[Herb Sevush]

[Bill Davis] “Ces’t la vie.

You win.”

I was as wrong as anyone back then. I thought FCP7 would not survive new OSX updates. I didn’t believe Apple would stick to their white paper promises. I didn’t believe that Apple would build a new Mac Pro.

My reason for the post was to advise against the habit of telling coders to stop coding for things that you don’t need … yet.

Software “bloat” is often software that you don’t fully use. I find After Effects to be bloated beyond comprehension, but I realize it’s mostly because I don’t use it much. I don’t think Aindreas or Walter finds it bloated, they probably have a list of features they wish were added. Same with editing software – it’s bloat till you need it, then it’s a feature.

On the other hand, I will take the “win.”

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Bill Davis] “Go back and re-read my writing about that 8 angle thing”

From the time capsule

[Herb Sevush] “Multi-Cam essentials

1) The ability to create a multi-clip with a minimum of 25 angles, no limit would be better. ”

Wow.

I’m gonna argue directly against this idea. I don’t want to turn my laptop into your idea of a multi-cam monster. At ALL.

To me, 25 angles is at LEAST 17 too many. – at least until Thunderbolt fully implements the all optical roadmap.

Anyway, I personally I don’t want the dev team to spend a minute coding in stuff that only a tiny fraction of the users will ever really need.

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/18336

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Simon Ubsdell] “So maybe the real decline is in directorial technique?”

Yes.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Bill Davis] “Simon is essentially arguing that a tool like X is a reflection of a trend where editing is becoming infected by a “too much cutting” and that’s somehow bad for content creation.”

No, Simon was talking about how “too much cutting” was affecting FEATURE FILM content. he couldn’t have been more specific. Nowhere, not once, did he take the focus off narrative films. You tried to make the thread about “content creation.”

[Bill Davis] “I also don’t want it to suffer from the type of feature bloat that lots of long time software can incorporate – after the tools that have concentrated for so long on being all things to every possible type of user that the entire interface grows bloated and complex. (my opinion only)”

Not that I haven’t beaten you over the head with this too much, but that was your exact reasoning why you didn’t want FCPX multicam to deal with more than 8 angles. It’s only “bloat” when your not using a particular feature, when you’re using that feature it’s a fantastic tool, so be careful what you wish for.

[Bill Davis] “I’ll likely feel less cranky after I get my next video delivered and can chill a little. It’s been a really, really busy month.”

That’s always a good thing to be complaining about.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[tony west] “We don’t see in cuts in real life, we see continuously.”

While I like long continuous takes where appropriate, I have to disagree with this statement. I’m not arguing that the scene you talked about in TD wasn’t fabulous, I just don’t think it was fabulous because it more closely resembled “real life.”

Look straight ahead at something for a few seconds, now turn your head and look to the left – you’ve just made a cut. Unless your consciously trying to notice it your mind eliminates the whip pan. The brain throws out all sorts of unimportant material in our daily lives and while we live moment to moment the information between the moments is often discarded. In a well edited scene that is aiming for a feeling of continuous time the audience is totally unaware of the cuts precisely because this kind of continuity is so similar to real life.

Long continuous moving takes build tension because your vision is restricted to a singular point of view – the audience becomes more present in the scene as they identify with the camera’s point of view and they become unnerved by what they are not seeing all around them. This is not particularly true of real life because you control where you want to look – when watching a long take you are prisoner to the camera’s point of view and the longer this lasts the more the tension can build when used for that purpose.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Bill Davis] ” I prefer to see it as preserving the threads relevance for the 90% of the editors reading this who will never do more than “discuss” editing a major feature film. I’m one of those guys”

So am I, but I don’t feel slighted by the discussion, nor do I feel the need to make everything about me.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Jeremy Garchow] ” but surely there has to be at least a few movies from the last few years that are ambitious (good?) even though they aren’t Kurosawa?”

Yes, but they are almost always low budget indie films. Beasts of the Southern Wild was a fantastic film. The World’s End is my other favorite film of the last few years. Neither would ever be made at a big studio nowadays.

[Jeremy Garchow] ” there had to have been some really sh*tty movies in the 40s, 50s, and 60s?”

Sturgeon’s Law stipulates that 90% of everything is shit and since movie production was at it’s height in those years it’s safe to say that more bad movies were made then than at any other time. More good movies as well. And the good movies were often popular and big budgeted items, something that is not true today. Vertigo, which today would have been released by Sony Classics and at a budget pretty close to what it cost to produce in the 50’s, was a big hit with a major movie star – go figure.

[Jeremy Garchow] “Less cuts doesn’t mean better?”

Absolutely not. The cut is what distinguishes movies as an art form – it creates time, it creates space, it creates meaning. It is to movies what silence is to music – and it needs to be employed with the care and consideration of it’s status.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Jeremy Garchow] “You’re comparing GOATs with average and citing a lack of ambition?”

It’s an old man’s privilege to decry the modern, especially when he’s right. If you want an example of a not so great you should look at “Unbreakable” by M. Night Shyamalan, definitely not a GOAT. The first half of the movie is composed almost entirely of beautifully staged one shot scenes. But that was so 2000.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

[Herb Sevush]

[Simon Ubsdell] “Coverage is the great enemy in my view. It makes every film feel like TV, because instead of giving you the freedom not to cut, it imposes cutting as an imperative.”

Agree totally. The equivalent in music production is where musicians are told to play without dynamics so that the final performance can be crafted in the mix.

One of my favorite John Ford anecdotes is about the wedding scene in “How Green Was My Valley” where you see Walter Pidgeon in the far background looking on as Maureen O’Hara drives off on her wedding day. Supposedly the DP asked Ford if he wanted to get a close up of Pidgeon and Ford said, “Lord no. If we shot it some idiot would probably use it.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fXKmM1-PVY

As a minor note I will mention that Ford used a wind machine to get the wedding veil to move that way at that spot – which is why they called him John Ford.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf

Some contents or functionalities here are not available due to your cookie preferences!

This happens because the functionality/content marked as “Google Youtube” uses cookies that you choosed to keep disabled. In order to view this content or use this functionality, please enable cookies: click here to open your cookie preferences.

[Herb Sevush]

Bill –

Simon’s opening post was clearly talking only about feature films. You are hijacking this thread, however unwittingly.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf