Andrew Kimery
Forum Replies Created
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[Oliver Peters] “In Premiere you can also hide unwanted clips and use the search field to reveal desired clips.”
On a related note, Search Bins function much better in CC2015 than they did in their CC2014 debut.
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[Tim Wilson] “That’s why I keep making this distinction in every single post I make on this topic. The topic is ACE-esque editing, and ONLY ACE-esque editing. “
Poor wording on my part. I should have “but it doesn’t seem like it scared off Hollywood feature film productions en masse from using it”.
[Tim Wilson] “And the tale told in The Book nailed shut the notion of whether FCP was equal to Avid (not quite) or superior (absolutely NOT) as the engine driving workflow. “
Yet more and more Hollywood features used FCP Legend after Cold Mountain than before (right up until Apple killed it). Prior to Cold Mountain Steven Soderbergh experimented with it on Full Frontal but that’s the only big name I can remember using it (and Full Frontal was more art house/indie than a typical Hollywood flick). After Cold Mountain it was used on tentpole films.
If it was an inferior tool and cost wasn’t relevant then why the increase in usage (especially on very high profile projects)? It seems like we are back talking about how workflows are more than the sum of their parts.
[Tim Wilson] “It’s not that FCP never existed in these circles. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of a single Avid facility among the hundreds I visited that didn’t have at least 1 system with FCP on it. “
I remember that too. It was always the redheaded step child sitting alone in the corner! lol
[Tim Wilson] “The missing ingredient in fulfilling my prognostication for X’s potential uptake in Hollywood is anybody besides Ficarra and Requa agreeing with me yet. LOL A notable gap, to be sure. LOL
“Interesting you mention that. Going by the list of movies on FCPs Wikipedia page (which is incomplete) a big chunk of them (possibly the majority, I didn’t count) were done by either Murch, the Coens, Kirk Baxter/Angus Wall (Fincher’s guys) or were films released by FOX (either 20th Century or Fox Searchlight).
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[Tim Wilson] “Not for movie and TV productions, which rented systems, and wrote the entire cost off as an expense. In practice, the price was virtually nothing.”
Generally speaking I agree, but… (of course there’s a but).
This might be an outlier, and I could be mistaken, but I thought I read that FOX went with FCP Legend in-house and that’s why a rash of FOX movies (from 500 Days of Summer to The Simpsons to whatever Wolverine came our around that time) were all cut on FCP in the mid-to-late 2000’s. To be fair, a division of FOX probably bought all the systems, rented them to the production’s LLC at insanely inflated prices and scored a gravy train for FOX corporate (can’t let the movie turn a profit on paper ’cause then they’d actually have to start paying people their net profit participation points!). But I digress…
Gearing going from “Hey, I just went to the bank and got a low interest loan for my NLE” to “Hey, I just went to the grocery store for milk and decided to swing by CompUSA on a lark and snagged FCP and the Mac to run it on” didn’t just give budget conscious companies a break it also gave individual editors a break. You could have a home editing system that didn’t require you to take out a second mortgage on your home. You could experiment, kick the tires and maybe like it so much (and feel comfortable enough with it) that you try and talk the next production you latch onto to use it instead of Avid. Sure, this affordability wasn’t unique to FCP (there was Vegas, Premiere, etc.,) but there was something unique about FCP that set it apart from the other NLEs in that price range (maybe it was features, maybe it was just a vibe it gave off) and helped it to gain traction where the others did not.
The price difference might not mean much to the entity bankrolling the film, but it could be the key factor that empowers the editor cutting the film to get comfortable in another NLE.
EDIT:
Of course today the financial and technical situation is completely different than it was back then. All the NLEs are roughly the same price, get along with each other if installed on the same machine, and the need for any sort of proprietary gear has diminished greatly (aside the need for the Mac to run FCP ;)).[Tim Wilson] “And these productions had the documentation to prove it in the Cold Mountain book! I continue to maintain that book may have done more to keep Avid locked into these ACE-esque workflows than anything Avid did. “
It might have been a reason FCP Legend didn’t have more inroads into Hollywood features before Apple pulled the plug, but it doesn’t seem like it scared people off en masse from using it. Could Mountain was released in ’03, the book was released in late ’04, and ’05 was when the uptick of Hollywood features using the old FCP started. And I’d assume the Hollywood Feature water cooler talk about FCP and Cold Mountain had already come and gone by the time the book came out and let the rest of the world in on the Adventures in Film Cutting thad had transpired.
