-
Final cut X A Diamond in the rough
-
[Herb Sevush] ” the EMC2 was the first modern digital NLE and came out a few months before”
Now THAT brings back memories. I clearly remember the optical drives that the media was stored on….ugh.
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
[Shane Ross] “Avid burned us too, and it’s taken us a LOT to trust them again, but they have earned it, and continue to earn it. “
DS, Symphony, Xpress, Pinnacle, Script Sync, Phrase Find (I think they might be back, however)……and with the company bleeding money, giving very sketchy financial statements, laying off people while giving huge bonuses to top execs, I’m not sure I would trust such a company. At least Apple cut Tim Cook’s salary when they didn’t hit sales projections (however ceremonial that might have been). Avid gives out bonuses.
However, MC is a great product for your market, so where else do you go?
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
Shanes post has a lot of accurate and valuable information – but it reflects his perspective as someone who’s focus is Hollywood feature oriented production.
But it was NOT that that drove the successful adoption of FCP Legacy. Not much at ALL during it’s first 5 years.
Because the FCP revolution happened bottom up – NOT top down – and the biggest reasons for FCP Legacy’s success had NOTHING to do with Hollywood style work at all.
While Hollywood was dragging their feet – the rise of both home desktop computer power AND the rise of the first basic 25Mbps digital video cameras are what REALLY propelled FCP to success in it’s early days.
Years before it was a glimmer in Hollywoods eyes – basic FCP systems were successfully supplanting the 3/4″ and Beta workflows that had been in place on the industrial and corporate video areas for years.
That somebody could finally buy an inexpensive digital camera in like a VX-1000 or the Sony PD-100a, digitize the result into FCP Legacy on an affordable Mac via Firewire – and make a damn decent video master that you could duplicate and distribute via VHS – was TRANSFORMATIONAL in the spread of video as a communications medium.
Without the market of NON-Filmmaking – FCP Legacy would not have developed into a tool that filmmakers FINALLY got to access for THEIR needs.
I suspect that what’s happening globally with FCP X will follow the same pattern. For everyone today who sees in terms of what it isn’t – there will be a dozen world wide who can see what its becoming. And they might just own the next set of keys to the future.
Because today – we’re not in a scarcity situation like we were back in the 1990s. Then, it was HARD to obtain and deploy production tools and expertise. Today it’s laughably easy. So a tool that ONLY does what the other tools do is an inherently WEAK tool.
In todays environment of plenty – we have to do more. Do it faster. Do it cheaper. And at the same time, do it BETTER than anyone else.
It’s the new normal.
My 2 cents.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Bill Davis] “So a tool that ONLY does what the other tools do is an inherently WEAK tool.
In todays environment of plenty – we have to do more. Do it faster. Do it cheaper. And at the same time, do it BETTER than anyone else.
It’s the new normal.”
But nowhere is there a premium for merely doing it differently.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf -
[Herb Sevush] “But nowhere is there a premium for merely doing it differently.”
But if ‘different’ makes one faster and more efficient, then there is a premium.
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
[Bill Davis] “hanes post has a lot of accurate and valuable information – but it reflects his perspective as someone who’s focus is Hollywood feature oriented production.”
Since that seemed to be the focus of the blog post, that was the focus of my comments. The explosion of FCP into the film/TV realm, and what spurred it.
It didn’t mention the NLEs used in the corporate or news world…Media 100, Edius. Or Early Premiere pro. PPro and Media 100 were the big boys in the corporate world…from my perspective when I cut in the corporate world in the mid 1990s. Even Sony had offerings, and little stand alone tape editing systems. ALL SORTS of editing options that were staples of the non-film/tv realm weren’t mentioned…only ones pertaining to Film/TV. Thus why I spoke about that.
I’m sure that FCP was huge in the corporate/wedding/realty realm, and lead to the slow decline of Media 100. Heck, DV in combination with FCP and firewire capture revolutionized everything, everywhere….
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
When you guys discuss cost, you forget to mention the value that piracy brought to FCP “legacy”. Quite a few seats of FCP “legacy” that I’ve run into over the years were pirated copies – i.e. installed multiple times for a single legit set of discs and one serial number.
FFW to today and FCPX gains interest because of the liberal App Store policy and because it is the anti-subscription NLE.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Scott Witthaus] “But if ‘different’ makes one faster and more efficient, then there is a premium.”
