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Will Apple abandon pro-users all together?
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[Jeremy Garchow] “I think we should take this offline… …there’s no reason to discuss this in a public forum, or at least this public forum. I will write you offline.”
I agree with you… Better yet, call me.
DRW
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.comDon’t miss my new Creative Cow Podcast: Bringing “The Whale” to the Big Screen:
https://library.creativecow.net/weiss_roth_david/Podcast-Series-2-MikeParfitandSuzanneChisholm/1POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums.
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What I don’t like in this FCPX analogy of Writing and Editing is that Writing is basically externalizing a preexistent spoken language.While Editing is still pretty much a craft in which there isn’t a previous and universal language per se.(as we learn it much later in life -and in a passive way by watching it on a screen)
We all learn how to speak when we are babies, so writing it down is a natural step forward, isn’t it? And a very early one too.I don’t know how Editing could be nearly as natural as Writing because it’s still a late and a rare feature in humans, after all. And by its passive nature, while watching it, Editing wouldn’t let one to communicate as good as reading it and promptly writing it back.
So, while Editing may increase in popularity, it’s still a fetishism, and I don’t see it coming as near (or as natural) as Writing.You picture it very well, Walter; In a group of video professionals we’re still talking with these old words.
How far is this fetish of “videoing everything” going? My bet is, not very far than we see it today. Only slightly enhanced.There’s still money to be made, of course, and that’s the path Apple chose to walk into. The fetish way.It is a very tantalizing analogy of democratizing a communication skill, but it won’t help FCPX to be a “revolutionary writing pen”. Nor we as editors will become the middle age scribes, that once walked the earth, being stormed by an Apple design. Wait, maybe a thunderbolt connection between thinking brains will allow their generated imagery to “talk” to each other? Oh dear, I see an iThink coming up soon. Beware!
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Since everybody here seems to be so much in favor of the so called democratization of editing and postproduction in general, let me be the devil’s advocate and say that I am not.
If you are a business owner, what’s there to like? It may not be a “nice” point of view in such a forum but it is one that makes economic sense. Is it futile? Sure, nobody’s gonna changes that evolution (no “revolution” in my mind, rather a devaluation).10 years ago, you had to pay a premium for an Avid. Spruce DVD Maestro cost in the 80.000 dollar range if I remember correctly. But you could also charge good prices for work so you could pay back the bank AND make a decent living.
If you’re spending 100.000 and more for your studio gear, chances are very likely you are both determined, trained and experienced in what you were doing – not just with regards to the actual work itself but the process of running a business in general. And it was all f***ing template free.
By the time you are able to buy such gear, you were ready to use it, run a business with it AND create stuff that is worthwhile creating.
Downloading a 300 dollar app from the app store is a whole different story.
While I do editing now and then (we mainly do various post work but not so much editing as most people here do on a daily basis), I would never call myself an editor. And editor is trained, first as an assistant, then slowly moves up the chain. It takes years. And it shows. Same for camera people, DPs or directors.Coppola, I think, said at the beginning of the the the whole digital video revolution how great this trend will be because somewhere a kid may pick up one of those inexpensive dv cameras and make a film. And it’ll be like a cinematic, young Mozart.
While that may be true, for every Mozart there are 1000 hacks and that’s the reality I am seeing all the time. Do we have better films compared to previous decades when it was a job exclusively done by seasoned professionals. I don’t think so. I strongly argue that the opposite is true.
Is there better graphic design out there compared to previous decades. No, again, I think the opposite is true.The work we do mostly involves regular feature film stuff for various rights holders and licencees. If any one of you have been to Cannes or the American Film Market, now and 15 years ago, the difference is like night and day. There is a vast amount of sub-standard, low budget material out there, essentially shot by a bunch of guys without proper background, with prosumer cameras, edited with FCP 7 and thrown onto the market. And it’s full with issues and problems that were unthinkable 10 years ago. There is so much of it, the market is over saturated. Prices go down, good product gets overlooked and sits on the shelves cause the pipes are blocked.
Unfortunately, the market doesn’t regulate itself really – ie. sub-par stuff isn’t rejected. The cheap stuff cost little and doesn’t rely on returns at any box office, they are sold in packages by the dozen because markets have grown but people can still only watch so much and the day only has 24 hours. Most of it is genre material, spectacular artwork and trailer to attract attention goes along with it and it then is’s thrown in a license packages together with 30 other titles for dvd, blu-ray or pay-tv world wide. It’s sold like porn, by the cover and by the pound.
