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FCPX Documentary on Kickstarter!
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[Bill Davis] “What makes you think the documentary is about “defending” anyone’s use of anything? Maybe it’s actually about what the director has always publicly said it’s about…an examination of how people confront and manage technological change.
“Well thats what the trailer is selling. A bunch of people justifying their use of a piece of software. Championing it like they couldnt edit before or be creative without it. They found the holy grail! My life will never be the same! Come off it, its just software. Does it really a need a documentary to rehash what this forum has been talking about for 6 years? I’d feel the same exact way if there was a PPRO or Avid, or Davinci documentary, its just dumb. It also doesnt help that alot of the people who are featured in that trailer sell training for FCPX. Bias? Nah couldnt be.
Not to mention a kickstarter?, like i thought that was the whole point of the software, you can make videos now for cheaper than ever…but we still need your money to make this documentary afterall.
What are you going to get out of this documentary personally Bill, that you dont know already? really?
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Like your mention of Tracy Kidder’s book. Agreed.
As for the speculation, was Randy having trouble organizing his vacation videos? … LOL, that one I will vote YES, since I have harped forever on the porting-over of iPhoto/iMovie convention, using the term “Events” — presumably because it is more family/amateur friendly — rather than the boring “Clips” or “Media.”
Doug D
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[Joe Marler] “Was it a focus group? Was it Randy Ubillos’ alleged difficulty organizing his own vacation videos? Were there influential academic white papers? Was there a “Xerox PARC visit” event? For the origins of the Mac, these have been well covered historically. The jump to FCPX was nearly as great a disruption. “
As I recall Randy was making a companion app for FCP Legend that would be used as a logging to (maybe something similar in functionality to Adobe’s Prelude) and when he showed the work in progress to Jobs, Jobs said that’s what he wanted the next FCP to be like. Presumably work on FCP Legend was abruptly halted as Randy and his team had to go way off the reservation to make this new NLE. IMO that would explain why the last Final Cut Studio was such a meager release and why FCP X
I would’ve loved to have been a fly on the wall for that and other moments such as they first time they showed it to select group of influential industry insiders and editors, as well as when the decision was made at the last minute to take over the NAB Supermeet
[Joe Marler] “Tracy Kidder won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1981 novel Soul of a New Machine,”
I’ll have to check that out.
Another great book on the topic is George Lucas And the Digital Revolution (You used to be able to find it as a free PDF, but I don’t know if that exists any more). It’s about the 5 or 6 guys that are pretty much responsible for CGI, Pixar and every NLE (if I’m overstating it’s not by much).
https://www.droidmaker.com/contents.html
Hopefully the X doc avoids the pitfall of being too focused on an event (the release of X) or about a thing (X itself) instead of being focused on the people behind the thing or the people impacted by the event. Even acclaimed docs like The Corporation were dry as a bone, IMO, because it was a lecture instead of a story. On the flip side, I thought Enron: Smartest Guys in the Room was great because it wasn’t about the Enron scandal, it was about the guys that created the scandal and helped foster a business culture that also took down the likes of WorldCom and Arthur Andersen. It was a character study using the Enron as the case in point. 60 Minutes has always been my go to example for this type of storytelling because they are always able to take a huge story like pollution and distill it down to one family in Wisconsin that everyone can relate to.
How does that Stalin quote go, “The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.”
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I’m writing an article for Audio Technology magazine about the Fairlight/ Resolve juggernaut. Any keen film makers want to make a doco about it???
Seriously, I’m not sure what the point is of making this doco. Sure the debate has generated tons of text over the last six years but this feels like it might be a boring rehash of tired tropes, justifications with 20/20 hindsight clarity and some therapy for the psychologically damaged combatants on both sides.
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[Michael Gissing] “I’m writing an article for Audio Technology magazine about the Fairlight/ Resolve juggernaut. Any keen film makers want to make a doco about it???”
Sure. Do you mind if I use Media Composer First? I hear it’s both easy enough for a novice master but powerful enough to edit an episode of Better Call Saul. 😉
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[Andrew Kimery] “Sure. Do you mind if I use Media Composer First? ”
If you shoot it on an iPhone and cut with MC Free sure, why not. Lets workshop it over a bucket of koolaid.