Yes, but “If” is a big word.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf -
[Scott Witthaus] ” Adobe would have a very difficult time trying this.”
AFAIK Adobe is split into three main silos; Creative Cloud, Marketing Cloud and Document Cloud. CC is still the biggest revenue generator, but Marketing is growing a lot (not sure about Document). Adobe looks to be someplace in between Apple and Avid in terms of dependence on the creative sphere for revenue.
[Scott Witthaus] “Avid has used this “aspirational” marketing strategy for years and one only needs to look at stock price to see how well that has done for them. It’s not a smart strategy and certainly not a smart way to choose an NLE.”
Don’t all companies use aspirational marketing though? Ex. FCP’s “In Action” page is populated with movies, TV shows, broadcasters and high-end commercials. It’s all telling us that these high profile projects used FCP and you should too.
[Scott Witthaus] “Exactly. What product solves the problem you have. For me, the solution is not the fact that some movie or doc was cut on a Media Composer. But pose the product as a solution (“I need to have multiple editors cutting in various locations and need to be able to output multiple formats for different screens and regions, etc. . What system solves this problem…”) and then you can more easily sell it.
“If you talked with a product consultant of an NLE vender and asked, “I need to have multiple editors cutting in various locations and need to be able to output multiple formats for different screens and regions, etc. . What system solves this problem…?” I’m sure they wouldn’t just start listing off names of movies and TV shows that used their NLE. They would give you a nuts and bolts answer and possibly mention a project by name that had a similar workflow as an example of their NLE executing that type of workflow successfully in the wild.
From an advertising standpoint though they have to do that in broad strokes and one of the best ways to do that is to highlight big, successful projects.
[Bill Davis] “That somebody could finally buy an inexpensive digital camera in like a VX-1000 or the Sony PD-100a, digitize the result into FCP Legacy on an affordable Mac via Firewire – and make a damn decent video master that you could duplicate and distribute via VHS – was TRANSFORMATIONAL in the spread of video as a communications medium. “
I think many things were happening concurrently and what we remember most probably depends on what circles we were swimming in at the time.
For example, during my first stint in Los Angeles in 2001 a lot of indies, docs, music videos, etc., (pretty much anything that was “budget challenged”) was being done on FCP primarily because of cost reasons. Many post facilities I’d been to had it running on a machine somewhere just to experiment with it, and, to Shane’s point earlier, I think it turned into the go to NLE for side projects & home offices because of it’s price point and feature set (it certainly struck a chord that other ‘inexpensive’ NLEs like Vegas and Premiere had not). Once ‘Hollywood people’ got used to FCP on small projects they started migrating to bigger and bigger projects. IIRC this is how FCP displaced Avid at Bunim/Murray. They were using it for small things, saw how capable it was (and that it was a few zeroes cheaper than Avid) and transitioned to it in 2004-ish.
2002 seems be when ‘notable’ films started coming out (“notable” just being films that were big enough to be written about) like “Rules of Attraction”, “Full Frontal” and “The Ring”. On a related note, Apple acquired FilmLogic in 2001 and turned that into Cinema Tools which came out in 2002. So either a significant enough demand from film-centric productions already existed just two years after FCP’s release or Apple was looking to help stoke those fires (probably a bit of both) because Cinema Tools was certainly an ‘up market’ product that initially cost as much as FCP did.
2003 and 2004 saw more FCP movies (ex. “Ladykillers”, “Supersize Me”, “Cold Mountain”, “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow”) and, IIRC, the first primetime scripted series (“Scrubs”) as well as big facilities such as the previously mentioned Bunim/Murray and Pie Town. To be honest, I’m not exactly sure when Pie Town started with FCP but in my mind they have always been one of the beacons in the FCP community (even expressing optimism about FCP X though they ultimately transitioned to Avid with Resolve for finishing). I think around 2004 is when I noticed trailers houses in LA also ditching Avid for FCP.
[Scott Witthaus] “But if ‘different’ makes one faster and more efficient, then there is a premium.”
Splitting hairs, but I think the premium is still because it’s faster and more efficient, not because it’s just different.
-
[Andrew Kimery] ” IIRC this is how FCP displaced Avid at Bunim/Murray. They were using it for small things, saw how capable it was (and that it was a few zeroes cheaper than Avid) and transitioned to it in 2004-ish.
“And when FCPX came out, they went back to Avid. Mark may want to chime in, but I don’t think they felt that it was a mistake to do so.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up