[Tim Wilson]

[Tom Sefton] “the whole project had 4 different delivery formats : 4096×1080, 3840 x 2160, 1920 x 1080 and 1080 x 1920. All content was shot using the same camera, and screens used mostly the same footage – hence your point of cropping and reframing being really great..”

Wow, I was right about something? Somebody write this down! I know I’m going to need to come back to this one day to prove it. LOL

More important of course, MAZEL TOV! Enjoy your new daughter!

Still, I’m curious. Was this aspect ratio-stravaganza new to you? Have you previously only done traditionally-oriented video?

[Tim Wilson]

[Ned Miller] “Did you know that at Dave Chapelle’s come back tour shows everyone has to give up their phone on their way in? The artists are getting PO’s looking out and seeing everyone looking at their phones:”

I’m all for it! LOL Except that I do love fan video of concerts, and have shot some pretty good stuff over the years….but in fact, I try to be sensitive about which orientation the video calls for.

I mentioned seeing McCartney twice…well in fact, through a series of circumstances so bizarre that it deserves its own story…which I’m writing…I saw him 3 times in 2 weeks. In addition to an arena and a festival-style event, I saw him at a bar with 300 people!!! I was right at the rail, close enough to touch him…which I did a couple of times when we slapped palms. A life highlight for me, for sure.

I had in fact seen him in the arena the week before, and I was CRAZY close, so the ONLY way I was going to get his whole body in the frame was vertical. I’ve embedded it here, but you really need to take it full screen if you’re on your desktop to see what I mean. No music in this clip. I just wanted to show his ENTRANCE into this tiny, tiny space to provide context.

btw, do note that the rest of the horizontal frame is filled with a scaled, shaded version of the video. Your observation that nobody notices this on TV, Ned, or if they do, they don’t care, is reflective of the extent that people recognize vertical orientation as “a” fully legit native tongue for video.

You might say that younger audiences are bilingual that way.

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I did grab “A Hard Day’s Night” horizontal, though…but even when he was halfway back on the stage, I didn’t get his full body. Here’s a photo from another song that’ll give you an idea, cropped 4:3, but not zoomed. All I cropped out was empty stage on either side….well, okay, half of the drummer and keyboard player, but I was too close to ever get them all the way in the frame….an awesome problem to have mind you, but there ya go.

To get back to your point about Dave Chappelle’s no phones policy, Ned, Paul McCartney is plenty used to performing with cameras in his face….but I was 6 feet away, and it felt rude…so after I got his entrance and the second song in his set (which was “AHDN”), I just put my phone in my pocket. The tradeoff was that he and I made a LOT of eye contact, which I wouldn’t trade for the world of course.

I’ve always imagined that my compromise as an artist might be, “I love fan videos of shows, too…but do me a favor. I’m going to turn up the house lights, and ask you to put away your phones, so that we can just look at each other. Can you do that for me, for one song? Please?”

I have no idea if it would work, but I do understand Dave’s impulse, especially for standup, when you’re ONLY looking into the audience.

[Ned Miller] “the mall wanted to mount 16×9 monitors VERTICALLY around the mall, sort of a precursor to what we now call digital signage, and they knew a standing humanoid fit great in a vertical 16×9 like cars do in its horizontal.”

Right. And if you walk any length through an airport of any size today, you might pass hundreds of vertical 16×9 monitors, filling the same space in the ecosystem that a poster does.

And indeed, to this day, no matter how widescreen a movie, a vertical poster is what does the trick.

Your example of video of cars as better in horizontal is a perfect one, though, as is the large-group selfie….although in fact, the native language of selfies is probably vertical now, right? Anyway, roadside billboards work better horizontally because you’re traversing them on that plane at enough speed that vertical boards aren’t in focus for enough time.

I’m also a massive fan of widescreen. I was subscribing to Widescreen Digest 20 years ago, and installing home theater systems — including more than a few with 2 screens in one enclosure, so that you could watch 4:3 TV on one screen and widescreen laser disks (ahem) on the other. 16:9? Fooey. I mean WIIIIIIIIIIDE screen laser disks. 16:9 was a compromise, and not an ideal one, imo. Not wide enough.

That said, you can see the difference in a heartbeat in a proper IMAX theater. A widescreen picture looks….I won’t say wrong, but I will say “incomplete”. The idea of “letterbox” is exactly the OPPOSITE of “full screen”. You’re not seeing the big picture AT ALL. You’re seeing a slice of it, through a narrow window.

