[Tim Wilson]

Sorry to chime in late…but I have no idea what’s up with that original message either.

Wherever it came from, ignore it. 🙂

Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
Twitter: timdoubleyou

[Tim Wilson]

[Andrew Rendell] “Be the guy who spots what needs doing and does it without being told to. Be the guy who communicates openly and is a pleasure to be around. Be the guy who knows when to shuddup and learn.”

This is a variation on Bob’s advice, and for finding a job, it’s exactly the right advice. Be willing to do whatever it takes, and be the KIND OF GUY that people want to work with. If you’re not pleasant to be around, you won’t BE around.

But the question was about what a student should be doing.

The answer is, not getting hung up about software. You can learn that stuff online for a few hundred bucks, and it’s good stuff. If you’re looking for super-practical connections between school and work, consider a trade school like Full Sail. These are much more than button pushing exercises. I love that Full Sail requires drawing classes before you ever touch a computer. They teach visual approaches to ART, which is critical to you if you want to be an ARTIST.

Werner Herzog is one of my favorite filmmakers, and he hosts a rolling educational seminar called The Rogue Film School. When asked what an aspiring filmmaker should learn, he says, “I tell them to read, read, read, read, read, read, read. Only those who read own the world. Those who are on the internet or watch TV too much lose the world. I give them a required reading list that has nothing to do with cinema. I tell them to read Virgil, to read Latin. To read Latin is to understand the genesis of our culture, of the Western world.”

Because that’s the thing. Any monkey can learn After Effects. You might have spent the last 4 years of your life learning Final Cut Pro – oops, there may never be another FCP editor hired again. (Kidding…mostly.) Who knows? Who cares? That’s the easy part.

But you will read more in school than you may for the rest of your entire life combined. You will NEVER replicate the opportunity to LEARN EVERYTHING. Be a STUDENT.

Look, you might even discover that you’d rather be a geologist than a filmmaker…but I can tell you that the best job I ever had in production ($300K/yr gross, which worked out to $100K net or so) came from GEOLOGY and BIOLOGY. I was shooting, editing, producing, and to be honest, I’m not sure they ever saw a frame of my work before we started. They certainly never said “We’ve seen your work and we love it.” They heard I was reliable, professional, nice to work with (I shit you not), and while we were talking, I blew them away with my knowledge of the earth sciences. Sold.

Here’s another thing. What job do you want? If you want to get into graphics, After Effects is barely a starting point. If you want to get into editing, you sure as shit better learn to be an assistant editor first — and the most valuable software for an assistant editor is Microsoft Excel.

In fact, Walter Murch’s assistant editor got in touch with me once. You know what software he spends most of his time in? Freaking FILEMAKER. I didn’t even know they MADE Filemaker anymore. But he said that Walter’s tool of choice is actually index cards, so you can imagine how much data his assistant has to manage.

And yes, on a movie set, to this day, the primary DATA gathering tool is PAPER. Oscar winning DP Dave Stump ASC refers to it as “metapaper,” and while he’s trying to build computer and device-centered approaches (included devices embedded into cranes, etc.), he knows we’re many years away from that.

Do you want to be a monkey or a manager? I don’t mean monkey derogatorily. Because there are some people who only want to DO effects, or editing…but if you want to be a post supervisor someday, well, you need management chops. You need to be able to work with vendors, like people who make miniatures. Maybe YOU want to make miniatures. Yeah, some previz software…but most previz is done with PENCILS and PAINT…oh yeah, and there’s a pile of clay, now get to work.

The fastest growing field in production right now is DIT, digital imaging technician. It’s a lot more than, say, an X-ray techician, in that you have to know EVERYTHING, including where you stand in the production workflow THAT DAY. Your closest associate on the set may be the assistant director: you need to be this place, at this time, and you need to be ready to shoot this much footage.

And you know what the most important tools of an assistant director are? A clipboard and a walkie talkie. But it’s real work! You have to know how much time this particular team is going to take to light a scene, and how much of that the DP needs to be there for, and know exactly what time the DP needs to be ready to shoot, and where in that process the director wants to be there, and a million other things that have zzzzzzzzeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrooooooo to do with software.

The last story I’ll tell you about is Tony Hudson. All he ever wanted to do was operate puppets. He started with Sid and Marty Kroft (if you’re old enough, you know that this is like coming out of high school and starting on a Major League club. NOBODY does that. Tony did.) He talked his way into a job in Lucas’s creature shop. (Can you talk your way into a job?)

