[Tim Wilson]

[Andrew Kimery] “Not to state the obvious, but the single vs multicam ‘debate’ isn’t just one of technical differences but also aesthetic differences and preferences.”

But mostly technical, I think.

It highlights a reality that I’ve never seen addressed at any length: the reverse shot is entirely unnatural. Literally. It can’t exist in nature, because it requires two simultaneous points of view.

That may seem obvious, but think about it. You, personally, can’t stand in one location and “see” a reverse. It’s entirely a cinematic invention, and can only be approached that way.

Although I suppose you COULD say that using reverses AT ALL is an aesthetic choice, which of course it is. And a relatively recent one at that.

What’s most interesting to me about reverses as an unnatural artifice is that they’re rooted in the very human reality of our role as witnesses, WANTING to see both speakers speak, AND wanting to see both sets of reactions. Even though there’s absolutely no way that we could experience the conversation this way “in reality,” reverse work because of this fundamentally human drive to empathy, to identify, in this case, with both of the people in the scene.

As both you and Oliver have identified, lighting is ultimately the gating factor in most cases. The lighting that would produce the most “natural” effect from one camera angle in this entirely UN-natural arrangement might not “look” natural from the other angle — since there’s nothing “natural” about the relationship between the two angles!

There’s also the technical problem that pumping in enough light to work for two contrasting, perhaps even conflicting, camera angles requires a lot of space. If you say twice as much space, then you might be cutting the number of potential shooting spaces in half, right?

Then staging the shot such that both camera set-ups AND both sets of lights AND their crews (focus pullers and such) are out of the frame now creates hard limits on where the cast can be. It almost certainly necessitates that everything be locked down.

Locking down cameras, lights, and actors for the technical reason of just creating a frame with the right things included and excluded also takes time for testing, and introduces risks for technical issues, rather than artistic choices, necessitating expensive retakes.

Even if there was in fact a one-headed camera that could view multiple perspectives, the rest applies. Costs skyrocket, and artistic choices plummet.

To go off topic of my off topic tangent, my pet peeve is reverse shots where the actor’s mouth doesn’t match the words we’re hearing. That’s the OPPOSITE of fixing it in post, u ppl. That’s taking a perfectly good shot and CREATING a mistake in post that didn’t actually happen on the set.

That’s a whole ‘nother rant, but we’re THIS FAR along in the history of cinematic language, and I still see this almost every single day.

Anyway, there are no problems in creating reverse shots that could be solved by shooting with a single camera, and the small handful of advantages that some multicam shoots allow frequently come at price of severely limiting artistic choices, for fundamentally technical reasons.

[Tim Wilson]

[Ned Miller] “However, I am very excited about Holography!”

I’m still holding out for Smell-o-Vision.

I think the larger issue with 360 is that most people aren’t really looking for an interactive experience outside games.

And I mean interactive AT ALL. Media 100 launched this massive new multimedia NLE initiative with the example of Tom Cruise’s sunglasses in Mission: Impossible — click on the sunglasses, and be taken to a page where you can buy them.

Makes a great pitch, except that that’s a terrible way to watch a movie, and a terrible way to shop for sunglasses. Nobody does that.

And they never actually showed how you’d represent on screen, “These glasses are for sale. Click to buy them!” There’s no equivalent of a hyperlink. So before you could get people to change their behavior about interrupting a movie to buy sunglasses, you’d have to teach them HOW to do it. Impossible.

So the idea of user-selectable multiple storylines in the same space is in fact compelling….but only in video games, where there’s also an interface for how those worlds relate to each other and what your expected behavior is.

I did a ton of real estate video, Ned, and I know exactly what you mean. It SEEMS like it’d work…but what I’m finding is that people want LESS multimedia. Still images, a slideshow AT BEST. Video is OUT. Look at Zillow, Realtor.com, Redfin, all those — video is incredibly rare. The interactive map might be the most important dynamic media on the site. Video on a map seems cool too, but really , how often do you even consult Google Maps? It’s more than you want.

Not to piss on anybody who’s doing this. Good luck! Hey, I DID buy into 3D (four 3DTVs and counting). I WANT these nifty variations. You better believe I want to watch 360º VR content, and I’ll pay quadruple if it’s in 3D. Anybody need a preview audience? CALL ME!