Even as much as I believe that we so quickly adapted to widescreen images is because, as humans, our primary orientation is horizontal — we evolved to see threats coming from the same plane as ours, not from above — but our horizontal orientation to MOVEMENT is still NOTHING like a letterbox PICTURE. It’s MUCH more like 4:3.

So as long as we PRIMARILY hold devices vertically, the PRIMARY orientation for device video will be, and SHOULD be, VERTICAL.

[Ned Miller] “I think it’s more an issue for the editors.”

I think also for producers. One thing it’s reinforcing to me is that one size does not fit all. It’s rare that a desktop version of a website is identical for desktop and mobile. Why should video be any different? But the question is, how do you account for it?

For a movie or TV show, no need. People EXPECT to turn their phones sideways. In fact, when I’m on YouTube and turn my phone horizontally, the clip automatically fills the screen. This is a Google-verse assumption (or does iOS do this too?), and it’s the right one. When i turn my phone horizontally, I DO want the video filling my screen as the default behavior (with one click to go out of full screen if that’s what I want).

But more often than not, it annoys me when a page goes horizontal, so I actually have my screen locked to vertical, and only unlock it when watching horizontal video….which turns out to be less and less with each passing day.

What it will increasingly mean for pros, I think, is an awareness like the BBC’s, that if you want your stuff to be seen to its best advantage on devices, shoot it vertical, no questions asked. Square at MOST.

Indeed, as an experiment, even if you download the Instagram app for this one experiment, load up your favorite horizontal video, and play with the crop tools. I think you’ll be amazed at how often a center cut not only looks good, but looks BETTER on the phone.

So I think what we really need is a “VERTICAL SAFE” marker in pro viewfinders. LOL

Speaking of which….

[Tom Sefton] “We didn’t do this – wish we had because it’s brilliant, but nothing understands a mobile audience better than custom created content for a portrait display.”

Haha! AWESOME example. I do think that vertical FILMMAKING will remain pretty rare, this is a FANTASTIC example of how powerful full-screen video is, and on devices, that means vertical.

The thing is, I’m not sure that this story “translated” to vertical would be any better. I think it’s meant to be told vertically. No WONDER the name of the movie is Impact.

For that matter, how much video really needs to be 16:9? Is a center crop of, say, The X-Files or Twin Peaks better because it’s now “widescreen” rather than pillared? It’s a push for X-Files for me, but Twin Peaks is weakened….

….not that most people will notice, any more than that they notice the convention of scaling and blurring a version of a vertical video to fill a horizontal screen.

And you know what? I first saw Lawrence of Arabia full screen on a 4:3 TV, and I swear it’s a better movie. Landscape, desert, horizon, Omar Sharif riding in from the distance, whatever — the POWER of that movie is Peter O’Toole’s EYES, and they’re bigger in 4:3. In fact, I found this promo still, which is actually the way I saw the movie, both 4:3 AND black and white. Wanna tell me this image ain’t cinematic enough for ya?

Anywayyyyy….since you brought up your own work, Tom, can you tell us a little more about it?

[Tim Wilson]

[Robin S. Kurz] “[Tangier Clarke] “Is it merely Apple’s intent is to provide the brain (FCP X) and let the third party developers provide the choice to the masses? ”

Yepp. And that’s a brilliant strategy, too, imho.”

I agree. I’d like to see even more of it. There are only a handful of core features that cover most editing scenarios, so they invested their energy exactly where they should have: organization, interface, and the heart of “the experience”.

After the NAB presentation in 2011, and before we got the release, I speculated about — AND HOPED FOR — a scenario where Apple did virtually nothing BUT the core. I imagined — AND HOPED FOR — being able to buy something like a codec pack from the camera manufacturer as an in-app purchase. Why wait for Apple to build in support for the 99K Ginormo camera some time in the next year…or more…when Ginormo has that codec ready TODAY, and could supply it INSTANTLY…if Apple had a structure that allowed it.

In fact, long after the release, I’ve continued to advocate for even more of this than is out there….but I’m really glad that they’ve stuck to this basic strategy. Keep the heart of the experience lean, mean, and fast, and let third-party developers provide functions that look like niches to the world at large, but are life-and-death within our niche. Leave that development in the hands of people for whom it’s their whole world, and it will inevitably work better than what ANY host developer (not just Apple) could ever hope for.