Among his jobs was designing and operating the whales in Star Trek IV. When Lucas started moving digital, Tony learned what he needed to learn on the job. One of his favorite accomplishments was the Jeebs head blowing up in the first Men In Black movie. He did every frame of that all by himself. No crew. Just him.

Then he got the chance to work with Ray Kurzweil, so he came to the COW and taught himself FCP. Then he moved back to Lucas as a manager, and now his job is running the place he used to work.

So what do you need to learn in school? You need to LEARN HOW TO LEARN. Read. Learn at least one foreign language. You’ll be amazed at the way it can reshape your brain if you let it.

Then do the software stuff on the side at any number of wonderful online repositories. You may never NEED a reel…but don’t look like a moron if somebody asks you for one. Be ready. That’s the point of all this.

Last last last thing. The job that I had when I ran my own company didn’t even exist when I was in school. The idea of somebody owning a meaningful computer or even a pro video camera was preposterous. I don’t mean to sound like this was ancient history, in the sense that, less than 10 years after this was true, I was in fact running my own company with these exact tools that never existed — editing software, I/O, media drives, none of it. (I graduated in 82, started my own company in 90.)

So ask yourself, which tools might exist in 10 years that don’t exist today? Or don’t exist in a form that you might recognize or be even vaguely accessible? Because THAT may be what you build your career around.

Some links to get you thinking:

David McGiffert, assistant director of King Kong (1977), 4 films for Sidney Pollack (including Tootsie, for which he was given an associate producer credit), all three Back to the Future pictures, Witness, The Fisher King and many more.
https://magazine.creativecow.net/article/playing-your-role-in-a-working-film-crew

Todd McMullen, DP. His first job? Martin Scorsese’s Casino. (Why? Because he was a nice guy.)
https://magazine.creativecow.net/article/dont-miss-your-shot

Tony Hudson, from puppeteer to ILM management
https://magazine.creativecow.net/article/a-nonlinear-career

Von Thomas, A DIT Tells All. I asked him to write this when he posted a picture of the DIT cart he built, but it turned into a much wider discussion of what a DIT needs to know. By they way, Von’s cart includes Cartspresso, a built-in Braun espresso machine in the same bright green as his cart. People keep him around because he’s good, he’s NICE, and he’s fun to be around. And he’s good. 🙂
https://magazine.creativecow.net/article/a-dit-tells-all

Think bigger than than I think you’re thinking based on your first question. If you’re already thinking big, think bigger.

And read.

PS. Just for grins, here’s Herzog’s Rogue Film School “About Us” page. Highlights:

“How do you sensitize an audience? How is space created and understood by an audience? How do you produce and edit a film? How do you create illumination and an ecstasy of truth?”

“Related, but more practical subjects, will be the art of lockpicking. Traveling on foot. The exhilaration of being shot at unsuccessfully. The athletic side of filmmaking. The creation of your own shooting permits. The neutralization of bureaucracy. Guerrilla tactics. Self reliance.”

“Censorship will be enforced. There will be no talk of shamans, of yoga classes, nutritional values, herbal teas, discovering your Boundaries, and Inner Growth.”

“Related, but more reflective, will be a reading list. Required reading: Virgil’s “Georgics” and Ernest Hemingway’s “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”. ”

You get the idea. Read it slowly. Read it more than once. Think bigger.

https://www.roguefilmschool.com/about.asp

Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
Twitter: timdoubleyou

[Tim Wilson]

[Jim Wiseman] “Good dealer here,”

Yes, a good dealer. In much of the lower 48, the only dealer is the Apple store. 🙂

I’m not sure where the $15K comes from though. You CAN go that high, because, well, you can. Twice as many card slots, twice as many bays, twice as much RAM, and the ability to use a top of the line graphics card, and of course it costs more. But if you want a computer as underpowered as a Mac LOL it’s quite comparably priced…except it comes with twice as many slots/bays/RAM slots, and, your local dealer notwithstanding, a corporate commitment to service for high-end customers that Apple has never had.

But it’s not about Apple vs. HP. They’re playing a different game. If you commit to Apple, you just have to stay aware that they’re not as committed to you. You have to commit to a computer that’s inevitably hobbled because Apple isn’t interested in maximum performance.

This is nothing new. Their commitment to mid-range graphics – or lower- goes back to the beginning. The “world’s first supercomputer” was nonsense and they knew it, and so did we, and we all (and I definitely include myself) had a lot of fun with it. But max performance has never been their top priority. It took me over 22 years as a diehard Mac guy to figure that out, and decide that I wasn’t going to keep paying Apple to frustrate me.

