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Computers = Trucks?
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[Andrew Richards] “Do/did you know anyone else tooling around in three-decades-old light commercial vehicles as daily drivers?”
I guess it depends on the crowd you run with, or your point of reference. Owning stuff like this is mostly ‘blue collar’, and media production really isn’t. People tend to notice the familiar, and disregard the unfamiliar. I’ve met quite a few people that have vintage commercial trucks and drive them regularly. Mostly small business owners that are gearheads writing off a hobby by using the truck for advertizing. Might be a regional thing due to our lax regulations or lack of rust. I still see a lot of street rods, muscle cars, old jeeps and rovers, and military trucks and other old and ‘impracticable’ rides driven regularly. But get out from the Southwest region, and these are a rare sight. I only did it back in the day when I worked on a swing shift, was younger, and had a nice straight shot on the highway to the station to save wear and tear on my other cars. Without power steering, brakes, etc and a stiff clutch makes it pretty tough to drive in heavy traffic. Now the Grumman is just a shiny motorcycle hauler.
Scott Sheriff
Director
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” —Red Adair
Where were you on 6/21?
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“and if you live where I live, where gas is usually a buck a gallon or more over the national average”
Just to not brighten up my life, I did the conversion from $4.18 per US Gallon (top price, apparently) to GBP per litre, and I get £0.70 per litre. Price here is £1.35 per litre – just over $8.00 per US gallon. Still, I suppose we do get the National Health.
B
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I 100% agree with the tower has become more of a niche for people who either make money from them through creative/technical reasons like we do, or for enthusiast reasons like gaming. That doesn’t mean the market is small, it’s just a lot less average consumer oriented and more specific these days. I can count on 0 fingers the last time anyone of my friends/family talked about wanting to buy or actually buying a tower computer in the past 5-6 years. Computers are personal machines to them and not tools, for them a laptop or ipad is more than enough and makes more sense. A laptop/mobile device used to mean compromised speed compared to a tower, which is still technically true. But we’ve passed a crescendo where increased power means nothing to average daily tasks like browsing, multimedia, word processing. When that is what the machine is being used for the speed difference is negligible between a consumer quad/dual core with 4gb ram vs a dual octo core workstation with 32b ram.
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[Bill Davis] “But to ignore the fact that the rising tide of technology is making it possible for more and players to chip away at the worlds “video to-do list” – while using less and less expensive tools to do it – is to ignore a trend that’s both clear and unstoppable. I’ll say it again, access to tools and/or specialized information are less and less a differentiator of anything these days. The tools are readily accessible, the knowledge available on your iPad if you’re interested in looking for it.”
Bill, I mostly agree with what you’re saying here, and I think that anyone in this business ignores the trend you’re pointing out at their peril.
I’d like to expand on your point as it relates to the high end.
For the sake of conversation, I’ll define the high end not in terms of production values, as a relatively simple production can have amazing production value, but in terms of production requirements.
I think that video production more or less used to look like a bell curve. There was a lot in the big, fat middle, and relatively little on the low and high ends. Today, I think that video production looks like a front-heavy well curve: the big fat middle has been squeezed out to the ends, with a very high bias toward the lower end. I think of if like squeezing a tube of toothpaste from the middle — you might push a bit more into the back of the tube, but most of the toothpaste is going to spill out the front.
Today, the low end of production doesn’t even know what more there is to know. The middle has easy and inexpensive access to the tools and training they need to produce really good work, but they are increasingly pushed toward the lower end of the pricing spectrum. The high end still exist, still has relatively big budgets, and is still very difficult to get into. It still requires years of experience and accumulated knowledge, highly specialized tools, and the aptitude to create new techniques to achieve visuals that were previously impossible.
I think that most of us here are in the middle somewhere. If my analysis here is right, and we are all going to get pushed up- or down-market, I think we should each figure out where we can compete better and work to position ourselves on the right side of the divide.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Walter Soyka] “I think that most of us here are in the middle somewhere. If my analysis here is right, and we are all going to get pushed up- or down-market, I think we should each figure out where we can compete better and work to position ourselves on the right side of the divide.”
Once again Walter, I agree with your analysis nearly completely.
The only add-on though I’d drop in is that inevitably, the best and brightest of the group that initially gets squeezed into the low end, will – sooner or later – by dint of effort, connections or pure serendipity – jump the divide and into seats at the high end. Driving out the current players. And as that happens, the experienced pros have to figure out what to do next.
And so it goes.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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[Bernard Newnham] “Just to not brighten up my life, I did the conversion from $4.18 per US Gallon (top price, apparently) to GBP per litre, and I get £0.70 per litre. Price here is £1.35 per litre – just over $8.00 per US gallon. Still, I suppose we do get the National Health.
B
“I spent a summer living in student/study in Bournmouth England after my senior year of High School – and I remember that then (4 decades ago) petrol was running about $4 a gallon when it was sitting at about $1.29/gal back here in Phoenix.
So I’ve always figured I just was enjoying “discount gas” for the large majority of my life.
Happiness is so often a matter of the establishing a functioning set of appropriate expectations and then enjoying it when you manage to exceed them!
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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[Bernard Newnham] “Just to not brighten up my life, I did the conversion from $4.18 per US Gallon (top price, apparently) to GBP per litre, and I get £0.70 per litre. Price here is £1.35 per litre – just over $8.00 per US gallon. Still, I suppose we do get the National Health.”
And for the most part, a pretty decent public transportation system, or maybe that’s my relative point of view.
And…..you have even frame rates, as well as double the voltage at any outlet.
…And tasty yet cheap street side samosa’s that the fanciest curry houses over here sell for over double the price.
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[Bill Davis] “The only add-on though I’d drop in is that inevitably, the best and brightest of the group that initially gets squeezed into the low end, will – sooner or later – by dint of effort, connections or pure serendipity – jump the divide and into seats at the high end. Driving out the current players. And as that happens, the experienced pros have to figure out what to do next.”
Hi Bill — sorry for the lengthy delay in responding. I wanted to come back to this point for a moment.
My concern is that the vanishing middle eliminates the path for growth. The more the middle disappears, the greater the gap between the low and high ends, and the harder it is to make that quantum leap. When the bell curve turns into a well curve, the middle you used to be able to grow up through becomes a chasm you have to cross over.
Look at the knowledge-doubling curve [link]. It’s almost scary. The knowledge required to be at the absolute forefront of computer graphics twenty years ago is now the baseline for working in the high end.
You’ve pointed out the same phenomenon in management. During the downturn, companies left and right cored out middle management. How do the lower levels make the jump from entry level up to senior management?
The internet and the tutorials available here are like management’s Harvard Business Review. Great articles, and you can learn a lot, but you still need to match that with some hands-on experience to work at the highest levels.
The same argument is made in economics and politics about the middle class; an evaporating middle class lowers social and economic mobility.
We’re in the Age of the Vanishing Middles (you read it here first!), and it’s a serious threat to personal growth and professional development. The more we are aware that this is happening, and the more care we take in steering our careers at this pivotal time, the better positioned we can be for success.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events
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