Andrew Kimery
Forum Replies Created
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[Bill Davis] “I guess news is only news if you don’t already know it! “
Always reminds me of an old NBC slogan for their summer re-runs, “If you haven’t seen it, it’s new to you!” 😉
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[Bill Davis] “Seems other than the Analytics that they imply, there’s little here that I haven’t been doing for going on 6 years in X”
Yeah, the analytics is the secret sauce as PPro has had publishing features (keywords, descriptions, privacy settings, etc.,) built in for a number of versions as well.
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Ultimately I agree that learning the art/craft is more important than learning a specific tool, but there is also a pragmatic element of putting students in the best position possible upon graduation. That’s largely a localized target to hit though because what’s applicable at Place A might not be applicable at Place B or D. For example, if a film school in LA only taught students on X then I think that would be disservice to the students because X use so is rare in LA (and I mean the county of Los Angeles, not just ‘hollywood’) and the competition for jobs (even entry level jobs) is so fierce (when its you vs 200+ other people for an entry level gig the people hiring are looking for anything they can to thin the herd).
This got me thinking to when I was in college and we didn’t have any talk/instruction during class aimed at a specific brand of gear. We talked about theory/concepts, got basic instruction on how to turn stuff on, set it up properly (white balance, zero out the board, hooking up a deck, etc.,), three point lighting, proper mic placement, etc., but it was all gear-agnostic. We had 2 or 3 different kinds of cameras in the Media Lab (this was of course before the days when students could easily own whatever they needed), lavs, shotguns, light kits, MC, FCP, linear editors (simple setup with 2 decks and a basic edit controller), and analog and ProTools mixing rooms.
We got our assignments (ex. do a soft news story about a local business owner) and then we’d meet again a week or two later to analysis and criticism. In the time between classes we were totally unsupervised so it was all up to us to find a story, shoot it and cut it. I remember learning how to use MC from a classmate and eventually teaching other classmates myself. We mainly used MC (FCP was v1 at that time) and I even had to do some linear editing when all the other bays were booked. I don’t think our instructor for the video production classes even knew how to turn the Avid on, but dude knew story like nobody’s business (and had a wall full of Emmy’s to prove it). The year after I graduated they added a bunch more editing bays (both MC and FCP) and a quick look on their site now shows that they have X, MC and PPro. At least these days you can pretty much run all three on a single machine where as back then that was a big no-go.
I’m not in Scott’s shoes so I’m not going to tell him what’s best for his situation, but at least in my experience being exposed to various editing gear didn’t hamper my ability to learn the art/craft of editing. Did I learn all the ins and outs of each system? No, that wouldn’t have been possible. What I did learn though was how to ingest media, perform edits, adjust audio, etc., and export media. Basically I knew just enough to get the edit done and not one iota more. haha!
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[Bill Davis] “Is that where they’re trying to add more revenue streams next? “
Uh, no… link for the Google-impaired:
https://blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/slay-on-social-introducing-the-social-publishing-panel-beta-in-premiere-pro/It’s a feature currently in beta that gives users more control and automation when it comes to prepping and publishing videos to various social media sites. It also displays analytics about how the video(s) are doing and suggestions for how to get your videos to have more reach. Not much info about it yet, but it looks like the Premiere team is tapping into resources from the Marketing Cloud team (Adobe’s enterprise level analytic and market research division) and funneling relevant data about your videos performance into PPro.
They are working with various YouTubers to get real world feedback so I’m very curious to see how it works once it’s out of beta. I have no use for it, but looks like it should be good for the YouTubers and other social media content creators.
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[Bill Davis] “That was true in the late 1990s when editing was a mysterious process done in TV stations and carpeted suites.
But it just hasn’t been that way for decades now.”
I do think that it’s easier to move up market than down market and that’s the fight Avid has been struggling with for a good 15 years. To protect it’s high end business Avid kept offering crippled, overpriced NLEs to compete with FCP Legend so it’s no surprise that ExpressDV, Express Pro, etc., tanked. There is certainly still a higher end market (and I think it’s expanding as streaming sites get more into the original content business), but the middle market no longer has to accept the high end solutions as their solutions. The one-size-fits-all approach has disappeared as technology keeps making gear better and more affordable as well as opening up new distribution models (how profitable those models are is another question though).
