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The Fog Thickens
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[Chris Kenny] “And Smoke? Honestly, I want to find some excuse for us to buy it — it’s now in that sort of ideal price range where it’s cheap enough for us as a small post house, but expensive enough that most people won’t buy it for themselves, meaning some people might conceivably give us money because we have it and they don’t. But I can’t quite figure out what we’d use it for.”
You said it, brother. It’s why I started the “Does this change anything” thread. Looking for the same excuse. Let me know if you come up with it.
Bottom line, in its case, seems to be converging toward the fact that it would still need to support some kind of round tripping and shared metadata because I use MochaPro for perspective tracking and Resolve for grade. And even from what the evangelists are demonstrating and blogging about, the Smoke tools aren’t in the same league. The only thing I can see it useful for is its integration of true 3D compositing and then it becomes just another graphics/composite tool — and although Shake is now well beyond its best-before date, I still find it amazingly useful. Its my #1 diagnostic go-to simply because it is so close to the core code — I’m not interested in glossy interfaces, holistic databases, or any of that ultra-sophistication that only serves to hide basic functionality. You could say that about the AvidMediaFiles source media model, which has been complained about ad nauseum the same way that Final Cut’s “anywhere” media management causes clips to go offline. If that’s a deal-breaker for picking an NLE… alrighty then.
BTW, I’m getting really tired of this “where the puck is going to be”. Its just a bad analogy, of the many, casually re-purposed by someone who apparently doesn’t/didn’t understand ice hockey in much depth. If you were to check out my geographical location, you would see that the guy who actually coined the phrase played here for quite a while. And while its nice to think that it alludes to some kind of prescience or Hidden Understanding, you also have to comprehend the degree to which the game bent to his individual force of gravity, that was like the Einsteinian “warped space-time” which really means that the puck position, like gravity, was a tendency that found Mr. Gretzky, and why not if you are the leading scorer of all time? I accept there is some Heisenberg uncertainty in the causality exchange, but pretending to know how the great debate of how media production will be executed in the future is making some hard-to-support assumptions.
Off-topic, of course, but while on the ice, its profoundly discouraging that the game in question has evolved to deal with the “skill” players with a strategy we know now to be called “concussion”. But that’s Darwin, right?
“Are we not men?” Arrrghh.
jPo
You mean “Old Ben”? Ben Kenobi?
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That’s great, Walter – I hadn’t seen it before. All the hoopla about what’s pro, what’s not pro, etc. which we’ve seen here makes me think of what it was like when desktop publishing for the masses first became a reality – 36 fonts, and all were used on one page! Everyone became a designer, just like every cub scout with a T2i and FCPX these days hangs out a “Cinematographer” shingle.
But the beauty of the desktop publishing revolution was that people could then afford the price of admission – and some had talent, or developed it. The cheapening of technology always ends up for the better at some point. Those who are willing to put in their 100,000 hours will rise to the top, spawning a new generation of people who will say, “Wow…if I had that software, I could make a feature film too.”
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
[Joseph W. Bourke] “All the hoopla about what’s pro, what’s not pro, etc. which we’ve seen here makes me think of what it was like when desktop publishing for the masses first became a reality”
I wonder if these battles happened when desktop computers increased in use over mainframes.
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The real explosion happened in 1985, when Apple introduced the LaserWriter printer, then shortly thereafter, Aldus introduced PageMaker, which became the industry standard, and is InDesign’s grandfather, so to speak.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Maybe the folks from Monsters, Social Network, Hugo, Act of Valor and Girl with the Dragon Tattoo were all unavailable?
But nine of these shows was “edited” in Premiere, it was just used in the workflow – big difference.
I will say at the Supermeet last night there was a LOT of enthusiasm for both Smoke and Premiere. Sad that when the Adobe guy showed that now when you drop a clip on a new sequence it shows a dialog box almost exactly like FCP7 asking if you want to conform the seq to the media etc. and the crowd went nuts like this was new – kinda reminded of an old Apple NAB presentation. I didn’t stick around for the FCPX presentation so no idea what kind of reaction it got.
While Macs and Thunderbolt are big talk at NAB, not much FCPX talk. It’s here and there at some booths but nothing like the presence legacy used to
have. Seems like the biggest loser this year is Avid – Smoke just completely killed the Symphony announcement. Apple is the big winner without even being here – with Smoke, OpenCL in CS6, Thunderbolt and FCPX no one I’m talking to is switching platforms because they stopped using legacy FCP.Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Irvine, California -
[Andrew Richards] “Terence Curren said he tried to line up someone, anyone, using Premiere Pro for film or TV work to come to this year’s pre-NAB Editor’s Lounge. But he said he couldn’t, even after calling Adobe. Was Team Coco unavailable?”