The irony is that when host developers half-ass some feature or another that sort-of covers some of the features in a third-party plug-in or helper app, it can sometimes be enough to kill that much, much better alternative. The third-party developer’s opportunity to monetize their efforts can become so choked off that they have to walk away from growing the product.

So it’s critical for the development of core features for THIS market that Apple NOT be the ones developing those features!

Again, no criticism of Apple implied. It’s true for ALL host developers. Build robust platforms for third parties, then leave them alone to do their jobs.

After Effects is one product that got this right in spades: an incredibly robust plug-in architecture, plus scripting, expressions, and other tools to easily enable custom functions that maybe only a handful of people in the whole world might need, but they do need.

Speaking of which, the After Effects Expressions forum has been one of our top 10 since we opened it. Depending on what’s happening in the world, it can slip into the top 5. Don’t for a minute underestimate the importance of this.

To put it another way, one of the most critical core features of After Effects is its extensibility for other people to go beyond its core features!

(As a former developer of third-party effects when I was at Boris FX, for whom I DO NOT speak on this count, the one area where I’m most underwhelmed is with X’s support for a third-party effects architecture. The Noise Industries/FX Factory ecosystem certainly does a remarkable job with this…but I sat across from Gabriele de Simone at Boris FX when he was developing what became FX Factory…and I moved into his much nicer office when he left to go solo LOL…and I’m telling you that he was doing even more in his development tools over a dozen years ago than Apple’s plug-in architecture allows today.

Likewise, not speaking for Gabe either of course…but as still a somewhat interested observer, this is one area where I feel that Apple is well behind the rest of the industry, and would have a fairly easy time jumping way ahead if they wanted to — not building these features themselves, but building better hooks.)

Admittedly, Adobe is playing a different game than Apple, and its understanding of “core features” and “target markets” is inevitably vastly vaster. All the more remarkable, though, that as massive as their “core” feature sets become, Adobe is still deeply committed to third parties.

Which, coming back around, should not be taken as a criticism of today’s Apple in general, or FCPX in particular. Apple was once justifiably famous for eating its young. Steve resented anyone making money from Apple that Apple wasn’t getting a slice of in return (user groups and sites like ours included), and Apple famously bought and let atrophy a significant handful of products and technologies that our entire market would have benefited from Apple just keeping their hands off.

So it heartens me that this appears to be holding up as Apple’s modus operandus for FCPX. I still want more. I want scripting, I want in-app codec packs, more robust effects hooks, and the like, blooming like a thousand flowers.

[Tim Wilson]

[Todd Terry] “my repeated and explicit instructions to “Position your phone horizontally… the same as a TV screen!” They don’t seem to get it.”

I disagree with this one million percent. Not the part about you preferring it. That’s your prerogative. But it’s not only not a problem, but using video the way the BBC app is working, HORIZONTAL is the problem. The most dominant platforms for watching video are Facebook and Instagram — and for the BBC, the target is the app — and VERTICAL IS BETTER. It fills the screen, it’s easier to see, and it tells more of the story.

Now yeah, if it’s going to TV, that’s a little different, but only a little. Vertical is now the native tongue of phone video, so nobody in the neighborhood of 30 or below cares. On the contrary, they EXPECT it.

Of course, I’m twice that age, and I not only have no problem with — I expect it too. And despite having shot professionally since the 70s, I vastly favor vertical video now.

One place (or two places) I recently the saw the value of it was seeing Paul McCartney’s IMAG in concert, both in an arena and at Desert Trip.. The fact is that nobody gives a spit about looking at anything but Paul. (His band has been together for 15 years, btw, his longest-standing band ever, and boy howdy, do they play like it. RAZOR sharp….but I don’t need ’em on the IMAG.)

The IMAG being vertical meant that we got in close on Paul’s face AND his bass. Horizontal would have been twice as far away, with two thirds of the screen filled with stuff I actively didn’t want to see.

This was also true for all 6 artists at Desert Trip, where bands used vertical or square value to MASSIVE advantage. Yeah, they had 250 horizontal feet to work with, but it worked best for graphics. McCartney is actually one of the most graphics-heavy artists on the road today, so there was definitely some of that. Roger Waters vastly moreso. At one point, there was a 250-foot long closeup on the neck of a guitar (during “Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Parts I-V” for those of you keeping score at home), but otherwise, he used the screen as a combination of square and/or vertical sections.