[Bill Davis] “It seems like EVERYBODY understands the basics of using a computer to assemble image streams today. And millions, not thousands, now own and understand the means of production. That’s also why YouTube is what it is, not to mention the juggernot that the “Lets Play” kids have created totally on-line.
They usually could care less about being “moviemaker famous” when their peers are spending vastly more money and time on alternate forms of leisure time stuff.
That’s an apple’s to oranges comparison though. Of course kids that are into video games, Lets Play vids and Twitch streamers probably aren’t dreaming of making it big in Hollywood, anymore than they are dreaming of making it big playing hockey. But kids that have watched Star Wars 99 times, make zombie movies with their friends on the weekends and look for tutorials on how to add muzzle flashes in post just might have aspirations for Tinseltown. To Oliver’s point, the people that are really interested in movies will want to find out what cameras, NLEs, etc., are used by their favorite filmmakers just like kids that are really interested in video games/Lets Play videos will want to know what controllers, computers, KB/M, etc., their favorite gamers use. That’s the bedrock of aspirational marketing.
Since video games got brought up, there is an interesting parallel to this in the esports world. For example, Overwatch is a new (relatively speaking) first person shooter from Blizzard that they are launched with the goal of making it into an esport, and there is a constant argument in the community about whether the gameplay in Overwatch should be primarily balanced for the casual scene or the pro scene. Creating a successful pro scene will keep the game viable for years (maybe even a decade or longer) in a market where casual gamers typically only play titles for months (maybe a year), but if you make the learning curve too hard you’ll lose the casual gamers which means less of a fan base to build a viable esport around.
Not an exact analogy to NLEs, but I think it’s interesting that things as different as NLEs and esports can have such similar problems.
[Bill Davis] ” And as Hollywood and the film industry turns more and more to “tent pole” thinking, the opportunities for editorial employment in big scale filmmaking are going to contract, not expand, IMO.”
Being able to ‘make it’ in Los Angeles has always been a seriously uphill battle and I think that’s part of the allure (it certainly was for me). No one admires Usain Bolt or Bill Gates because what they accomplished was easily attainable and/or achieved by many. And of course there’s the famous quote from Jobs where he asked Sculley (then an exec at Pepsi), “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?” Whenever I talk to high school or college kids that want to head for the bright lights of the big city my speech basically boils down to this, there’s no logical reason to do it, it’s a never ending grind, its more of a lifestyle than a job, and your endeavors will almost surely fail… but that’s no reason not to swing for the fences anyway.
With that being said, there are more movies and TV shows being created today than ever before, but there’s also more competition than ever before so I think the overall difficulty of making a living remains the same because as old barriers crumble new ones are formed. In general I think the are more opportunities for making a living by cutting together moving pictures, but some will obviously pay better than others.
[Brett Sherman] “Nobody is writing about the editing tools and techniques of Youtubers who make a good living with their videos. Personally I’d love to know about the production workflow of AJ+ or Attn: or any of the other Facebook media creators. Those could also be interesting reads, but I’ve never seen one on Creative Cow. “
To be honest, outside of the ins/outs of publishing to social media I’m not sure how unique and/or interesting those post workflows would be for people already familiar with post workflows.
For example, I doubt solo YouTubers like Pewdiepie or Michelle Phan have very exotic editing workflow because their business model doesn’t require it (though they might really be keen on the new social media publishing ability for PPro that’s currently in beta). For larger YouTubers/digital media companies like AJ+, Machima, Maker Studios, Attn:, RocketJump, PopSugar, etc., it’s been my experience that they typically have workflows that are similar to traditional TV/film workflows but just scaled down and/or on a lower budget. If you are running a digital media news company employing many people trying to make daily deadlines you’ll run into the same basic problems as a cable news channel that employes many people trying to make daily deadlines (multiple editing stations, shared storage, asset management, review/approval, archiving, etc.,.) The biggest difference will probably be that the cable news channel has a bigger budget to throw at those problems. FWIW I know that RocketJump, PopSugar, Attn:, Yahoo, and Viacom’s digital side use PPro (I think Machima does as too but I’m not totally sure).
