific post about FCP X with a comment about portability. One would logically assume that you’re adding to the conversation and speaking of FCP X.
If you were commenting on the original post in the thread, then you should have replied to that.
I took your reply to my comment on why FCP X was cool to be another reason why FCP X was cool. A reason that didn’t really make much sense.
Simple as that.
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“We’ve been able to shoot and edit broadcast video on laptops and small cameras for 12 or 13 years”
I lectured around the place for several years for the Royal Television Society on lightweight production, then characterised by the VX1000 etc. FCP1 came out and I added a Mac laptop to the gear, and at the end of the lecture opened it up and said “and now we can edit in the field on a laptop in broadcast quality”. It used to produce an amazing stir, and one man in Dublin so disbelieved me he stormed out.
B
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Guess I should add it didn’t make much sense in the context of a direct reply to my post. It certainly makes sense on its own.
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[Bernard Newnham] “”We’ve been able to shoot and edit broadcast video on laptops and small cameras for 12 or 13 years”
I lectured around the place for several years for the Royal Television Society on lightweight production, then characterised by the VX1000 etc. FCP1 came out and I added a Mac laptop to the gear…”
This was true for the introduction of HD as well. Remember that FCP 4.5 was rebranded as FCP HD. It supported DVCPRO HD over FireWire, in both 720p and 1080i.
(Talking about portable HD of course. Not that FCP HD was the first version to support HD. That was FCP 3 in 2002. I was at Boris FX at the time, launching Boris RED 3, and presented at many, many events where Apple also showed uncompressed HD in FCP 3. Quite the pile of gear to do that — but remember when uncompressed was the Holy Grail?)
FCP 5 added HDV (which had actually been introduced in FC Express the year before I think) and P2 card support.
So really, you have to give as much credit to Panasonic for MAKING a format lightweight enough to work on a laptop, followed by HDV of course — but The Legend of FCP was out in front for supporting untethered HD on laptops, 7+ years ago. (You could in fact do uncompressed on a laptop by using external storage and IO, taking HD on laptops with FCP back 10 years.)
Leaving aside for a moment the argument over whether HDV was (is?) a pro-quality format, the point is that professional results on portable platforms has been a non-issue for a very long time. It’s easy now with almost NLE you can name.
So, among the arguments fer or agin X, I don’t see how image quality meaningfully factors in.
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[Tim Wilson] “So really, you have to give as much credit to Panasonic for MAKING a format lightweight enough to work on a laptop,”
It is THE VERY REASON for me to make an exodus to FCP way back when. 720p24 DVCPro HD support from Varicam footage.
I had a laptop, some firewire drives, and rented/used a comparatively expensive HD1200A.
Jeremy
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[Jeremy Garchow] “It is THE VERY REASON for me to make an exodus to FCP way back when. 720p24 DVCPro HD support from Varicam footage.”
Same here. We were about to start a new PBS series, went out to NAB and demo’d the then brand new varicam + 1200 + FCP DVCPRO HD workflow, jumped right in and here we are about 8 years later. I would like to add that the AJ 1200 was about the worst professional deck I’ve ever worked with (I don’t count anything made by JVC as professional) Traded it in a few years later for the 1400 and have been all smiles ever since.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Herb Sevush] “Traded it in a few years later for the 1400 and have been all smiles ever since.”
Yes, a much more capable deck.
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[Bill Davis] “To my eye, there was little lighting beyond the adept use of natural light and some bounce fill.
That’s where a DSLR that can use a f2 lens and generates a darn clean signal at ISO 2500 enables a new agile and compact approach to high quality remote work.
Nothing more than that.”
Okay, then… so looking at the piece with a colorist’s eye…. The way most of the costuming *pops* (especially the blue uniforms in the classroom and the red outfit the performer is wearing) suggests there was also a massive amount of grade/correction involved– and usually is when sourcing DSLR.
Sweet little tune, Hans Zimmer might find it somewhat familiar, “I’m from Kenya, I’ve got an itch in my bra” occurs to me…(The kids have been singing that, parodying “Circle of Life” if the joke is opaque). Could stand being about 2:57… 4:whatever-it-is seems a bit heavy, if not slightly self-indulgent. But what else do you do with all that footage?
jPo
“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.
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