Final cut X A Diamond in the rough

[Bill Davis]

[Andrew Kimery] “While you were cutting your stuff on FCP in AZ, other people were cutting docs using FCP in NYC, music videos on FCP in Chicago and TV shows on FCP in LA.”

Not really, Andrew.

I walked out of NAB 1999 where I went looking for a platform for a specific corporate monthly magazine program I had just pitched to my largest client.

It’s where I saw FCP 1.0 at its initial introduction.

Ordered a system the next week and was cutting on it a week later.

I undoubtedly wasn’t the first, but I was AMONG the first guys using FCP Legacy (via Hi-8!) for corporate video LONG before it was even a glimmer in Hollywoods eye.

Seriously, I remember all the events you are referencing and by the time they appeared, I’d been cutting on FCP for quite a while.

Well before I flew to LA to help Mike Horton do the very first LAFCPUG meeting and years before I flew back to LA for an early DV Expo and wound up chatting with Rami Katrib of Digital Film Tree about how excited he was because Walter Murch needed to set up a home cutting situation and they were going to be going to his place to instal a FCP system for him.

FWIW.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Andrew Kimery]

[Bill Davis] “Seriously, I remember all the events you are referencing and by the time they appeared, I’d been cutting on FCP for quite a while.”

Less than 12 months is quite a while?

The goal posts are moving a bit, Bill. I’m not disagreeing that you started using FCP v1 early or with your personal experiences while using it. I’m disagreeing with your idea that, “Without the market of NON-Filmmaking – FCP Legacy would not have developed into a tool that filmmakers FINALLY got to access for THEIR needs.” It doesn’t fit. Having a single product that could address multiple market segments was always in Apple’s plan. I mean, they had the Oxygen Network as beta testers for FCP v1. Like I said previously, there were a lot of things happening concurrently and it was FCP use in the lower end of the film/TV community that lead to the development of improved tools from Apple that focused on the workflow needs of the film/TV community. It just doesn’t make sense that Apple would look at a guy editing corporates with 3/4″ or MiniDV and go “You know what he really needs? Cinema Tools!”

I agree with you that FCP’s path to success was from the bottom up, not the top down, and there’s certainly a wide bottom in the filmmaking community.