[Bill Davis]

If your output target is movie screens and network TV, you’ll want to stay with something like the model FCP-7 represents. Full features for long form work, and support for huge corporate or production house integrated workflows.

If, on the other hand, you want to do something like, for instance, a database driven content management system that processes video clips into “virtual menu” in somebody’s high end restaurant, complete with video of “tonight’s specials” presented table side to a room full of 100 different diners who need to watch iPad deployed content in real-time as they make their dinner selections – FCP-X would likely leave FCP-7 in the dust – particularly with a “magnetic timeline” that doesn’t really care how long the shot of each desert takes for TONIGHTS menu in the great scheme of things. That’s mission critical when you’re conforming to an arbitrary traditional TV time slot purchase. Incidental when you’re deploying a website commercial that can be 42 seconds or 2 minutes and 14 seconds and nobody cares.

Once upon a time the few made all the video for the many. Today, there are 2 million FCP editors alone. Show me another tool in development that will better allow 20 MILLION people to edit functional content for 20 million businesses in order to drive the iPad content of the future?

Tomorrows production WILL NOT be the same as yesterdays. Sorry, but as with all massive industrial change – we adapt or die.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Conner

[Bill Davis]

This is precisely like today’s politics…

The vote is split 50/50 – and everyone is fully convinced that whoever doesn’t agree with their side – regardless of what that side is – is a dismissible high-functioning dolt!

Ain’t modern life grand!

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Conner

[Bill Davis]

Cool.

But where are you going to find the FCP-7 professional who’s only had 3 months or less to master the software?

(you do require such comparisons to control for variables, right?

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Conner

[Bill Davis]

Current “travel” interview kit is 2 600 Coollights LED 600s and a Coollights 250. Paired with lightweight stands, these are both compact and pretty portable. (tho I wish they’d make a version in a lighter box since the metal boxes increase durability but makes them a bit heavier than they actually need to be.)

I picked these because they’re relatively inexpensive and can be driven by V-mount batteries. Lithium tech makes batteries lighter and more portable – but you can also rent higher capacity V-mounts cheaply in most larger cities.

I’d agree with Mark’s Lowel suggestions, but that requires you to be near reliable power – and I’ve had too many shoots in large areas like convention centers and hotel ballrooms where the outlet might be 60 feet away. Traveling with stingers is kinda nuts. LEDs on the other hand sip power so daintily that you can get away with much lighter gauge household extension cords if you must work at distance.

LED’s have limitations, but for standard interviews and broad-brush close to medium range general lighting, the output/power/reach proposition is hard to beat.

I used to drag an Arri kit around, but while I love the lights, it’s just no longer practical.

For what it’s worth.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Conner

[Bill Davis]

Since you just asked for “one” here you go.

Keynote.

Go backstage and any major business conference or public presentation and ask the tech crew behind the curtains whether they would prefer presentations in PowerPoint or Keynote. They might say “either” because they understand that their job is to work with both – but buy them a drink after the job – away from their bosses – and if it’s not 99 to 1 Keynote, I’d be shocked.

Even in the PC dominanated world of big company IT – the guys I know and have worked with for years break out in a sweat when they’re forced to work with PP presentations, and exhibit nothing but relief when handed a Keynote presentation. Particularly when the presentation is complex. Embedded sound and video files in Keynote projects tend to simply work.

In PowerPoint, not so much.

Apple software. Generally regarded as “top of the class.”

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Conner

[Bill Davis]

Herb, I hear clearly that you loath Apple as an entity, but to argue that they’ve grown from their particular garage and taken their vision farther, and in a more sustainable fashion than any other current operation on the planet (Exxon/Mobile excepted) is simply magical thinking.

The truth is that no matter how you measure creativity in business, Apple is a world class company.

That they’ve bought or licensed as many patents or processes as they’ve developed in house is just a reflection of the fact that they understand that no business can exist in a modern, interconnected planetary global economy as an island.

Stuff they HAVE invented in house, (e.g. Quicktime, Firewire (prior to giving it away to iEEE to encourage it as a standard) and everything else represented by the quite large vault of in-house patents they hold were developed on company time with company resources by company people.

So I believe you’re argument falls flat by objective standards.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Conner

[Bill Davis]

I concur with Nick,

This is precisely the kind of bread and butter work that Barbra Zimmerman and her team at BZ have been doing for decades.

Time to buy access to the rolodex of a connected professional. That’s usually the best way to grease those wheels that you didn’t even know existed.

Good luck.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Conner

[Bill Davis]

I am, yet again, skewered by your rapier-like repartee.

I simply cannot withstand another of your devestating ad hominem attacks. I am in ruins.

So, bleeding and contrite, I’ll return to my small quiet corner of the production world to crank out yet more video embedded powerpoint/keynote/ipad delivery work for my current nameless massive global beer company client —  and you may return to your next electronic press kit for the LA movie studio industry that appears to be the heart of your work —  each of us keenly aware that YOU have demonstrated that YOUR viewpoint on everything from editing to the use of CAPS in internet discussions is – in every possible way – vastly superior to mine.

you win.

congratulations.

Oh, and thanks VERY much for letting me exercise my seldom used passive/aggressive muscles. Feels kinda nice once in a while.

; )

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Conner

[Bill Davis]

For the newbies, yes, I’d HIGHLY recommend you build your own. You’ll learn a good bit about simple electrical device construction which is great. (no real electronics knowledge is needed since most of these I’ve ever encountered are really just packaged Lutron dimmers in a field box.)

But I’ll still argue that there’s a place for the HF units in many kits.

Mark, you don’t like the lesser range, and I get that. But combined with a standard scrim kit, that 25% dimming will get you a pretty WIDE range of output possibilities – with less color shift than if you cut off the light intensity by using a LUTRON style squeezer to dim it further for mere convenience.

And ignoring the time value of one’s efforts, a Lutron 600w dimmer, weatherproof box, cable, plugs, and weatherproof i/o fittings will likely run you $30-40 for each squeezer you make. Trivial enough in itself, but for a 5 light kit, that can add up fast.

Once again, horses for courses.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Conner

[Bill Davis]

Love this idea!

I’m making this my new interview standard and replacing the term “wide shot” in my vocabulary with “hostage shot” just so I won’t forget!

Thanks Nick!

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Conner