Compressor costs 50 dollars – and it does DVD and Blu-ray encoding, it even does (sort of) format conversion, right?. Cinemacraft costs 60.000 and it ONLY does DVD and Blu-ray. An Alchemist is well beyond 100.000k. Is the quality the same? No, it isn’t, of course. But for the average person Compressor’s results looks decent enough (sometimes!!!!). It is hard to explain to a customer (who often is clueless and even more often doesn’t care as long as it fits the specs and is CHEAP) why you charge more (and have to charge more) then somebody who spent 50 dollars on such an app. If you are lucky you can make a good niche for yourself with some primetime companies that do care about such things and are prepared to spent the money. If not you are having a hard time or you’re going with the cheap stuff, too.I think the quality of product out there goes down. There are exceptions but in general I feel it’s true. And because CHEAP rules, that trend makes it hard for those professionals and companies who do care, invest and pay for top quality software and gear to remain profitable. And then people wonder: “Why don’t look my encodes, my downscales, my put-whatever-you-like-here look like the Hollywood stuff I can buy out there?
Apple’s motivation in all that is, of course, not democratization of anything but the sales of hardware. I just don’t think it is doing any of us – as company owners, freelancer or simply an audience – any favour in the long run, five to ten years from now. -
[Frank Gothmann] “Since everybody here seems to be so much in favor of the so called democratization of editing and postproduction in general, let me be the devil’s advocate and say that I am not.”
Am I “in favor of democratization?”
Yes, in that it let me start a business ten years ago for a tenth of the money that it would have cost me just a few years before that.
No, in that someone else can start a business to compete with me today for a tenth of what I paid. The same phenomenon that allowed me to disrupt other businesses now threatens my own.
Does democratization encourage lower standards for quality, or do our lower standards for quality allow democratization? It’s a chicken and egg question.
Cheap gear isn’t even the big problem. Cheap labor is. Media is a sexy business which graduates more candidates every year than there are positions to fill. Supply and demand says that this will push wages down.
Democratization may be bad for business, because I’ll be too expensive to win over the masses of cheap bids. It may be good for business, because the low quality of the cheap-bid work will help differentiate my higher quality work and actually increase its value.
I’m not trying to make a value judgment about democratization. Whether I like it or not, it’s inevitable reality, like gravity, the speed of light, or the weather. You can like it or you can hate it — just don’t ignore it.
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 -
It is what it is. No sense whining about it. I’m predominantly a cameraman — have been so for 30 years. It’s hard for me to watch documentaries on say HBO, that have sub-standard camerawork. Even nature shows, once the domain of the most talented documentary DP’s, have slipped — badly.
If more people now have access to a pro-editing environment, so be it.
In the end, there’s nothing to do but produce work that shines. The top people get the calls; that’s the way it’s always been — here’s to a free and open market.
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[Frank Gothmann] “If you are a business owner, what’s there to like? It may not be a “nice” point of view in such a forum but it is one that makes economic sense. Is it futile? Sure, nobody’s gonna changes that evolution (no “revolution” in my mind, rather a devaluation).”
And if the quality of the movies/tv/whatever is so bad, why aren’t networks/film festivals/whatever rejecting them?
There is no question, it is harder to make money, on the flip there is no question there are many more avenues to make money from these days. Like Walter says, it’s a chicken and egg.
Have a look down memory lane:
https://forums.creativecow.net/archivethread/45/46439
https://forums.creativecow.net/archivethread/45/46404
https://forums.creativecow.net/archivepost/45/136435
https://forums.creativecow.net/archivepost/45/135721
https://forums.creativecow.net/archivepost/45/47078
https://forums.creativecow.net/archivepost/8/2471
https://forums.creativecow.net/archivepost/8/2415
https://forums.creativecow.net/archivepost/8/2293
https://forums.creativecow.net/archivepost/8/3249
https://forums.creativecow.net/archivepost/8/3154
https://forums.creativecow.net/archivepost/8/3020 – For you Aindreas…and many morrreeee!
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Where to begin.
Aindreas…
I hear your concern and your pain. But there’s nothing either of us can do about it.
Believe it or not, I’m trying to cope with precisely the same change and pain. I’ve just decided that instead of fighting it and railing against it, I will embrace it and try to find the things about the change that are empowering rather than just yell about it.Change is disruptive. Period. And we all have to deal with this disruption.
Your argument sounds to me like someone in the Court of some 14th century king arguing that the peasants thatdon’t have the economic clout to afford a personal craftsmen to build them a custom Clavenet – don’t deserve to learn how to play the piano.
That was precisely how the old world worked. The power of (anything) was reserved for the people who could AFFORD that thing.
Today it’s a different world. People with little money can afford astonishing personal technology.
No where is that more true than in the visual arts.