No, that was a miscommunication between Terry and I. We are rescheduling someone for a post NAB Editor’s Lounge. Stay tuned.
Kevin Monahan
Sr. Content and Community Lead
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe Systems, Inc.
Follow Me on Twitter! -
[Andrew Richards] “What gives? If every film and TV pro is flocking back to Avid, why are they back in the red? Was everyone waiting for CS6 to hop to Premiere? Does Smoke 2013 change everything?
I feel like this NAB asks more questions than it answers for me. What about you?
Best,
Andy
“From my conversations during NAB I heard the opposite of any “flocking” behavior in any direction.
We got tons of sizzle this year. (clearly more resolution at lower prices on cameras are a rapidly accelerating technological fact) and a lot of spin.
But this year, underneath the well-earned buzz of Smoke, the Black Magic Camera, the CS6 rebuild et al – what I saw on the show floor was very, VERY retro.
Lots and lots of guys in suits making the traditional contacts, deals and relationships to move as much product out the door as possible – and the vast majority of it has nothing to do with me.
My interests are not the core interests of NAB and haven’t been since I worked in Broadcasting in my early career.
NAB is still actually a “wholesalers” convention at it’s core. In previous years, consumers, prosumers and even significant but still relatively small players like creative boutiques, ad agencies or production houses use the show to scout for solutions – but the real bulk of NAB has always been that it’s a “trade show” in the classic sense.
Which reminded me that what I think is “important” is a smaller part of a small part of the big picture that is “the production industry.”
Evolutions or even “revolutions” in this stuff can make my life easier or harder for few years now and then. But it’s the “long game” that matters.
I was joking on day one from the airport that the theme this year is “everything changes everything” but on reflection, after the show, that was silly.
Nothing changes everything, because “everything is” unchangeable. Its too overpoweringly massive and complex to ever understand.
Something can change what *I* do. If they target me properly. And manufactures certainly “wish” they could move the industry to their will, but only a small handful can and even those ebb and flow in clout.
Perhaps BlackMagic shook the beast this year. Good for them. From their presence at NAB (right near Apple’s old space near the South Hall front door) they generated the new eras most valuable commodity – buzz.
But for how long?
Morgan Spurlock noted in his Supermeet presentation that ephemeral thing we call “buzz” has a shorter and shorter life cycle these days. He noted that about 2 weeks is all you can even hope for before something ELSE is the “next big thing” in peoples brains.
He struck me as a pretty darn smart guy.
So I’m going to try to be a bit more “reflective” and a bit less “reactive” this year.
That seems a better bet for long term results.
Personally, other than the Supermeet craziness of last night (way too much to go into here) the most “fun” I’ve had was actually that initial meeting of a few “or Not” folk. Walter Soyka and I even sat together for most of the Supermeet program last night (when I wasn’t bouncing all over heck and back trying to help put on the show.
And as cool as forum participation is, nothing meets sitting down with people to talk about the past, present and future of an industry we all enjoy.
That’s been the whole point, after all. The studying the things we use is all well and good. But the people are where the real value always resides.
Time to lace up the Asics – the show awaits.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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[Lance Bachelder] “But nine of these shows was “edited” in Premiere, it was just used in the workflow – big difference.”
I’d bet Act of Valor was edited on Premiere. Bandito Bros are pretty Adobe-centric.
2.9 GHz 8-core (4,1), FCP 7.0.3, 10.6.6
Blackmagic Multibridge Eclipse (7.9.5) -
[Lance Bachelder] “and the crowd went nuts like this was new”
Isn’t that what lots of people tend to do at the supermeet or during MacWorld keynotes? I’ve neve been to one but I have watched in fascination one or two videos. “And the crowd went nuts,” would seem to be their caption.
David
AllinOneFilms.com -
[Lance Bachelder] “But nine of these shows was “edited” in Premiere, it was just used in the workflow – big difference.”
Oops, should have mentioned. Both Monstes and Act of Valor were edited on Premiere Pro. I didn’t know about “Girl with the Dragon Tatoo”. I’ll have to check that one out.
https://tv.adobe.com/watch/customer-stories-video-film-and-audio/monsters/
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