But I sure don’t get how to monetize it yet…..

[Tim Wilson]

Greetings all,

Hopping in with a brief explanation, and a couple of reminders.

1) For our first 19 years, we didn’t allow members to delete their posts. When we opened up that option as an experiment, chaos quickly ensued. Even when members removed their posts for the purest of reasons, threads became difficult to follow, good stuff went missing, etc.

This thread going off the rails in part because of members removing their posts is an example of why we returned to our previous policy of, if you want a post removed, contact us using the Contact link in the upper right of the page, and we’ll consider it, but generally, no. Accountability depends on the knowledge that if you’re going to say something in Creative COW, you’re going to have to stand by it.

——- This is ENTIRELY in keeping with policies of forums across the web, in the widest possible range of areas of interest. Threaded conversations depend on structure. Our brief experiment with users having unlimited access to deleting their post was a deviation from standard web practice that we have amply demonstrated is simply not at all sustainable.

2) We have always had a policy against posts about other posters. This was originally created to prevent personal attacks, but also more generally, to just keep threads on topic, and to keep from going down rabbit holes about motivations, intent, and other non-answers to important questions that bring people here in the first place.

3) So, while acknowledging the unpleasant irony of deleting posts about deleted posts, and acknowledging that there are no satisfactory outcomes to the “what the h— happened here?” detour that the thread took, I have pared the thread back to the topic.

4) Any ON TOPIC additions to this thread are of course welcome.

5) In keeping with other longstanding policies at Creative COW, arguments about administrative actions are not. This post is thus read-only. If you have issues with my handling of this or any other issues, please take them up with me directly, using the Contact link at the top of this page. I’m very much up for phone/Skype calls as well as emails, and will happily reach out to you on my dime.

Thank you for your understanding, and as always, thank you for continued support for Creative COW. It pains me to fall short of your expectations and our own, and I welcome any direct conversations with any of you about how we can do better.

Best regards,

Tim Wilson
Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW

[Tim Wilson]

Yes! Please! Apple FCPX and the Making Of Whisky Tango Foxtrot

Not meaning to suck attention away from the thread topic, which is the rightness of Premiere as the choice for the Coens (see my post below, where I also note how organic a choice it was for Fincher and Tim Miller), but, to speak to your point, Claude, I 100000% believe that X has the potential to move the needle in Hollywood more than FCP ever could, for reasons I discuss in the article.

Now, whether or not it actually WILL, we’ll see. 🙂

[Tim Wilson]

[Charlie Austin] “Pretty unbiased author I’d say.”

Well, it was very biased in the sense that I believe that objectivity is a lie, and to the extent that there may possibly be such a thing, it is to be rigorously avoided. LOL I stated my bias, that I think the WTF guys are up to something that really intrigued me, and I wrote from the perspective of my own enthusiasm with THEIR enthusiasm.

But I also wrote about THEIR biases, which include a love of risk and a desire to touch everything, that made FCPX a good choice for them. Not every director rolls that way. At the other end of the spectrum, I can imagine directors who care every bit as much about the same production issues who don’t care specifically how their teams approach it. “I pay U ppl to figure that out.” Maybe it’d be the post supervisor or the editor or somebody like that.

It certainly gets fuzzier when you have directors like Ficarra-Requa and the Coens who also edit…

My directors cut of the article also included a brief (FOR ME) compare and contrast with David Fincher’s bias to not just pushing post forward onto the set, but pushing cinematography back into post, eg, reframing every single shot. I’d have been stupefied to see him NOT gravitate toward Premiere and After Effects. Completely organic choice, completely reflects his bias that multiple iterations of THE FRAME is a good idea.

The Coen brothers are also one of a kind, so to speak. I was working at Avid when they did their first project on FCP, which caused some consternation. Raising Arizona was a team favorite — I was odd man out preferring The Big Lebowski (BUT THE DUDE ABIDES) — and my boss’s wife had actually written a book about the Coen brothers. But when I heard their workflow, I said, “Wow, Media Composer would have been a spectacularly bad fit for them.”

Of course, the next thing I said was, “The only thing worse for them is Final Cut.” LOL I’m surprised that they stuck with it as long as they did. Everything about Premiere for THEM makes vastly more sense to me.