To build on your example in typesetting – it was once only those who could afford a lead type foundry – then it was people who could afford a Linotronic L-100 – then it was people who could afford a $6000 laserwriter (I was one of those myself!) – then after a while, anyone with a 500 laptop and a $150 Epson inkjet could practice “do it yourself” typesetting at a level unimaginable to that guy who used to sweat at the type slug foundry for his whole life.
I got schooled because I was able to afford that Laserwriter I. You probably did the same. There was a week BEFORE I knew what a kerning pair was – and a week AFTER I learned that. And like it or not, there’s a kid out there with a DSLR and MacBook who is getting schooled in exactly the same way as I write this. The unescapable difference is that the pool of those learning was small back in my day (and surely in yours as well) since a $6000 laserwriter/computer combo was pretty rare back when I was getting started.
A laptop, a library of fonts available via download on-line, and an Epson ink-jet printer is in damn near every home today.
And next to them you’ll find a camcorder. A TV set. And a laptop computer that shipped with free editing software.
If you can’t see the change represented by that – you might explore whether you possibly have some “Industry-insider” blinders on.
Everyone here knows that the real challenge is assembling the skills and wisdom to USE the tools properly. And that means buckling down and paying ones dues and learning the language and techniques – learning what works and what doesn’t, to make a buck (just like ALL of us did.)
But the huge change is the human expectation of ***access***
And Apple isn’t the cause of that. They’re just the company that understood it in a particularly useful fashion before anyone else.
My 2 cents.
“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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look bill, relative to this debate forum, my reply is that this is bad software made for the wrong reasons.
Histrionic defences of epochal change in technology and social organisation do not alter that fact.
[Bill Davis] “And next to them you’ll find a camcorder. A TV set. And a laptop computer that shipped with free editing software.
If you can’t see the change represented by that – you might explore whether you possibly have some “Industry-insider” blinders on.
“I see the the same things Bill – but I’m not going ga-ga over it. As I said – you’re proposing the same kind of casual skills usage popularised by the desktop publishing explosion. Anyone could make a badly designed flier as a result, now they can make a badly produced ad for the dog kennel, as I believe your original example posited. Good luck to them. Thats fine – it allows them to make low utility stuff that they would have had to pay for – that’s dandy.
On the other hand you have the british director of… monsters was it called? pushed the whole thing out of the adobe suite. Got enormous acclaim and attention. And this after an astonishing track record with the beeb pushing out unbelievable post for historical docos.
So those are two things bill right – they are both dependent on transformative tool dissemination change. means, price and processing power.
my point is that we have seen this, in a very measurable way, before. People disinterested with typography remained disinterested by typography thirty years later. Kerning is not tabloid conversation. This is a craft Bill – I need to get this through to you. common society is not going to explode in a napalm fire of excitement at the sight of three point editing – even if apple has made a morons special mittens versions of it in X.
they could care less Bill – they have other things to do. In point of fact, a certain thrust of this argument almost has a weird form of craft narcissism to it.What I find quite seriously annoying in the FCPX debate is the exceptionalism applied to this software – its just bad software bill. Its buggy, bloated, its undo’s are unstable, the project file mutates in size at a whim, large projects are a no-no, the colour corrector is a joke, the plug-in architecture is brain damaged.
And yet people surround this software with grand transformative arguments that it does in no way deserve.
This just isn’t particularly good software Bill, and in order to effect it, Apple had to kill an awful lot of very good software.
[Bill Davis] ”
But the huge change is the human expectation of ***access***
“seriously? – and i’m getting snarky – but seriously – what? Its just editing software Bill – badly conceived and executed editing software.
It’s not the singularity.
http://www.ogallchoir.net
promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics -
[Aindreas Gallagher] “What I find quite seriously annoying in the FCPX debate is the exceptionalism applied to this software – its just bad software bill. Its buggy, bloated, its undo’s are unstable, the project file mutates in size at a whim, large projects are a no-no, the colour corrector is a joke, the plug-in architecture is brain damaged.
“Finally, some meat.
There’s no doubt FCPX has some very real growing pains. I know people like to discount this, but this is a v1 Beta. Yes, it should have been handed differently, yes, it probably shouldn’t have been released in this form, but in my experience these types of problems are fixable. I have worked with more bloated software that does get fixed. Whether Apple delivers or you choose to believe it, is up to Apple. So, at this moment in time, you are right it’s a bit tenuous. People seem to be using it in the real world, that is a fact.
Jeremy
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Well, on facts of its real world use, I don’t know of a single individual or production shop in London employing FCPX professionally. Not one. It is being completely rejected. And the reason is simple – its bad software, made for the wrong reasons, and it is unfit for purpose at this time. As you say, extraordinary things could happen. Or apple could just increasingly ignore it and then kill it in three years.
http://www.ogallchoir.net
promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
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