Andrew Kimery
Forum Replies Created
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[Bill Davis] “But it isn’t available for rental – exactly like virtually all movies in the period directly adjacent to their initial release.
So why is that relevant?
“You mean movies that initially release theatrically and, per distribution deals with the theaters, are contractually barred from offering day-and-date rentals, sales, VOD, etc.,? And then they go through the various release windows so each distribution partner in the chain has a chance to monetize the movie? How is the Hollywood model of staggered release windows relevant to self-distribution via the Internet?
An indie self-distributing their own movie online and not offering a rental option at the start is really odd to me (and I’ve been in this space since since the mid 2000’s). Most people want to have the lowest barrier of entry so they can reach the widest possible audience, and try make the most money, upon initial release because initial release is when they’ll have the most hype/word of mouth. I mean, it’s not like they are going to have a major marketing push in 6 months to remind people that the movie still exists and that it’s now available for rent.
So coming back full circle, for a couple of bucks I’d rent it right now, but I’m not going to pay $10 for it. I rarely buy movies in general though.
[Bill Davis] “Oh, so then you saw it after all? Else how can you know what issues it actually ended up raising? “
From their website:
“In 2011 Apple ended Final Cut Pro as we knew it and started over with a brand new video editing application: Final Cut Pro X. The disruption this change caused is still being felt by the film, television, and video industries to this day.With misinformation run amok, Off the Tracks is a documentary that aims to clear the air once and for all.
Featuring exclusive interviews with the creative professionals who use the software and the developers who created it. Why did Apple make Final Cut Pro X?”
I’m going to go out on a limb and say they talk about why Apple did what they did, how people reacted, why people reacted they way they did, how the program changed over the course of time, how it impacted the NLE space, how people’s perceptions of it changed/didn’t change over the course of time, reasons as to why people’s perceptions changed/didn’t change over the course of time, etc.,.
I think I know just a wee little bit about all of that… ????
I don’t have to see the documentary to be knowledgeable about the real life events that the documentary talks about. This is like saying I can’t talk about the corporate malfeasance at Enron unless I’ve seen “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room”.
And at no point in time have I voiced an opinion about the documentary itself. Just an agreement with Shane that the trailer feels like a corporate hype piece that would be right at home at an Apple event.
EDIT: cleaned up a copy/paste error.
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[Bill Davis] “$10 is pretty much price the market places on “movies” as a general category today, documentaries included.”
Rental prices aren’t $10.
[Bill Davis] “just means that you chose to stay apart from any really meaningful discussions about the issues it raises, until some future time frame.”
Um… I personally experienced the issues it raises and, as a long time FCP user, have been taking part in meaningful discussions about them since before X was launched (including exchanges with people featured in the trailer).
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[Bill Davis] “Heck, even with the digital connected sales model Apple uses, they were able to go from a $1200.00 price point down to $399 for their NLE software. Thats a 66% price drop”
I think that had much more to do with Apple wanting to ‘reset’ the price of their NLE rather than a linear price drop tied to doing away with physical distribution. For example, when FCP Legend shipped with manuals the box weight nearly 18lbs and when they ditched the printed manuals the box went down to less than 2lbs. Nary a price drop did we see. ???? A console video game typically costs $60 at retail and it’s estimated that about $4-$8 of that is for creating and shipping physical copies. I’d imagine the numbers are about the same for software in general.
Where does the company want their margins to be and what will the market find viable? Apple has traditionally had very high margins are hardware and that allows them to have narrow margins on their software (or just give it away for free). Apple also did away with DVD SP, Soundtrack Pro, and Color and split Compressor and Motion out into separate SKUs which probably did more for the price drop than not shipping discs in the mail. Ultimately I think Apple just wanted to offer X at a more affordable price point and they decided on $299.
Another example of price points is Blackmagic with Resolve and Fusion. Both received massive price drops to just $999 (plus the free versions obviously) after Blackmagic acquired them and then both got huge price drops to just $299. BM, like Apple though, has a hardware business that affords them a lot of flexibility in the pricing of their software.
