Opinions on what NLE to teach on a new BA in Film & Screen Media Production

[David Roth weiss]

Thank you guys for noticing my absence over the last year. Interestingly, I’m still the #6 all time Cow poster, in spite of only posting about twenty times in the last year. That seems to indicate that I’m not the only one around here who’s been posting less.

I’ve been at ProMAX now for a year, and if you guys think that sitting in a darkened edit bay telling stories for about 14-hours a day cuts into your free time, try consulting about workflow, hardware, software, and infrastructure all day, every day, for a worldwide customer-base of users, all of whom spend about 14-hours a day in their edit bays.

BTW, as far as FCP7 still being so popular 20-months after it was EOL’d, that’s because it is still the easiest NLE for most to learn; by far, is the easiest of all the NLE’s to use collaboratively; and, by far, is the easiest to use in a shared storage environment (unless you’re using Avid Isis in an all Avid environment). These are things I deal with every day now, and you would all be surprised at just how many facilities are still FCP hold-outs.

David Roth Weiss
ProMax Systems
Burbank
DRW@ProMax.com

Sales | Integration | Support

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[John Davidson]

Unless they’re ALL on macs, I’d say teach them premiere. It’s platform independent and open to the widest audience, be they PC or mac. I can’t tell you to teach them X because X is changing and evolving heavily. What you teach today likely wont be usable in 3 months, 6 months, or a year.

It’s not a question of which program I think is better but more about what’s most easily accessible to each student, especially after the class is over. Considering a creative cloud account is a monthly 50 buck purchase, that makes it the easiest program for all the kids to get.

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[Franz Bieberkopf]

David,

I’m not so surprised, as this lines up with my own anecdotal observations.

I would be very interested to hear more about your observations and interactions around this very interesting “transitional” phase.

Franz.

[Oliver Peters]

I do my share of teaching editing students each year at a local college film class. Last year and this, it’s become a real dilemma as to what I should teach them. You have to decide whether you want to teach editing concepts or teach students to function as working editors (independently or as entry level assistants at companies). If job skills are a factor, then Avid Media Composer or Adobe Premiere Pro are the way to go.

But here are some other interesting considerations to factor in:

1. If you aren’t tied to the Mac platform, you might look into Lightworks, which is free (or minimal cost for the pro version).
2. Also on the PC, EDIUS and Vegas are solid choices.
3. If your students all have access to iPads, you might look at the new TouchEdit. This would be more for teaching editing concepts. It would require an iPad 2or higher.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Lance Bachelder]

It’s a dilemma for sure – you’re not just learning software, you need to tell a story effectively and at a high level. Learning Vegas for instance (which I love) and becoming a great Vegas Editor could be a problem if your demo reel lands you an Avid gig and you’ve never touched the NLE! You’re in for a major shock.

I think a class that gave students hands-on experience with a variety of NLE’s and their strengths and weaknesses might be cool as long as they had ample time to actually learn the program well enough to run it in a paid situation.

The truth is it takes a long time to really learn any NLE and all its ins and outs, fretboard shortcuts etc to the point where you’re just being creative and not thinking about the software and able to work effectively with a client breathing over your shoulder.

Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Irvine, California

[Richard Herd]

I’m a teacher.

I taught Premiere Pro for the last 2 years. This year I purchased FCPX and am teaching it. I teach a lesson on dialogue editing. In PP, it took a week. In X, it took 50 minutes. L-cuts, J-cuts, audio mixing. It really sucks because now I have to come up with 4 more days of curriculum. I think we’ll do dubstep remixes of Sinatra tunes.

In my opinion as a teacher and a freelancer (yeah, I’ve made 1,000 effing ads in a dead market, soul-crushing environment, can’t wait to move), X is best. The folks who say X ain’t for film are wrong.

The decision for Avid and PP has nothing to do with actual storytelling, editing for content type stuff. Avid is so clunky as to be embarrassing. PP still has that weird rendering-but-not-rendering in the bottom right but thankfully it integrates nicely with AE. Whew. Otherwise, we’d get it for free and let it sit on our HD for a decade.

(Swore off this damn forum. Hate to be back.) Truth is … no… my experience mandates that your students touch X first. Get the story going. What editing is: it is not the most important part of a move. IT IS THE MOVIE!

Another detail, my first year students shoot on consumer panasonic cameras. My second year students shoot on Canon XA10. Actually, the Canon stinks to get the footage into the system.

You should’ve seen the first year students huddled around the iMac, collaborating, discussing shots and angles, and which one to use. This was day friggin’ one. By my curriculum that’s 10 times more efficient. When they have a question, I show them the next buttons and how deep the program actually is.

Look: If they can tell a story with motion picture and they have the drive for the entrepreneurial hustle, then maybe they can be so lucky as to get a shared corporate IT, low-risk permission, anti-hacker environment gig Avid is so proud of. Me? I installed a SAN and taught them how to make password protected sparse images to protect their work.

Ok. I’m very proud of my students.

Premiere upgrade arrives in 2 weeks.
Avid arrives in August.

They gotta know all three.

[Richard Herd]

[Bill Davis] “If your students are looking to work into filling seats as professional editors where the bulk of what they’ll do is precision timeline editing and full production – focusing on AVID would be smart. “

I know what you mean. But you didn’t say that. First, a student has to get results they intend. Avid is clunky and ridiculous except for those in a niche market that has nothing to do with storytelling abilities. I mean the crappiest movies in Hollywood are cut on Avid. That has nothing to do with the software.

Get the students telling stories ASAP! Then, once they have a bit of a reel and a knack, then they can look at markets and job skills. This is pedagogy, here. X is a deep program.

[Richard Herd]

Post Redacted.

[Richard Herd]

John, I show my first year students your video on editing because of the editing time lapse. They get the a-ha moment! It’s crazy that some of them like the “link clips to the gap” approach and other like the “build it in the timeline” approach.

Question: How long did it actually take to cut “The Decider” Promo?

Thanks!

[John Davidson]

Really? That’s awesome!

Actual physical time editing was probably 3 hours. The graphics took a bit longer than the edit. In the middle of the cut I rewrote the spot, so that took a little extra time. I was also going slower initially because I was talking, and then about halfway through the cut I got the idea that I would speed up the playback of the edit in the tute. At that point I quit talking and it started going much faster. Seeing the edit sped up turned out to be my favorite part.

That’s pretty cool that you’re showing it to your class.

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.