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[Michael Gissing] “Lets workshop it over a bucket of koolaid.”
LOL
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[Neil Goodman] “What are you going to get out of this documentary personally Bill, that you dont know already? really?”
Huh? When I watch an episode of Sherlock, or Elementary or even the great Jeremy Brett BBC Holmes-based content from years ago – I usually already know the outlines of the story there as well.
That hardly stops me from being interested.
Plus, At NAB I got to see the Off The Tracks initial preview.And I thought it really held together as a story.
Remember a LOT of us in that preview crowd are reasonably experienced media professionals often with years of editing experience – so it was a pretty tough crowd. I think we were all pretty surprised at how engaging the story we watched was.
At its heart, it held together as a piece of storytelling. Period.
And truth be told, it starts with a rehash of a LOT of the negative X stuff. Nobody seemed to sugercoat anything in what I watched. There was criticism galore. And, of course, the vast majority of the people in it are people I actually know. So it was fascinating to hear them explain their thinking in more depth. Obviously since it was recorded at an X specific event – most of those appearing represent people who stuck with it long enough to get past their initial shock. But they really didn’t come across as fanboy zombies. Largely because they were able to articulately explain their REASONING for their opinions pretty clearly. So it was fascinating to hear what others were experiencing while I was experiencing the same events.
Look, this is really no different from Poker Players going to see a documentary about other Poker Players that includes people they know.
If it succeeds in giving the viewer a window into about how others think about Poker strategy – I would expect to have that be particularly interesting to people who know a lot about Poker.
And I would fully expect there to be a lot of poker players who will be MORE than ready pick apart every single perceived flaw and loudly air their disagreements with any and all conclusions aired in this by any participant.
As this group FULLY understands – creating work – means it goes out and people criticize it. Period. Full stop.
Should be interesting around here when it comes out!
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No difference here.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Bill Davis] “What makes you think the documentary is about “defending” anyone’s use of anything? Maybe it’s actually about what the director has always publicly said it’s about…an examination of how people confront and manage technological change.”
We can tell from the trailer what to expect. Interviews of people who use FCPX. What is the point? Would you want to watch a movie about Premiere Pro editors telling you why they think Premiere Pro is the cat’s meow with a side order of awesome sauce?
[Bill Davis] “What might be REALLY crazy is if people would just be patient – look at the work when it comes out – and THEN judge it based on what it actually IS – rather than what everyone is pre-assuming what it will be when it finally arrives.
Wait … that kinda make me think about something that happened six years ago…”
What exactly happened six years ago? I know at the FCPX key note they said FCXP was innovative, amazing revolutionary. Will the movie ask Randy questions like, why did it take FCPX so long to catch up to Fast/Pinnacle/Avid? Randy did not invent GPU acceleration for NLE. He also did not invent background rendering. Don’t you want to see a documentary about FAST/Pinnacle/Avid? While Fast Multimedia did do some cool and innovative things I would like to think the Canopus Corporation did as well. Don’t you want to see a movie about Hiro Yamada and the Canopus Corporation? To me FCPX is a NLE. It is not a pioneer in digital video editing like the Newtek Video Toaster. Having said that a documentary about the Video Toaster might be cool. How come background rendering wasn’t cool back in 2001 when the Fast Multi Media Red, Silver and Purple systems did it? What about Fast/Avid Liquid making use of the GPU long before FCPX. Don’t you want to here an interview from the people who implemented GPU acceleration long before Randy did? I don’t think you care about innovation in the word of video editing. Instead I think you want to glorify Apple when ever possible even if it is not needed. It is great that you were using FCPX from day. I almost think you expect a reward or at the very least a pat on the back but keep in mind, some people could not use FCPX back in 2011.
I hope they mention for some people the lack of multi-cam, 3rd party video capture cards and closed captioning (among other things) made FCPX unusable for certain workflows. Having said that FCPX has come along way. If FCPX had been released back in 2001 it might be worth glorifying but that is not the case.
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[Bill Davis] “As this group FULLY understands – creating work – means it goes out and people criticize it. Period. Full stop.
Should be interesting around here when it comes out!
????”
Really not sure why you’re having to defend it on here Bill, but it looks like it’s worth watching.
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