This all reminds me of an older interview with Steve Jobs. Shortly after the iTMS was launched Steve Jobs was asked about the competition (like Rhapsody and the legal Napster) and he said he didn’t worry about them because they don’t sell MP3 players. The iTMS prices were set extremely low because it was never designed to have viable profit margins, it was designed to sell iPods.
If I had to guess, I’d say Adobe set the initial price of CC with healthy margins in order to get working capital upfront and then over the years the margins have narrowed and narrowed as the cost of doing business went up. Now they’ve hit the floor of where they want the margins to be so they’ve poked the price to get the needle out of the yellow and back into the green (so to speak).
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[Shane Ross] “This one made the movie appear to be marketing.”
I agree that the trailer felt like something we’d see at an Apple keynote celebrating the 10yr anniversary of FCP X. The overall tone was too melodramatic for my tastes (it’s a piece of editing software, not the cure for polio).
I’d probably check it out for a $1.50 rental, but not really interested in paying $10 for it. Either though social media, blogs, industry publications, and/or real life I know/follow everyone shown in the trailer and I didn’t get the feeling that the doc will tell me anything I don’t already know about the tumultuous, if predictable, path that X had being a nascent piece of software trying to break into a long established market place.
Take me inside the halls of Apple from 2009-ish to 2015 and tell the story starting with the decision kill Legend and the early development of X up through it being used on Focus and I’ll pay $25 for the fancy, extended edition version. 😉
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[Bill Davis] “with ZERO COGS (cost of goods sold) increase at all. “
It’s probably harder to think about the cost of goods sold for a company that offers no physical goods, but I’d be surprised if the costs related to developing CC (both the software and the SaaS sides) haven’t increased at all since 2013. It has been in constant development since release, but there’s been no net increase in Adobe employees (or contractors) since 2013 to work on it? No Adobe employees (or contractors) that fall under the CC revenue umbrella have gotten a raise since 2013? Adobe hasn’t had to pay for more servers to handle the dramatic increase in CC users since 2013?
[Bill Davis] “But now it’s been used.”
It being used was an inevitability though. The price was never going to stay the same forever, especially at the rate of development Adobe is pushing.
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[Oliver Peters] “IOW, you are saying that Apple can take FCPX users for granted.”
Vender lock-in. 😉
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[greg janza] “I’m currently working on a 1min in-house promo spot utilizing a dozen employee interviews that has gone through three rounds of changing the overall message focus. And all of these changes have occurred after all shooting was completed.”
Well that sounds annoying.
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At the end of the day Apple is a hardware company so as long as you buy one of their computers I don’t think they don’t care if you use Avid instead of FCP X, After Effects instead of Motion or even Windows instead of MacOS. In the past year or so I’ve seen 2-3 video production jobs posted by Apple and all of them were looking for people with Premiere skills, After Effects skills, and FCP X skills (Motion seems left out in the cold). The tribalism surrounding tool usage seems to largely be a product of the users.
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[Bill Davis] “But in other video types (certainly in corporate work where I have spent most of my career) information from the executive suite “as discussed on set” – has been not just useful, but often CRITICAL to the successful completion of a project.”
Agreed. I don’t work on many corporate projects, but on the ones I have worked on all the language and imagery, has been vetted by marketing, legal, management, etc., so there is no room to ‘rediscover’ the piece in post. It was all hammered out before hand and the challenge for the editor can be sticking to those guidelines while still trying to make something entertaining and informative.
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Thanks for all the info, Joe. I’ll give your suggests a shot and report back.
I’ll also submit a feature request asking Apple to improve their sync-by-audio feature so hopefully it can become more on par with PPro and PluralEyes.
I started using PPro CC regularly about four years I routinely give it 100+ clips to sync (I think the most I’ve done is 250) and it nails it 99% of the time. What I don’t like about PPro is the work I need to do to clean things up after the sync. I was hoping X would save me time on this front, but if I have to do a comparable amount of prep prior to sync in X then it’s a bit of a wash time wise. We’ll see though.
Worst case I’ll just use PPro for this project (since I do have a bit of a deadline) and I’ll save X for some other projects that don’t have hard deadlines (so I won’t have to worry as much about the learning curve).