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FCPX and college students pro cons?
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[Mark Morache] “That’s quite a deal. Wish they had that when I was in college.”
https://www.avid.com/US/specialoffers/special-offers-Student-Pricing
I think tech support is only phone support, of course.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Whaaat? $300 for Media Composer and 4 years of updates is an insanely low price. Do you know how many classes you have to take before you can get the discount? I wonder if you can sign up for an Intro To Video class or something like that at a local community college and still get the deal – that’d save a lot of money.
To answer your question Mike, I’d reiterate what a few people have said already.
• FCPX might eventually be picked up by professionals but as of right now the majority of people who used FCP 7 are looking at Avid MC and Adobe Premiere Pro (I’ve been editing in LA for the past 3 years and I don’t know one editor who’s switch to FCPX or is planning on it)
• FCPX dramatically changes the terminology and paradigm of editing so if any students start cutting on FCPX they’re going to have a difficult time working on any other editing system
• FCPX is still very new and most people don’t think it’ll really come into it’s own for about another year, even Apple has stated that they didn’t plan on people dropping FCP7 and migrating to X immediately. FCPX is a work in progress and it’s difficult to tell when/if it’ll ever be “finished” enough to have the same mass appeal/adoption that FCP7 had.If you want to give your students a jump on FCPX just in case it does start picking up steam that’s not a bad idea, but I’d definitely teach them Avid first.
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[Dustin Parsons] “Do you know how many classes you have to take before you can get the discount? I wonder if you can sign up for an Intro To Video class or something like that at a local community college and still get the deal – that’d save a lot of money.”
https://www.avid.com/US/resources/Academic-Eligibility
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
as a trainer (I also train commercially as ACT) who has worked at times in higher education as a part time lecturer I would like to feedback something related to me from someone more full time at the university.
he said the purpose of the course should have been training so they can go into the workplace but that it rarely was that (to add to that he, myself and many others were doubtful if they could attain that level of understanding from the course on offer). What he admired as an alternative was that the focus became on concepts and film/media theory (probably due to lack of technical staff or impetus to call them lecturers).
he isnt the only person in higher ed I have had echoing these commentsI tend to agree that its the ideas that matter and that the software isnt so important. I realise in some situations with technical courses this can be different.
one thing I dont agree with is that this is going to cause a world of technical problems and pain, in fact as far as I can see it will really lower the technical requests as its media management is way more robust than in the past with version 7
also I think time for learners to get up to speed will be dramatically reduced with FCPX as I feel it is simpler and self taught persons cannot learn as many bad habits as when they are let loose with tracks and filed anywhere on the harddrive. if it is simpler for learners to get started and tell storied this is good thing NO?
and no I dont think this software is any more limiting in storytelling as a consequence of its design than any other software, just wish the audio mixing was a bit better thought out
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[Ben Scott] “I tend to agree that its the ideas that matter and that the software isnt so important.”
It’s not just a question of software; FCPX differs conceptually from every other NLE.
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 -
Ben,
I whole hardly agree that teaching storytelling and theory are important and necessary requirements. Our main issue is this. We are a 4 year university, with the mandate of being a Liberal arts school but with the focus on job ready students when they graduate. We do not prepare students for graduate school, or to go into more debt. We are to train students in their field of choice in a way that prepares them to be ready to get jobs. This is put in the most simplest terms of course it’s a lot more then this but essentially this is it in a nut shell. The School was recently rank 9th for best value for the cost of tuition in the nation (tuition here is aprox 1,200 a semester).
So with this in mind yes we need to teach students Theory and practicality, in this particular it means we have to teach software. Because of the small staff 3 full time TV/video/film professors and the relatively short amount of class time (4 year university after generals only 2 years of major course work) we have to cram and a lot into a little amount of time.
My particular job on campus is to support the university with its video needs (the institutional projects; commercials president messages ect.) As such I hire current students to work with me in this field. Again I don’t have a lot of time to train them on how to use a NLE I need them to be able to come on board and immediately start working. I think of myself as a hybrid Educator/ actual employer. So I am trying to figure out what will help these students get jobs in the “Real World” while having them help us.
For me it is a interesting pickle which is why I reach out to you experts and potential employers to get your take and help me help the university make a informed decision.
PS I have video skills not grammar skills 🙂
Mike Jeffs
Video Coordinator
BYU-Idaho -
[Ben Scott] ” I feel it is simpler and self taught persons cannot learn as many bad habits as when they are let loose with tracks”
Well, track based editing is what professionals use when editing. Teaching track based editing means teaching GOOD habits. That’s one of the big problems that I encounter when dealing with timelines from beginning editors…their footage and audio is all over the place…no rhyme or reason to it. They need to be taught good methods for organizing their timeline. FCX is very problematic as it will reinforce with these new editors that tracks are unimportant, and that is not true. FCX will be the only “professional” NLE that is not track based. And Apple seems to think this is the future of editing. Professionals beg to differ.
