Andrew Kimery
Forum Replies Created
-
[Bill Davis] “As much as I want bold upgrades – I DO NOT want to risk what I have right now – a dependable go-to tool”
Careful Bill, you are treading close to ‘get off my lawn’ territory. 😉
-
Just to add to what’s already been suggested, FCP 7 isn’t ‘activated’ in the same way that DropBox is activated. Your Dropbox account knows what computers are ‘attached’ to it but FCP 7 is not as smart/connected. FCP 7 has no idea if the same serial number is being used by more than one person unless both users are on the same network and try to run FCP 7 at the same time.
I assume you are erasing the laptop’s hard drive reinstalling the OS before you sell it? That’s sufficient to make sure the buyer doesn’t have access to your FCP 7 serial number. If you also have Avid Media Composer (w/o a dongle) on the laptop then that you will need to specifically deactivate from the laptop (or you’ll have to call Avid and have them do it after the fact).
-
[Greg Cohan] “I’m pretty sure I know the answer here but the idea of forcing someone to copy and past 10,000 times seem mean and cruel.
“That still sounds better than listening to 5,000 SFX and adding unique descriptions of them to a Comments column… 😉
-
[Gary Huff] “but holding off in case of a refresh.”
How long are you willing to wait? I’m in a similar boat and I’ve pretty much written off the MP. If I had to buy something today it would either be a high-end iMac or an HP workstation.
[Steve Connor] “Still with iPhone sales peaked, they might put the focus back on to their computers :)”
Computers are tapped out man. Apple’s looking at wearables, their new AppleTV push and cars.
-
[Oliver Peters] “I don’t think it’s usually a matter of fixing. Most films need a certain amount of experimentation.”
I think most projects need both but the amount of each can be indicative of how well (or poorly) pre-production and/or production were executed. I’ve worked on projects that were well put together and I spent the majority of my time wearing my ‘creative editing hat’. I like wearing that hat a lot. Other projects I’ve worked on were not very well put together and I spent the majority of my time wearing my ‘fix it in post hat’. I don’t like wearing that hat very much.
And how much fixing can be done in post depends on the size and types of the problems being faced. In your example of a scene not being shot it sounds like you were able to fix it in adequately post. On the flip side, Peter Jackson being forced to shoot parts of The Hobbit without a script wasn’t a problem that could be adequately fixed in post. And there’s of course ‘happy accidents’ where victory is snatched out of the jaws of defeat. All projects, and all problems are different as we all well know.
[Oliver Peters] “Alan Heim tells this story in “The Cutting Edge” documentary about the film “Lenny”. “
Interesting that you reference Lenny Bruce as I cut a documentary about him a few years ago (just a niggle but his death was an OD, not a suicide).
-
[Oliver Peters] “I find it surprising that anyone here thinks narrative films are strictly based on the script.”
I don’t think anyone is saying that narrative editing is a paint-by-numbers affair where nothing changes after the writer finishes the script.
[Oliver Peters] “I worked on one film where the single most important scene (a small one, but it set up the main character’s motivation) wasn’t filmed. We had to completely re-arrange things and add voice-overs to fix the situation, otherwise it would have never made any sense.”
I think this is more in line with what the sentiment is. If the script is well written and well shot then you minimize the amount of ‘fix it in post’ that has to happen. The editor(s) can spend more time editing and less time rewriting in order to fix plot holes, production short comings, etc.,.
Even for doc/unscripted projects production still has to at least have a premise for what they are doing (who/what am I filming, why am I filming, etc.,) otherwise you’ll just end up with hours and hours of aimlessly record footage and interviews that have nothing to do with each other. And at some point you should still end up with a script/paper edit as a starting point before you dive into editing, IMO. On reality shows story producers will basically be writing the script during production and hand it off to the AE’s who will create a string out for the editors to start working with. Will there be changes once editing starts? Of course (especially if it’s episode 1 of season 1), but the starting point of editing is a script and as the show goes on the scripts will get better and the amount of rewriting in the editing will go down drastically (network notes notwithstanding). No one is going to hand the editors thousands of hours of footage and say, ‘have at it’.
Last year I worked on a historical doc and the script was 95% done before my first day on payroll. The director/producer had a premise of the doc, did the interviews accordingly, had them transcribed, and cut them into a script along with VO. Were some changes made during the edit? Of course, but the edit wouldn’t taken significantly longer if we were trying write and edit the documentary at the same time.
In narrative someone writes a script and actors perform it for the camera and in unscripted people ‘perform’ in front of the camera and then someone writes a script based on that. The more I work on long form unscripted pieces the more I appreciate having a script to work off of if for no other reason than I know that someone has already gone to the effort of looking through the footage and created a first draft as a starting point.