Some illustrations (which you can click to enlarge):

The Rolling Stones

The aforementioned McCartney, nice shot with vertical IMAG and the man if I say so myself

The Who, combining vertical Roger and Pete with square Union Jack animations

fwiw, I got a lot of very nice shots of all the bands, including some awesome zoom shots (a story for another day, but I will be sharing them eventually in a story about Fujinon lenses shooting the show, and piping it around with Blackmagic doo-dads) but I find myself cropping them vertically for my own enjoyment, or at most square, in almost every case. Turns out I’m kind of a 4:3 guy after all! It really is one of the things I love about Instagram too. Yeah, it’ll do horizontal in the latest updates, but I hate it. I’ll still with squares, and where I can, go fullscreen vertical.

Admittedly, yes, IMAG is a special case, but Facebook and Instagram are not. Nor is sharing video with friends mobile-to-mobile, or mobile apps. Vertical is the solution, horizontal is the problem. This will become more and more true over time, even on TV.

You don’t have to like it. You don’t have to get used to it. But if you’re as desperately trying to preserve your hair as I am, I do recommend that you embrace the new world everywhere you can. LOL

[Tim Wilson]

[Richard Herd] “In the hands of an artist, this tool could be fantastic. However, I will probably make famous people make fart sounds. :)”

Not to belabor a point that I think we agree on more than not, I hope you’re not implying that adding fart sounds isn’t great art. ???? There used to be a version of the Bean Scene from Blazing Saddles posted on YouTube with the, uhm, audio effects turned off for early broadcast showings, which is in fact how I first saw it. It’s quite startling, even more unsettling than you’d think. I suppose it’s good news that the “proper” version is the only one I can currently find, amply demonstrating that this is in fact high art.

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And as you can see, easily-enough added with older technology. Technically ADR, but I think, more technically, AFR.

[Tim Wilson]

[Jeremy Garchow] “[Tim Wilson] “There are already plenty of ways for unethical people to be unethical, and it typically happens far, far before this part of the production process.”

I think the production process would be the least of concerns.

On the upside, I’m glad it’s Friday.”

Yes, my exact point. This kind of tweaking doesn’t even make my list of issues in the scheme of things. I’m more of a “glass is 42% full” kind of guy than anything else (things are just shy of “okay” at best), but this time, I’m saying, “What glass? I don’t see any glass, relatively speaking. This is AWESOME.”

But yeah, I’m glad it’s Friday. Saturday means the phone doesn’t ring, so I can work even longer hours. ????????????

[Tim Wilson]

[Bob Zelin] “that’s like saying Large Shrimp.”

Except that large shrimp actually exist. ????

[Tim Wilson]

[Richard Herd] “What massive time savings? This will be a time nightmare and extend and extend and extend re-edits.”

I agree that the paperless office was an illusion, but I’m sincerely not getting that you’re not seeing this as a true breakthrough, in a good way.

The problem of providing excuses for endless edits that you note is a real one, but no different than we’ve been dealing with in NLEs for 30 years. And it’s not like the film-ness of film stopped people from insisting on new edits…

….but I know you’ve done a ton of VO editing. I know I did documentaries and news magazine stuff, so VO was constant. I’d have added years to my life if I hadn’t had to drag people back into the studio to accommodate a script change, missed cue, or some other absolutely normal, perfectly rational situation.

A colleague of mine is wrestling with this now on a project. The company offers continuing education for medical specialists, required by licensing boards. Precision is a must.

For this one recent project, a doctor did a GREAT job on the VO, as good as any pro I’ve heard…BASICALLY. But there were just enough tiny errors that… well, let’s just say you can imagine why a presentation to doctors about cutting-edge treatment might need to be razor sharp.

There were also some pieces of the script that were based on older information that was updated between when the project started and now — not the first time this happened. There were also a number of mis-speaks that are endemic to multi-hour recording sessions that they THOUGHT could be edited around, but when it came down to it, couldn’t be.

No biggie, except that the narrator is a DOCTOR, a very busy specialist with a large clinical practice, who’s also an in-demand speaker, and who lives far away. Swapping out narrators isn’t an option, for reasons.

