[Gary Huff]

[Douglas K. Dempsey] ”
I guess that is the context of my original (admittedly failed) analogy: the first job of an editor is not necessarily finishing, but trying to find the rhythm, “voice” and intent of the piece among an avalanche of material.”

Yes, and in today’s market, one usually cannot merely be an “editor” and hand off the rough piece to someone to finish up. It’s, more often than not, all the same person.

And who is to say how much that finishing editor actually improved upon the original edit itself? On the rare occasions that I have been asked to put the “polish” on an edit, it has often involved actually fixing it.

[Gary Huff]

[Bret Williams] “Obviously.”
So if Leonardo Da Vinci had merely drew a rough, stick figure outline of what he wanted and then some unnamed individual came in a actually painted over the lines and made the artwork “polished”, who is the real artist?

[Gary Huff]

[Bill Davis] “So my mood has changed significantly.”

First of all, congrats.

Second of all, funny how that kind of news can pull a complete 180 on your day.

[Gary Huff]

[Bret Williams] “I have seen some non-full time editors that have just enough knowledge to barely function in an NLE get a rough cut done very quickly because they couldn’t give a damn about the audio quality or the visual quality or even what track the clip is on. ALL they cared about was getting the story and weren’t distracted by the art of editing.”

But then it’s up to someone else to actually finish it up and make it work, right? And probably to shine the rough edges as well.

[Gary Huff]

Exactly. So when they eliminated that position that your great Editors had, in favor of the Online Editor position, then they no longer had the fallback of someone who knew the craft to make their cuts look good.

Unless Bill has a dedicated color correctionist working for him, but somehow I doubt it.

[Gary Huff]

So Bill’s not really an editor? He wants to be a director?

Directing requires it’s own craft as much as any other position. Now you can still turn out good work without knowing the craft, but then you’re just requiring that the people who make you look good are also on the ball (and possibly, even ignoring what you have to say to them in order to do something that is of quality).

I fail to see how this applies, but then again, you’re “just sayin'” so it’s not like you’re standing by your comment anyway.

[Gary Huff]

[Bill Davis] “I don’t ride scopes nearly as much as I did in my analog days, because today’s digital signals don’t degrade or drift nearly as much as the analog signals of my youth.”

That’s not why you use them.

[Bill Davis] “But other than that, when I’m editing, I want to concentrate on content – not engineering.”

I find that when people say they prefer to concentrate on the “art” rather than the “craft”, they rarely can deliver on either.

[Gary Huff]

[Joseph W. Bourke] “I worked at a broadcast facility for fourteen years, and for at least 10 of those years the news was nothing but infotainment, and national stories produced by the parent company’s DC bureau.”

Having also worked in news, that’s how I consider it. Will people just ultimately end up bored with it knowing that it’s all for entertainment, and otherwise useless?

[Gary Huff]

First of all, no simple camcorder records in raw .AVI files…so you should give the make and model of the camcorder and what you originally did to generate these “raw” .AVI files (I assume you mean uncompressed?)

This is necessary because I feel that we’re about to introduce some generation loss in this footage.

[Gary Huff]

[Lance Bachelder] “There’s been a few morn’s I’ve awoke, clicked in and wondered if I was gonna be nuked myself, yet somehow I’m still here lol and looking forward to more heated debates with true peers :)”

Naw, you’ve been staying away from the Merlot recently, so you’re safe. 😉