John Christie
Forum Replies Created
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James
This was done by a colleague of mine in Vancouver who has been editing drama for many years. When the Stargate franchise ended, he had to put together a demo for the first time in many years.
And in doing so, he managed to poke fun at the whole demo reel thing.
Enjoy
https://www.youtube.com/user/justmefilm#p/u/12/GnrCGyrSMa0
Cheers
John
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Hi James
A sizzle reel is just a newer different way of saying demo reel. When we are pitching new shows to broadcasters we create a 2 to 3 minute sizzle reel, a few years ago we would have called it a demo reel or a pitch video.
From an employers perspective, we never judge an editor by their sizzle reels, they’re usually a reflection on the choice of music and the quality of the video of the video you’ve had a chance to work with. We always judge people’s editing talent by looking at full shows or segments that editors have cut.
Keep your reel short, and try and get the opportunity to edit some longer form projects.
Cheers
John Christie
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David
Apple could have saved themselves a lot of grief by calling the program what it really is: iMovie Pro. This would have given them the opportunity to test the waters before hand and get us all used to the ideas being presented. Instead, Apple decided to create all the drama by EOLing FCP 7 and Colour. Is the drama worth it? Well it’s been great fun to watch and read about. Apple decided to choose a new path that doesn’t meet my companies needs, therefore I will have to change editing applications.
Cheers
John C
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I run a facility with 16 edit suites. All of our editors are freelancers familiar with both Avid and FCP. None of the editors I’ve spoken to are interested in learning FCPX and I don’t blame them. We’ll be switching to Avid in the next year or two.
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[Walter Soyka] “I rely on both Macs (I’ve got 7) and PCs (I’ve got 3) in my shop, but the FCPX-or-not debate has made me realize that I’m now far more dependent on Adobe and Maxon (both cross-platform) than I am on Apple. I’m currently budgeting a small render farm, and I had always planned on going with Macs for operational simplicity. I’ve reversed course. I can get significantly more power for the same cost with PCs. That means I’m also considering PCs the next time I refresh my workstations (within a year).”
I agree, Walter. If you remove Final Cut Pro from the editing mix, all the either programs are cross-platform. I have 20 plus suites to think about upgrading in the next few years. I don’t want to switch platforms, but it’s something I have to consider. If Apple starts losing the high end studio market, they’re going to lose a lot of their prestige in the market place. The perception that creative professionals use Macs has helped drive a lot of Mac sales.
Cheers
John
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[Bill Davis] “Reminds me of just how smart PT Barnum was being when he said “I don’t care what you say about me, just spell my name right.””
Bill, PT also put up a sign saying “This way to the egress” to encourage people to quickly leave the exhibit tent hoping for something better outside. Kinda like Apple is encouraging us all to leave FCP.
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[Larry Watts] “So I say, give Apple some slack. They aren’t taking FCP away from us. “
Hi Larry
But the point is they DID take FCP away from us. FCP X is in no way a replacement for all the features that were in FCP Studio. Every previous version was an improvement on the past version. And upward compatibility was always guaranteed. It may someday gain back what it’s missing, but for now, our facility and our 20+ seats of FCP7 will not consider moving to FCP X.
Cheers
John
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[Liam Hall] “I think this a bad thing. It’s borne out of arrogance and elitism”
I don’t think it’s arrogance and elitism. Every industry has a language born out of necessity that’s required so you can get things done and explain what you’re doing. I don’t want to say a “list of edit decisions in a machine readable format” when I can just say EDL. Mechanics don’t say “a mechanism to vary engine torque to the wheels” when they can say transmission.
Cheers
John
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Glen
Best post I’ve seen on the topic. In Vancouver, most of the colleges and universities teach FCP. One film school taught Avid. I’m guessing the others will switch to Avid. So the future “elite” 5 to 10 years down the road will have no knowledge of FCP.
I loved your culture reference. We have a lot of post facilities near my office. I was walking back after lunch one day and overheard two guys saying “and the software reads R3D files based on the EDL” I chuckled to myself, wondering what percentage of the population could understand this little random snippet of conversation.
Cheers
John
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I run a department with 20 edit suites, 3 Xsans and 4 assistants stations. Like everyone else, I’ve been eagerly awaiting the arrival of a 64 bit version of FCP. But it has to be one that fits the need of my department TODAY. With every new release of FCP in the past, we’d look at it, go ooh and ahh at the new features and then wait a few weeks before upgrading to make sure there were no serious bugs. But we always knew we could open our old projects and we knew we could rely on it for things like machine control, proper colour space with third party cards, OMF, EDL etc, etc.
So when Apple announced FCP-X and we all looked at, there was still some ooh-ing and awe-ing. But all the tools we rely on in our business were gone. Apple has essentially said goodbye to the high end pro market.
You can talk all you like about new editing paradigms and relational databases, but if I can’t get a show delivered onto HDcam tape, or share multiple projects across 20 edit suites, then I’m not even going to look at it.
I’ve never seen a new version of ANY software come out that doesn’t offer a migration path from the old software. Sure, maybe not everything translates 100% from FCP2 to FCP7, but I did open a consolidated project from FCP2 and it opened just fine in FCP7, except for a few speed change shots I had to rebuild.
That doesn’t mean I’m going to jump ship to Avid today or tomorrow. Maybe Apple will add some of what they’ve removed back into FCP-X, but I can’t wait around for ever. And the deafening silence from Apple doesn’t add to my comfort level with them.
A lot has been said about volume licensing, but in Canada, Apple never sold volume licenses to companies like ours. So we can’t add any more FCP7 systems.
We’ve set a two year deadline to move to another platform. Most likely Avid, but you never know. Two years is a long time in the computer world.
After yesterdays financial announcements, it’s become clear that iOS, iPhones and iPads are the new Apple. Mac sales were only 18% of the gross. And the release of FCP-X has announced to the world that Apple doesn’t want to be at the top of the pro-market anymore.
Cheers
John C