Even just getting the doc in front of a proper microphone has been waiting for weeks. It might be months before it actually happens, plus however much time it’ll take to process the whole thing, make the vocal sessions at least plausibly match up in post, etc etc etc.

Pray that the doctor, reading the revised script, remotely, gets it close enough that a third take isn’t necessary.

Or my colleague could have done made the edits and added the tweaked new information in an hour or two, a month ago.

How is this not massive? Assuming that it works as well as it appears to in the demo, I can’t think of a single scenario where a VO editor won’t be delighted. This is one of those examples of what Arthur C. Clarke observed about a sufficiently advanced technology looking like magic. This looks like MAGIC, with demonstrably practical applications.

And really, if the worst you can say about a technology is that it’s too advanced to trust your colleagues and peers to use it ethically, well, take responsibility for yourself, and don’t worry about the other guy’s ethics any more than you already do. There are already plenty of ways for unethical people to be unethical, and it typically happens far, far before this part of the production process.

It’s certainly understandable to me why people might be hyper-tuned to this issue these days, but I ain’t buying the miniscule risks of this as outweighing the exponential rewards.

[Tim Wilson]

[Tony West] “I guess what I would say Tim is, if they replace X with something that I like even more I won’t be upset. I liked Legend right up until I started really enjoying X”

I 100% agree with you on this, but I am also sensitive to WHY somebody else somebody else would find the discontinuity a deal breaker. For THEM, there are two separate products, and the new one is a no-go.

But I think it’s not unlike all the other issues. Jim Wiseman will tell you that his Apple II is a current machine for his workflows and works just fine…but some of my favorite Apple II software not only never made it to Mac, it simply disappeared.

Even within the world of software released BY Apple, the percentage of it that didn’t reach its 10th anniversary without becoming zombieware is pretty close to 100%. That’s why this remains a legit topic.

[Tony West] “What is your guess on them wanting to sell Pro computers in the future?”

That’s a really interesting question to me. There was a time when Apple really did want to sell their top-end computers as the baddest in the land. The 1999 “Supercomputer” ad is a work of mad genius, and ends with the best Windows joke of all time…even if the ad as a whole is riddled with…let’s call them exaggerations. Still fun, though.

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After that, though, I think they understood that they didn’t want to compete with the Intergraphs of the world. Remember THOSE? Purple cases, and they were HUGE, but they were as powerful as they looked.

When you compare a Mac Pro to an HP Z workstation (512 GB RAM — srlsy tho — multiple graphics cards, etc), an Octane, or what have you, you can even argue that Apple only BARELY cares about pro computing AT ALL…

…but really, the iMac is pretty slick. And Apple has ALWAYS considered the MBP to be FULLY pro. Certainly the iconography of the FCP introduction was all about the laptop…although, admittedly, the opening iconography was also all about DV.

Still, when they banged the drum for ProRes 4444 support in ARRI Alexa, they used the laptop again. As a marketeer, I love this picture. VERY powerful message. This camera looks like it belongs with the MBP every bit as the Panasonic DVX-100a DV camera did!!!

Which raises the question, Tony, what would a pro computer from Apple have to be to answer your question in the affirmative….

…AND to not chase people off the platform the way the trashcan did. ????

Your thoughts?

[Tim Wilson]

[Ricardo Marty] “Dont like like that voice lets use Don Lafontaines hey how about Orson Wells nah I prefer Vincent Price.

We could get stuck in the past.”

That’s harder to do than you’d think…I think. Roger Ebert was trying to do something like this before he passed, but it turned out that there were very few stretches of his voice recordings that didn’t have Gene Siskel interrupting him. ????

There are obviously some issues with this, but I don’t see it as much more problematic than hologram actors. Remember when people said the same thing about that? That we’d be inundated with them? I actually wouldn’t mind seeing a few more of them than we’ve seen so far, especially in advertising where I think the illusion could hold up for the shorter duration more easily…

…but I just think about the massive time savings, and I think of this as one of the most practical new features that anybody has released in a while.

Not that it’s been released yet. I do appreciate that they don’t think it’s ready for release until it’s 100% detectable. I can see where this would be quite a trick if the original file has been conveniently lost, and all that remains is a flattened recording. This kind of watermarking is ironically much easier to do with video files….