Speaking of solutions to problems, YouTube Spaces is a clear example of direction many YouTubers are going. Sound stages, green screens, control rooms, cameras, etc., it looks like any other production space except its for YouTubers, not TV networks or movie studios. I worked on a live YouTube show recently and from a production standpoint it was put together and manned like a live TV broadcast except it streamed over YouTube. Medium sized sound stage, studio cameras, control room to put the Death Star to shame, etc.,. Big budget digital productions look a whole lot like smaller budget TV/film productions.
As I’ve quipped before in other threads, we seem to be in a weird transitional period where Old Media people are trying to get into New Media because that’s where the eyeballs are going, yet New Media people are trying to get into Old Media because that’s where the money (and prestige) is.
I’d be remiss to leave this topic without mentioning YouTuber Freedie Wong (RocketJump) and his very successful scripted YT series “Video Game High School” that ran for three seasons. Here is a link to his final thoughts on working on a series of that scale with YT as the distribution channel (and Kickstarter for a lot of the funding).
https://www.rocketjump.com/blog/vghs-post-mortem
[Bill Davis] “That time a couple of years back I tried to bring a leading young editor doing things differently into the forum, inside a day he got so much pushback from the entrenched thinkers here he basically exited with a “why bother?””
Whatever you do, don’t talk about the new social media publishing features Adobe is working on. You probably haven’t run into this yet, but some people don’t like talking about things outside of their own needs. 😉
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The Apple bundle is a great deal and once again, Adobe just keeps copying Apple. ????
Apple raises prices on hardware (Sept, 2016):
“Brexit bites: Apple raises European prices to reflect fall in value of the pound & Euro”
https://9to5mac.com/2016/09/08/apple-uk-price-rises-brexit/Apple raises prices on software (Jan, 2017):
“Apple increases App Store prices by 25% following Brexit vote”
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/17/apple-ios-mac-app-store-prices-rise-25-per-cent-following-brexit -
[Joe Marler] “Re why doesn’t Apple just build an ATX-form machine,”
I think his point was about using standardized and interchangeable parts so that Apple users could have more options at competitive prices. Even if engineers started with a clean slate today it would still behoove them to create agreed upon standards otherwise the cost of computers would skyrocket. Imagine if literally every computer line made (from Dell to HP to Acer to Boxx) was a custom form factor with a custom motherboard, custom GPUs, custom PSU, etc., and these parts weren’t interchangeable across computer lines from the same company (let alone interchangeable across brands). It would be a nightmare.
Getting back to Apple for a second, the long of the short of it is that Jobs never wanted end users to have control. Woz is the one that wanted to keep Apple ‘open’ so people could mod/customize/tinker if they wanted too. The iPad and the iPhone (totally sealed, computing ‘appliances’) is always what Jobs ultimately dreamed of. The realities of the computing world kept Apple from reaching that goal up until basically a few years when Apple started soldering on components like RAM and ditched their last computer that had anything close to an open design (the old MP).
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For people that have already done it (or are just into computers in general) it’s easy (or at least easier). For people that don’t have that background they might not want to put the time and effort into when they can just buy something off the shelf.
I used to build PCs as a hobby but I don’t anymore. I’ve thought about doing a Hackintosh, but I just have the to find the time to do it (and find the right guide to get the features that I want).
[Dominic Deacon] “If any part of my pc fails it’s under warranty. “
It is, but you are responsible for taking care of it. With Boxx or Dell or HP if you have a problem you call them and there’s no finger pointing from various part venders because everything came from one company. And depending on which warranty plan you picked you could even have a tech come to your place and fix it on site.
It all just depends on how comfortable people are with things and how they want to spend their time and money. I mean, I know how to change the oil in my car and rotate my tires, but I take it to the shop for that because I’d rather pay them $25 to do it for me so I can spend more time/energy doing other things.
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[Shane Ross] “The drawbacks being that I need to tread carefully when it comes to OS updates.
“So, just to be clear, app updates won’t cause problems, just OS updates?
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[Bill Davis] “There’s a long thread somewhere on the forum during the earlier debates about whether there were any visible advantages to going the Terrenex route over the direct FireWire deck transfers. “
For the curious (and the nerdy).
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/335/85274#85363
[Bill Davis] “Basically, whats the point where spending the money on an outside service makes a visible difference?”
I think that probably always comes down to a case-by-case basis. What’s the budget, what’s the expectations, etc., Most people opt for ‘best quality possible’ which really means ‘best quality within the budget’.