You may recall that, as enthusiastic as I was, and am, about FCPX, I’ve said loudly and often that the greatest favor Apple may have done the industry is to help more people understand that Premiere is a better fit for them than FCP was in the first place, and certainly the better fit going forward.

It’s remarkable to me that workflows as different as Finchers and the Coens (and for that matter Tim Miller with Deadpool) can be accommodated so organically within the Creative Cloud, which is why, as engaged as I’ve personally been by FCPX since I first saw it, I’ve also said that I think it’s inevitable that Adobe wind up with the biggest slice of the pie. Compelling tools, compelling combinations, enormous flexibility, all the stuff you see in articles like this…..

….which might reflect your priorities, and which might not. But the “originated from Adobe”-ness or “originated from Tim”-ness of it is ultimately irrelevant. The most relevant bias to watch is the bias of the people portrayed IN the article, not the employer of the author.

This is actually a theme I’ve hammered many times in this forum over the years, that what appears to be a technical choice is actually a reflection of personal style. THAT’s the value of articles like these to me. The more biased the better. What are these people trying to do?

Of course, the idea that we’re kidding ourselves when we fail to talk about technology choices as a reflection of personality is pretty Freudian. I think “objective” is a lie we tell ourselves to preserve the illusion of rationality.

Whereas Siggy and I feel that rationality is only useful when applied to puncture the illusion of rationality. LOL Be specific: HOW am I kidding myself. LOL Speak aloud the unspoken forces that have driven previous decisions in hopes that the next one might actually be a little more rational, which can’t ever be taken for granted.

Being rational is hard precisely because it’s unnatural, and more often than not, self-defeating, because it gets conflated with objectivity, which doesn’t exist.

So THERE’s the task. Identify the biases of the subject of the article, identify the biases in yourself, and ask, “Are the forces that drove those choices similar to the ones that drive mine?”

It’s only when you align your inner forces with your outward choices that you can approach balance, and after that, happiness.

THAT’s what struck me talking to Glenn Ficarra. He’s a happy guy. We laughed a LOT in that conversation. FCPX was the right fit for him and his partner, and the rightness of that choice touched everything they did, including location scouting and screenings for suits. LOVE it.

I’m also gratified that Fincher and the Coens took the advice I would have given them about using Premiere that they could have saved themselves a lot of time if they’d asked me for. LOL

And now I shall reveal my true choice for the new name of this forum: FCPX or Not: Group Therapy. LOL

[Tim Wilson]

[Simon Ubsdell] “you’re doing it within the context of the timeline instances. It’s an amazingly powerful option.”

Hmph. Timelines. If you’re into that sort of thing.

[Tim Wilson]

[David Mathis] ”
Tim, how about a basic forum?
“

For Resolve? Got it right here.

Although this doesn’t sound that basic. 🙂

[Tim Wilson]

[Andrew Kimery] “when the subscriber contacted customer support Adobe waived the cancelation fee.”

Yep.

I am truly underwhelmed by the reading comprehension skills of the blogger, who claims to have read the page you linked to, Andrew. The cancellation language is three sentences in.

Reading is hard, though. I get it. Takes a lot of time. So, he COULD have Googled “Adobe cancellation fee,” gone directly to that page (I did this, btw: it works), then on that page, searched for the word “Cancel” to see what he’d see.

The word “cancel” is on there 40 times. The page lights up like a Christmas tree. I’m posting a small version of the pic of the whole page zoomed out just to show: the answer to the question of what happens when you cancel isn’t some esoteric knowledge revealed only to a chosen few. It’s easy to see:

If you cancel within 14 days, there’s no penalty, so what about mentions of what happens after 14 days? I found the first mention IN THE THIRD SENTENCE ON THE PAGE, and, once I found the specific language — “Should you cancel after 14 days” — I copied and pasted it in my Search box. It’s on the page TEN TIMES.

That’s a view of the page zoomed all the way out. Even at 100% size though, that phrase “Should you cancel after 14 days” is on my laptop screen four times on the first screen. Next screen down: FIVE times.

The entire page is three screens long, and “Should you cancel after 14 days” is “only” visible three times, but having already seen it seven times by then, I get the gist. As do you. As should he have.

