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walter murch, bee dancing, and blinking
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Aindreas, after that post you should change your COW avatar to this:
🙂
Best,
Andy -
[Walter Soyka] “FCP’s timeline was totally open and didn’t have an opinion on how editing was to be done — “forensically absolute, intellectually disinterested.” You simply placed time-based media at specific points in absolute time, with immense (and occasionally dangerous) freedom over their arrangement and re-arrangement.
FCPX is a far more specialized tool. Craig Seeman has made the good point a few times that Apple has likely studied how people used editorial UIs for FCPX — I think we’re taking that idea a step further here. Apple has studied how people edit, and then incorporated the most common methodology directly into FCPX’s design. It’s even there in the language: primary storyline, secondary storyline, clip connections.”
That, right there, is the history of computing. In ye olden days, the process of using a computer was the process of programming a computer… and programming meant telling the machine precisely which hardware-implemented instructions to execute. As time passed, more abstraction was added. Higher-level programming languages were created, in which you no longer directly interacted with the hardware. Operating system vendors began to create extensive libraries of code with nice APIs, providing developers access to lots of pre-packaged functionality that didn’t require them to write their own code. Standard software was distributed, which performed simple tasks without requiring the user to write software at all. These tools could be used together to perform fairly complex operations. Later, ‘application software’ was invented — large software packages that provided all-in-one solutions for specific tasks.
And Application software itself has continued to evolve to provide more support for the way people use it. Consider iTunes vs. the previous approach of managing your music collection in the file manager, and using three different apps for playback, ripping, and burning. Consider the sharing features iPhoto has — they don’t do anything you couldn’t do yourself by exporting images and uploading them somewhere, but they save a bunch of steps. Consider the layout of the OS X file system, which is structured in a much more standardized way than the classic Mac OS file system.
Complaints about the introduction of higher-level tools, on the part of people conformable with lower-level approaches, have followed nearly every one of these historical developments, and the rhetoric is always remarkably similar — “I have less control”, “Things are too easy now and amateurs are going to show up and ruin everything”, “My skills are being devalued”, etc.
Yet despite these objections, the trend toward higher-level tools in computing has been relentless for, literally, five or six decades at this point. It’s not going to stop. At any rate, not until computers function at the same level of abstraction as human brains, and software natively understands mental concepts.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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Andy, you are so, so mean.
I just read it in my head with his voice. It works.. horribly well.
http://www.ogallchoir.net
promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics -
I agree that continued abstraction has been seen throughout the history of computing — but I’d point out that it’s somewhat unique to computing, and doesn’t exist in all areas where people craft things with tools. Many other tools have remained strictly functional.
People still build houses with hammers, but building materials and techniques have changed a lot over the past few hundred years.
FCPX “burns in” our current editorial model to the application. Aindreas asks us to consider the consequences. Maybe we had the best model, so there’s no harm in accepting the abstraction. Maybe we didn’t, and the assumptions built into our tools will limit how we think going forward.
[Chris Kenny] “Complaints about the introduction of higher-level tools, on the part of people conformable with lower-level approaches, have followed nearly every one of these historical developments, and the rhetoric is always remarkably similar — “I have less control”, “Things are too easy now and amateurs are going to show up and ruin everything”, “My skills are being devalued”, etc.”
No one is saying that in this thread. There are plenty of other threads where you can go to argue these reactions.
This thread is, ironically, a higher level, abstract discussion about how the new tools could affect editorial. It’s also a place to alternately compliment Aindreas on his brilliant writing or to good-naturedly ridicule him for being totally inscrutable, if you’re so inclined.
Do you think that the model built into FCPX encompasses all editorial? I’m not sure yet. I’ve been thinking about editorial in essentially the same way that FCPX has since I learned the craft. I’m having a hard time thinking outside of it so far– is that because that schema is the essence of editorial, or because that’s all we’ve come up with so far?
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
For sure, the absolute BEST thing that has come from this whole FCX release is the emergence of Andreas as a “poet for the people”. Much needed insanity in these days or utter irrationality.
Marvin Holdman
Production Manager
Tourist Network
8317 Front Beach Rd, Suite 23
Panama City Beach, Fl
phone 850-234-2773 ext. 128
cell 850-585-9667
skype username – vidmarv -
[Walter Soyka] ” ridicule him for being totally inscrutable, if you’re so inclined.”
Hey – hey now.
Inscrutable is the new black you know.
http://www.ogallchoir.net
promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics -
[Walter Soyka] “FCPX is built with a specific editorial model in mind.
The tools may accomplish the same tasks, but the distinction is real — and I for one think that Aindreas is wise to ask if it will have unintended consequences on how we think about editing.
I’ll bust out the Marshall McLuhan quote again: “We become what we behold. We shape our tools, then our tools shape us.” Now that we’ve reshaped our tools, Aindreas is asking what will happen as our tools shape us.”
Walter,
Is not about tools, but about concepts.
Mr Jobs decided long ago to change the concept of the “Personal Computer”, now they have decided to change the concept of video editing.
Tapes are disappearing and most of us are shooting file-based formats, but the concepts of movie, reel and sequence won’t change.[Walter Soyka] “FCPX is a far more specialized tool. Craig Seeman has made the good point a few times that Apple has likely studied how people used editorial UIs for FCPX — I think we’re taking that idea a step further here. Apple has studied how people edit, and then incorporated the most common methodology directly into FCPX’s design. It’s even there in the language: primary storyline, secondary storyline, clip connections.”
I doubt very much Apple has studied the way people edit.
All that of “primary storyline, secondary storyline, clip connections..” sounds to schools papers and manuals.[Carsten Orlt] “There is absolutely nothing you can do in the FCP7 timeline that you can’t do in X. Not always the same way but that is pretty obvious, isn’t it.”
My editing starts when I go to shoot. back home, I preview, select and edit all at once. Many times I even write the text on subtitles while I edit.
FCP gives me all the freedom I need to work the way I like.
FCPX doesn’t gives me that freedom at all and force me to a senseless process.
[Chris Kenny] “Complaints about the introduction of higher-level tools, on the part of people conformable with lower-level approaches, have followed nearly every one of these historical developments, and the rhetoric is always remarkably similar — “I have less control”, “Things are too easy now and amateurs are going to show up and ruin everything”, “My skills are being devalued”, etc”
With those better tools most people end up working with presets.
The trend are tools for people which doesn’t understand (and doesn’t care) about the underlaying technology. You won’t get what the tools have to offer if you don’t know what’s going on inside the machine.
My “value” is not on my 8 years editing with FC, but in my 25 years editing with everything. No fear for cheap good tools for everybody.
rafael -
I just listened to the podcast interview. great stuff. “this is too important to what I do, we need to get this fixed.”
Amen to that.
http://www.ogallchoir.net
promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics -
[Walter Soyka] “Maybe we had the best model, so there’s no harm in accepting the abstraction. Maybe we didn’t, and the assumptions built into our tools will limit how we think going forward.”
No matter how many times it’s said, it will never sink in…
Aindreas might provoke that argument as the extreme in his blistering rants, but in all honesty, that’s so far off base, what he is saying is a fundamental truth, not extreme in its core…which is why his voice here represents to me a wider range of thought
But the other coin here, who I’m really getting tired of reading, takes it into the gutter *projecting* his own interpretation of the argument…
While this thread, by its outset transcended that, he has to drag it right back down into the stench of what makes this so divisive and manifest some imaginary monkey protesting by throwing wrenches in the machine…
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