FCP to AVID Switch Issues

[Danielle Warren]

Ha, that is a funny story about your Wired subscription. I suppose at the end of the day, any campaign for anything won’t please anyone. They were definitely targeting an audience, and it worked because FCP became such a standard for a lot of post houses in the last number of years.

And you’re so right about there just aren’t enough hours in the day to learn and master, really master all these different pieces of software. I kept looking around at posts for jobs asking for editors to be proficient in both FCP and After Effects/Photoshop etc. and thought, “Am I the only one that doesn’t know all of those and doesn’t have the time to master them? I’ve sat down and tried to learn some basics in After Effects, but it would literally take me months to become anywhere near proficient enough to do what clients ask for. It’s a joke in my opinion and I don’t understand how they find people that are THAT good at both. Your analogy of the music virtuoso is a good one. I wish producers, post houses, directors et al would think about that when they hire editors and realize it’s a craft, and not one that is just bundled together with graphics, coloring, and finishing work.

Thanks for your stories. I was too young when FCP first started so I never knew how it was marketed. I came in at FCP 3 and have progressed from there. And I was able to buy 3 because of the student discount, making an already semi affordable software even more affordable for students.

[Stephen Mark]

The other big lie is that it’s necessary to master all that software. It is necessary to master the craft and art of engaging an audience. Software and hardware change all the time but creating compelling stories is still about pinging the same emotional responses humans have had since hunter gatherer days. That’s where you hit the steep learning curve. If you know what you want to achieve, figuring out a new piece of software shouldn’t take more than a few weeks. (And you don’t need to know everything a program can do before you start using it. Just learn what you need to do what you are doing today. Learn the rest tomorrow. If a potential employer wants to know if you can work with this or that program, the answer is always yes. Then run out and get a book or watch online tutorials.)

[Steve Pankow]

“When did editors become jack of all trades and stop being editors.”

Proliferation of media outlets hasn’t helped IMO. The advertising dollar pie hasn’t grown that much, but it’s being sliced into thinner and thinner pieces, resulting in lower and lower budgets. Bean counters are always on the lookout for ways to cut costs, so if FCP claims to do so…

I’d also throw in that I think FCP was easier for kids to acquire cracked versions of and learn on than Avid, though acquiring legal student versions of Media Composer has become much easier and cheaper in recent years, leading schools to begin reintroducing Avid to their classrooms.

[Steve Knattress]

[Steve Pankow] “”When did editors become jack of all trades and stop being editors.””

a long time ago…

I remember editing in the late 70’s on 2 inch quad tape, we were then expected to technically line up the machine ( in those days editors were engineers), often record, edit ( simple editing was a “machine to machine” dub), audio mix (originally lifting the audio off to 1/4 and back) then add/fix graphics, and finally transmit the show.

It was usual for no one else to “touch” the programme between record and transmission.

Time-code editing then arrived with edit suites with 3 vtr machines or more, costing many hundreds of thousands of pounds.

As we moved from 2′ to 1″ to beta with many more digital devices, vision switchers, audio mixers, DVE’s came out, all of which we were expected to be able to”drive” at some level.

Non-linear then arrived with many of the editors “tools” in one box, firstly at non-broadcast then broadcast resolutions.

Decades ago at least we could learn and update or knowledge a little at a time as new devices/ techniques appeared, not just be thrown in at the deep end and be expected to know “everything” at day one.

Editing is editing at any level, you know what you or the director wants, then you use the tools available to tell the story.

Steve