[Andrew Kimery]

Assistant Editors needing reels depends on the job, IMO. I’ve interview at boutique places where they’ve wanted to see a reel because they were looking for some one who could wear more than one hat and I’ve interviewed for bigger post houses (or TV shows) where they don’t want to see a reel ’cause they are looking strictly handle the technical/nuts & bolts side of editing. Personally, if I was looking for an AE a reel wouldn’t interest me because there’s nothing in an reel that can show me if that person is a good AE or not.

If you are looking to “move up” in your area your personal connections mean more than your reel, IMO. Take post producers or more experienced editors in your market out to lunch/dinner/drinks (on you of course) for some quality face time. Don’t hit them up for work, but tell them about yourself, what you’ve done, what you want to do, etc.,. and ask for their advice and how they got to where they wanted to be in the industry. I’ve found that a lot of people really like helping out the young bloods and sharing their knowledge. After you’ve won them over w/your personality you can offer to send your resum

[Andrew Kimery]

Add me to the list of people that never remotely drew a connection between the COW and Blue Cow Creative. If the Creative COW was a post house or BCC was an industry internet forum or portal I might have, but they are two separate beasts (no pun intended).

-A

[Andrew Kimery]

I’d definitely check out Shane’s DVD.

https://store.creativecow.net/p/63/getting_organized_in_final_cut_pro

He talks about how to use multiple projects to keep FCP from choking on long form pieces.

-A

[Andrew Kimery]

[Shane Ross] “A fresh DV or DVCAM tape is always best, but a used one will be fine. MiniDV tape or DVCAM tape…doesn’t matter. It will record as DVCAM though…
“

Don’t forget that DVCAM has a faster tape speed than MiniDV so a 60min MiniDV load will only record 40min if the deck is in DVCAM mode. Not a problem if your program is shorter obviously, but it can be quite a “D’oh” moment if you are trying to record 60min in DVCAM mode onto a 60min MiniDV tape.

-A

[Andrew Kimery]

Right now FCP cannot utilize all 8-cores, but in some cases I’ve seen it go up to 6 cores used while rendering.
Some variables to consider though are:

Leopard. How many bugs will it have when released and how long will it take Apple to address them?
64-bit FCP. When will it come out? How many bugs will it have and how long will it take Apple to address them?
New Mac Pros. When will them come out and will the new “guts” have any glaring Rev A issues?

I bought a middle of the road Mac Pro recently to replace my 5yr old G4 and my reasoning behind that, as opposed to getting an 8-core, was this. First, the current gen Mac Pros have a memory bottle neck issue that keeps the machine from fulling reaching it’s full potential. People are assuming that the updated Mac Pros will use newer CPUs and motherboards that don’t have this bottle neck and better utilize multi-core functions. Secondly, since I don’t do a whole lot of heavy rendering I it was hard to justify the price of the 8-core right now. So, w/the 4-core being cheaper, I could afford to upgrade sooner so I decided a middle of the road Mac Pro now, and a middle of the road Mac Pro down the road (one w/the better mobo and such) would only be a little more expensive than an 8-core now.

But everyone is different so ultimately you have to decide what works best for you.

-A

[Andrew Kimery]

How far can you zoom in?

It depends on the quality of the footage. Just watch your footage on an HD monitor and keep zooming in until it starts looking bad and then you’ll know how far you can go

-A

[Andrew Kimery]

[beenyweenies] “If, however, you are a salaried employee (they withhold taxes on your behalf), labor laws apply and overtime must be paid for anything over a 40 hour week.
“

In CA it’s not just 40hrs a week but over 8hrs in a day too.

-A

[Andrew Kimery]

Interesting idea about dropping the clips into a sequence and organizing like that. I’m not sure if it will work for us right now, but I’m definitely going to experiment w/it and keep it in mind for future application.

Because of better media shoot times and long term storage options we are leaning towards Sony’s XDCAM HD (and keeping a big eye on the new EX). I’m envisioning having enough 50min “long” memory cards to get thru the day then using a laptop to dump each card to it’s own XDCAM disc w/the XDCAM USB 2.0 drive. And if the footage needs to be sent back to the office for editing you just ship the disc via FedEX or UPS.

Something I’m really waiting for is Final Cut Server. If FCS will let us track our digital assets like I think it will then the need for giving the imported/catpture clips unique and very descriptive names (like e307_EA_intv_smith or halo3_x360_gp17_bossfight) won’t be as critical because we won’t be doing so much organizing at the Finder level.

Andy,
I saw your mention of the “continuous clip recording” over at dvinfo.net. I wonder if that will be a feature of the EX too?

-A

[Andrew Kimery]

Lots of good POVs here that I think showcase how many times the answer in this business is, “Well, it depends…” The size of your market and the size of your projects have a lot to do w/whether or not being a specialist or a jack of all trades is the best approach. As Walter said, there are a ton of people in Hollywood that just editor, or just assistant edit or just operate a camera, etc.,. There are also a ton of people in Hollywood that editor and do vfx or write and direct. What’s right for one person isn’t necessarily right for the next. One has to recognize what one’s own strengths and weaknesses are and see how that matches up w/one’s location and the types of projects one wants to work on.

Being a specialist is only a helpful if clients are hiring specialists and being a jack of all trades is only helpful if clients are hiring jack of all trades.

-A

[Andrew Kimery]

[weevie833] “Thank you for the clarification. I guess what I meant is that it embeds the media but not the mix. which makes it almost useless, along with the 2GB file size limit.
“
I guess it depends on who does your audio but I’ve always worked w/guys that wanted a clean slate. A post house I used to work at even had “rubberbands” on the “things you will not do/use” list in the editor’s bible.

-A