[Tim Wilson] “Bunim-Murray and Pie Town, different story of course. Those guys went hard into FCP with hundreds of purchased seats, and interesting to me, both went back to Avid — enabled at least in part I think by software-only MC pricing, but I think also driven by fond remembrance of robust workflows and support infrastructures.”
And the fact that Apple nuked FCP from orbit like it was trying to eradicate an Alien Queen (“It’s the only way to be sure”). No, I’m not going to let go of my theory that if Apple did a retool FCP 8 instead of a reset with FCP X then I doubt many (dare I say any?) of these ‘switcher’ stories would’ve happened. 😉
Bunim-Murray went back to Avid pretty quick but PieTown stayed with 7 for a while. From conversations with some people there they were optimistic that X would eventually come around and fit their workflow (they seemed to have a very strong relationship with Apple). Obviously they ran out of patience (hope? time?) and moved to Avid and Resolve in late 2014 IIRC. I didn’t realize PieTown ever ran Avid, I thought they were always FCP.
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[Bill Davis] “IMO X will face precisely the same trajectory.”
I agree. Which is why I said it a few posts ago. 😉
I think you underestimate the cost factor of Legend vs MC though. If FCP was 70, 80, 90 grand a seat like MC was back then (and required all the proprietary hardware MC required) then Apple would’ve had a dud on its hands. The total value that FCP offered though (performance plus cost) was unmatched. It’s Media Manager was nicknamed the Media Mangler, it never had the multi-user features that Avid did, etc., but a lot can be forgiven when you can could get around 10 seats of FCP for the cost of a single seat for Avid.
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[Scott Witthaus] “Unless, of course, you are speaking of the broadcast and film niches, as that niche is very slow to change and adopt new things and workflows (for very good reasons, many times).”
Agreed on all points and you are correct that my statement was limited to just ‘Hollywood’ movies. After 2-3 years of FCP Legend ‘toe-tipping’ in Hollywood workflows it started to be used more frequently around 2005-2006. If the responses Charlie talked about at the ACE event ripple out then I could see more people learning about possible FCP X workflows this year and then maybe another movie or two (not done by the Focus/WTF team ;)) cut on X later this and/or early next year. If the feedback is positive from that then more people will use it (similar to the building success FCP Legend had in the mid-to-late 2000’s).
Even at FCP Legend’s peak penetration though the majority of Hollywood films were still cut on Avid, but it no longer was a curious thing to cut one on the old FCP. I could see the same thing happening for X and PPro. How much ground Avid loses though I think is more up to Avid than to outside NLEs as getting people to stay with what they already have is much easier than getting people to switch. One of the best examples of this has to be the vast number of people that stayed with FCP Legend (and might still be on FCP Legend) give years after it was EOL’d.
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[Oliver Peters] ” At least on union gigs, Avid was the tool to stick with.”
Yeah, union is typically scripted and scripted is almost entirely Avid. There’s also the case of just the budget in general. Lower budget shows tend to be non-Avid so everyone makes less (including the editors).
[Charlie Austin] “I agree. For what it’s worth, the marketing – lately anyway – is about easier. Faster. That is good.”
Easier, faster… better value. All pitches that sound a lot better than “cheaper”. 🙂
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[Esther Casas] “I thought that was enabled in playback settings “enable mercury transmit”, which it is. I am trying to find online how to enable this in CC, but only find it in CS6? is this what I have enabled already?”
Enable Mercury Transmit is for sending the signal to an external monitor via an I/O device like an AJA Kona card or a BlackMagic Mini Monitor box.
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[Charlie Austin] “I think we’re approaching a “tipping point”… Maybe. Or not. 😉 However, in the last 2 weeks WTF has appeared at a Producers Guild sponsored screening Q/A, At ACE, And on Wednesday at the DGA for a screener and Q/A. People are… interested.”
[Andrew Kimery] “I think X is around where Legend was in ’04.”
[Bill Davis] “Not like Legacy’s development path at ALL IMO.”
Adoption path, not development path.
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Thanks for the tips Tony.
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[Charlie Austin] “I think we’re approaching a “tipping point”… Maybe. Or not. 😉 However, in the last 2 weeks WTF has appeared at a Producers Guild sponsored screening Q/A, At ACE, And on Wednesday at the DGA for a screener and Q/A. People are… interested.”
I think X is around where Legend was in ’04.