No boo-hoo Apple doesn’t love me, Apple doesn’t care about pros. Please. Apple likes me fine, and cares about pros…just not enough for what I need.

It’s just an awful lot of energy to expend on a company that’s going to do what it does, regardless, and no matter what it does, it will lead the industry in sales and deep, abiding love of its customers and Wall St. But not computing performance, which is the main thing I buy computers for.

Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
Twitter: timdoubleyou

[Tim Wilson]

24 phone support, sure. Next business day replacement? Coverage if you accidentally pour water on it? Really?

Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
Twitter: timdoubleyou

[Tim Wilson]

As noted in an earlier thread, HP’s layoffs represent 7% of its total workforce, and will be spread across the next two and a half years. most of them are in the printing division. This is far from catastrophic.

My own theory is that EVERY company with 369,000 employees (compared to about 60K at Apple) would do well to trim 7% of them in the next two and a half years.

I still believe Apple will release a new Mac Pro, and am frankly mystified by the people who are sure they won’t. When will you people relax and realize that I’M ALWAYS RIGHT??? LOL

here’s something I AM right about. Apple will not add two more card slots, two more drive bays, TWELVE more RAM slots, and high end graphics. Okay, the last one is a maybe, as is Apple adding 4 more cores….ALL of which they’ll have to do to match an HP Z820.

And add next business day shipping of replacement parts, even if you’re in a different country than you bought it in, and cover accidental damage, for less than the current price of Applecare. Not gonna happen.

I’m just saying, OS is OS, money is money, but if you want the baddest computer with the best coverage, from the only company with a workstation division devoted to media and entertainment, you aren’t holding your breath waiting for Apple.

PS. Sorry about any spellings stupider than usual, or autocorrect humiliations. Typing on a phone…

Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
Twitter: timdoubleyou

[Tim Wilson]

[David Cherniack] “definitely incorrectal”

Don’t think I didn’t notice that.

Hey, and on the autocorrect front, I type the f word so often that I added it to the dictionary on my phone. Then there was time that I was typing an email to a client whose last name is Guzik….

Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
Twitter: timdoubleyou

[Tim Wilson]

I don’t know anything about HP, really, beyond the same stuff everybody else reads. As you point out, Craig, a number of the jobs trimmed will come through early attrition and retirement….and c’mon, I think every company with 369,000 employees could probably stand to trim 8% of ’em in the next two and a half years. LOL

[Craig Seeman] “Personally I find myself printing less and less “

That’s what they mentioned in their advice to Wall Street. Not that YOU are printing less and less, but that EVERYONE is printing less. I rarely get as far as PDFs. I mostly just send attachments.

I can’t think of a single thing I’ve printed since a Google map last fall.

Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
Twitter: timdoubleyou

[Tim Wilson]

I just noticed that the layoffs won’t actually be completed until October 2014. Not sounding so dire to me.

I also noted that, while overall down, HP’s financials beat the street estimate, and stock was up 9% yesterday on the news.

I ain’t saying that this represents the turnaround HP is looking for, but it also doesn’t represent the wheels falling off.

Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
Twitter: timdoubleyou

[Tim Wilson]

[Chris Harlan] “I wonder if Sir Jonathan is newly freed, or now at the mercy of those who don’t quite get him?”

As Steve told Isaacson, nobody was allowed to tell Jon what to do. “That’s the way I set it up.” But this is now.

The thing is, I think Timmy (may I call you Timmy?) has been at the wheel for a lot longer than commonly acknowledged. If not fully the captain, certainly more than the helmsman. I wonder if he sees any real percentage in shaking things up too much any time soon.

My last nautical metaphor FOR THE YEAR: my guess is that he’ll stay the course, and my guess is that our guess about the course is probably substantially wrong.

Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
Twitter: timdoubleyou

[Tim Wilson]

[Chris Harlan] “But by making the statement, I think they were definitely making a statement of their general intentions.”

Or the exact opposite. 🙂

Remember when Steve was adamant that they would never do a tablet because tablet buyers aren’t “Apple’s kind of customers” — something along the lines of “they’re rich guys who buy one of everything,” aka douchebags, and if there’s anything that Apple customers are NOT is douchebags.

Right?

He said the same thing about Apple making phones.

Apple’s capacity for making EVERYONE who predicts ANYTHING about Apple’s next move look like an IDIOT is what really sets them apart.

Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
Twitter: timdoubleyou