So yeah, hate on subscriptions all you want. Argue that the cancellation fee is too high. Fine. 100000% legit. It’s a debate forum. Let’s debate! But claiming that the information is somehow hard to find — the writer implied that the information isn’t even there — is a demonstrable error of fact. That part of the debate: over.

[Andrew Kimery] “when the subscriber contacted customer support Adobe waived the cancelation fee.”

Worth repeating, so I repeated it.

[Tim Wilson]

[Oliver Peters] “Part of the inherent problem in Apple’s approach is often that they tend to not deploy a feature or tool precisely because someone else already has. “

Don’t skate to where the puck has already been? Or something. LOL

[Herb Sevush] “I don’t know of any NLE that wouldn’t benefit from more user control.”

I actually get what Apple is up to by eliminating user choice in as many areas as possible. It’s the most fundamental Apple ethos. It has been since Jobs got rid of that openness freak Wozniak and welded the case of the Mac shut in 1984. He conceded that people need to open their own computers when he returned, but there was certainly a relentless march to eliminate choice in as many other areas as possible.

It’s certainly the basis of iOS, and the most fundamental way to describe the difference between “the Apple way” and everyone else.

The larger issue is that if Apple is the one making the most important decisions, they have to get them right. Here, they got it wrong….

…but I still think they’d argue that they got it right. Don’t they always? LOL

Moreover, I think they’d argue that they’ve made a better NLE by in fact providing fewer options than it used to have, by eliminating workflows that it used to support, and closing off entire avenues of interop.

I certainly don’t see anything in their 21st century experience that leads me to believe that more options are coming, even for something as simple as setting more kinds of defaults yourself. Those are usability and design decisions, and Apple has already decided that they want to be the ones making those decisions.

They don’t want your filthy options cluttering up their elegant prefs pane, Herb. LOL

Not that I’m arguing that you’re wrong. I’m just saying that I think Apple would say you’re wrong, categorically. I’m amazed that anybody puts up with this kind of condescension from a company they pay, but, I can say as an Apple customer since 1979, it’s the bargain that every Apple user makes: trading off respect for delight. LOL

[Tim Wilson]

I don’t think people understand the scope of Lynda.com. Maybe the $1.5 billion purchase by LinkedIn offered a clue. LOL Seriously, the stuff she does in our business is the barest tip of the iceberg.

Even before LinkedIn, that company was being driven by over 100 full-time salespeople, pushing that product out. I can only imagine how big they’d gotten in the lead-up to LinkedIn thinking “Hey, if we spend a billion and a half dollars on Lynda, we’re going to make a LOT more than that in return,” and I actually can’t imagine how big they’re going to get from here.

So Larry’s content may have been gold. I know for a fact that yours is, Walter!!! But it takes muscle to push it out there, on a scale that most people can’t comprehend.

I look at other billion-ish dollar companies out there that started, like Lynda, as scrappy individuals, and the story is the same. Shutterstock was founded by Jon Oringer in 2003, now with a market cap of just over $1 billion: 500 employees, most of them in sales.

Videoblocks is the one to watch next — they got to 1 million clips in their library in a year, compared to the previous record of 6 years by Shutterstock. Started by another scrappy, self-funded individual, Joel Holland in 2009, and I think they “only” have 75 people or so (am I remembering that right? something like that)….but they’re growing fast, and doing an awful lot of things right. But to get to the next level, they’re going to need to at least double their staff, and I bet they will. I wouldn’t be surprised if they did it before the end of the year. Just guessing, but I see those guys playing to win, and to win, you need a big team.

Stock media is different than training of course, but my point is the same. You used to be able to show up with the goods as a trainer, have a nice website, a strong social media presence, go to user groups and trade shows, and have people make their way to you. No more.

It’s the same issue that so many people here have identified, writ large. Competing against free, but unlike, us, ALSO competing against the well-funded behemoths who are orders of magnitude larger. Larry was going up against Lynda, the COW, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, every user group, fcp.co, on and on and on — and he kind of acknowledged that this was the issue. His team couldn’t generate lift.

My diagnosis is that the team was way too small…not that there mightn’t have been a million other things, but man, Walter, I think you’re exactly right. As hard as it is to make a living as a solo or small team producer, where you’re mostly competing against free or nearly free alternatives, I can’t even imagine how hard it is to compete as as a small or solo trainer against BOTH “free” AND billion dollar empires.