[Ben Scott] “if it is simpler for learners to get started and tell storied this is good thing NO?”
Editing is an art and a craft. And you need to teach the tool along with the art. Teach the art alone and you teach people to appreciate…or critique. If you want to teach them to DO, you need to teach the tool. Can you teach painting without teaching how to use a brush and how make a stroke? Can you teach graphic arts without teaching the tools to create them? And editing is a CRAFT…like carpentry. Can you teach how to build a house without teaching how to use a hammer and saw? How to look at read blueprints? Camera operators aren’t only taught the art of lighting…they aren’t only shown paintings by Rembrandt to study light…shown movies to see how cinematographers “paint with light.” They are also taught the basics of electrical systems…watts, amps, foot candles. They are taught how to read a light meter. How many lights they can plug into a wall as to not overload the system and blow a circuit.
Filmmaking…TV show making…involves science as much as art.
And if you teach an NLE that is completely different from every professional NLE out there, with differing terminology, then you hamper the students. They won’t be able to communicate properly with other editors. They will have to forget everything they learned and start from scratch.
When students graduate they rarely jump right into being editors. At least in broadcast TV and feature films. They start out as Apprentice Editors, or Assistant editors. Because while school teaches the art of editing, and the basics of editing, the students still do not know everything they need to know about editing for broadcast TV…or feature films. There are many many details that they learn on the job. That they MUST learn on the job. Because feature film editing, broadcast TV editing, web video editing, music video editing, corporate video editing all have different workflows…stuff that the schools do not cover.
So they learn on the job. Work their way up…better learn the tools of the craft…CRAFT of editing. If they go in with completely different terminology, they will be at a disadvantage. And I have worked in places where many of the editors were kids right out of school, who didn’t assist or apprentice, and their editing wasn’t up to snuff. Their projects had to be fixed…they had to be told what to do in order to fix things and make them right for broadcast TV. This is stuff they would learn as assistants.
If the students want to head right into wedding video, web video, home movies. Fine, teach them FCX and only teach the art of editing. But if they want careers in film or broadcast TV…which I’m sure most of them want…then they need to be taught the proper tools of the trade, and how to use those tools…as much as teaching the art.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
[Mark Morache] “FCX has such a radically different paradigm, it would be difficult for people trained on it to migrate to Avid or Premiere.”
Until this week I’d have agreed completely with this assessment – but the this morning I spent a couple of hours with a 16-year old work experience kid who has been using iMovie for a while and got himself the trial version of FCPX just last Sunday and started work with it on Monday.
He’d cut a couple of pieces on FCPX to show me (movie trailers for Avatar) and …
… I was completely blown away not just by how quickly he had got to grips with the software to a genuinely sophisticated level but how professional, well-thought-out and creatively effective his work actually was. That’s in three days!!!!
Oh, and he’d already got a handle on the basics of Motion 5 within that same time.
Granted this was an exceptionally talented kid, but it did confirm to me what I have noticed for a while, which is that below a certain age kids are so natively computer-literate that picking up new software isn’t a “learning process” as so many older folks find it to be, but a completely instinctual thing. The result is they learn at lightning speeds.
And my conclusion from that would be that they are more than capable of mastering multiple platforms at the same time – and will only benefit from the overview that exposure to different working models will give them. In short, I’m not at all sure anymore that learning FCPX would be a hindrance to learning anything else.
It’s the rest of us over a certain age that I’m more worried about 😉
On another note, I was very intrigued that this kid was asking a lot of the “big questions” about FCPX that have been vexing much older and wiser heads around here – his biggest gripe was the “visual clutter” of the audio clips in the timeline! Interesting …
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
Interesting, but hand him Media Composer and Premiere and have him come back in three days and evaluate how well he made the transition. That will tell you more about whether people who learn on FCPX can transition away from it easily or if it’s too dissimilar in its methodologies. That’s the crux of the issue.
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Michael Hancock
Editor -
[Michael Hancock] “Interesting, but hand him Media Composer and Premiere and have him come back in three days and evaluate how well he made the transition. That will tell you more about whether people who learn on FCPX can transition away from it easily or if it’s too dissimilar in its methodologies. That’s the crux of the issue.”
It would be an interesting experiment certainly if I could persuade his parents to let me use him as a lab rat – not sure that’s going to happen.
My feeling is that he would learn it all pretty quickly and be completely unfazed by an supposed methodological incompatibilities – I think what actually impressed me the most was that he was seeing past the software to the underlying principles in a very perceptive way.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com
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