-
[John Rofrano] “It’s not. I was referring more to the way that you treat the medium. For example: Tape needs to be acquired and therefore needs an import step to copy it to a digital file. Digital files do not need to be “acquired” and so you can just drag them from a card and drop them onto a timeline.”
Ah, thanks for the clarification. Though NLEs like Media Composer (via AMA) and Premiere Pro started adopting file based, native camera codec editing workflows before X was even made public. Not to mention Sony Vegas (well, Vegas Video back then) could eat just about any codec you threw at it. On a related note, is deciding to use Proxy or Optimized media in FCP X really any different from a conceptual standpoint than deciding to use DNx36 or DNx175 in Avid MC? Even with todays super-fast computers the pros and cons between editing media in it’s camera native format vs using a proxy workflow vs transcoding to a high quality, ‘edit friendly’ codec still exist.
[Joe Marler] “This item you casually mentioned is actually a deep, divisive debate within the UI design community, about skeuomorphism. Jobs and Scott Forstall liked it, Jony Ive and his team do not. “
I agree that the super-flat trend in UI design has gone too far and has negatively impacted the usability of many pieces of software.
[Bill Davis] ” Listening to how things as fundamental as deciding WHEN Leia appears IN the actual film implies that if all one thinks about is simply “following the script” as an editor – one may not actually be as skilled an editor as they might become. Just a general observation referencing no one.”
Or that some movies are rushed into production with half written scripts so there is no choice but to figure it out in the cutting room. In a recent interview Peter Jackson admitted that many times while shooting The Hobbit he was making it up as he went along because he was given a woefully inadequate amount of time for preproduction. The lack of a coherent script certainly showed up on the big screen in three films that weren’t nearly as good as his previous trilogy.
I agree with the saying that a movie is written three times, once by the writer, once by the director and once by the editor, but the editor’s version is severely handcuffed by the abilities and execution of the previous two authors.
-Andrew
-
[Bob Zelin] “If you told anyone on these forums (damn kids) that anything cost $80,000…”
I don’t have as many miles as you do Bob, but I still remember being amazed when Avid released the Adrenalines for ‘only’ $25,000. And then a few years later they released MC as software only (OMG!) and it was ‘only’ $5,000 (double OMG!).
Now I have Avid, FCP 7, FCP X, Premiere Pro, Resolve and Lightworks on my off the shelf, desktop computer and collectively all 6 of those NLEs today cost less than $5,000.
-
[Tim Wilson] ”
Can we at least, rational nay- and yay-sayers alike, agree on that? That Apple isn’t trying to reach “everyone” in ways that it did just 5 years ago? They’ve said so often enough that it seems a little disrespectful to insist that they are.”Yes and no. 😉
I think Apple is more concerned with trying to reach more of “everyone” in general with X and less concerned with trying to reach “everyone” within the specific niche of guys and gals that edit all day, every day for a living.
-
[John Rofrano] “Early NLE’s tried to make editing easier by using film strips, bins, scissors and other things that were familiar to editors that were use to working with film. New editors don’t have that frame of reference anymore so continuing to restrict your workflow to using these techniques doesn’t make sense. “
Yet FCP X still has things like the razor blade tool, sprocket holes, film leader, an 18th century looking key icon, etc.,. 😉
Oddly enough, and someone correct me if I’m wrong, but Avid probably has the least amount of ‘archaic’ iconography and it’s typically dogged as being the oldest, least ‘with it’ NLE in everyday use. Besides bins I can think of anything film-centric off the top of my head. I’m sure there are other ones, but I don’t have Avid in front of me.
FWIW I’m pushing 40 and I’ve never cut on film (barely even touched film) so even 20yrs ago the film-centric frame of reference was falling apart, but I don’t think that really matters. What matters is if the interface still effectively communicates the desired information. For example, it’s easy for people to associate ‘razor blade’ with cutting something so giving the tool that allows you to make a virtual cut in your virtual footage a razor blade icon still effectively communicates the function of that tool.
Just like it’s become popular in UI design to have a gear icon to access the settings of a program or filter. Does software have gears? Do computers anymore? No, but the idea of gears being in the ‘guts’ of things so clicking on the gear icon will allow the user to manipulate the ‘guts’ of the program is a seemingly effective design decision.
[John Rofrano] “The new Final Cut is a reimagined workflow focused around telling the story with digital media”
I hate being ‘that guy’ but this is a pet peeve of mine. I know ‘digital’ has been co-opted to mean tapeless and/or card based for acquisition and downloadable and/or streaming for delivery but digital acquisition has been around for 20yrs (and digital delivery for over 30) . Digital 8, DV, DVCPro, DVCAM, Beta SX, HDCAM, etc., on the acquisition front and CDs, LaserDiscs, DVDs, etc., on the consumer delivery front.
With that being said, I don’t see how, in terms of story, a movie shot on film is inherently different than a movie shot digitally.