FCP in the workplace.

to original poster.

if that "post supervisor" is really a "friend of your's" you haven't helped him much with such a stupid point of view.

you completely missed the point.

it's not because all wannabes and untrained debutants tend to take the Fcp road that Fcp itself is the culprit.

by making that confusion you just acted thoughtless and frantic as ... they do !

your confusion is bad for workplace

I don't think I blamed FCP. I think what I meant was that because FCP is so accessible that it isn't a professionals only tool. It is a professional tool but not a professionals only tool and it's the producer's responsibility to hire the right people. It's a producer issue not a FCP issue.

> I think what I meant was that because FCP is so accessible that it isn't a professionals only
> tool. It is a professional tool

That is pretty much on the mark, I think.
When I work with musicians, seeing "keyboardist" on somebody's resume tends to lead to assumptions that the musician knows theory, composition, arrangement, and multiple styles of music, especially classical music. Seeing "guitarist" leads to none of those assumptions!

FCP is a much more computer-literate piece of software, with principles that are more modern and easy to understand. Avid was geared much more towards editors who have already gotten used to non-digital, cut-and-paste editing.

The smart producers also tend to realize that hiring good talent saves you money in the short run. Hiring a low-priced hack will lead to much larger problems, including lost money, time, confidence, and in some cases even technical catastrophes. It's the low-end projects where producers pinch pennies and hire the wrong people.


www.derekmok.com

>Seeing "guitarist" leads to none of those assumptions!

Frank Zappa would say "shut up and play yer guitar".



www.strypesinpost.com

derekmok Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> > I think what I meant was that because FCP is so
> accessible that it isn't a professionals only
> > tool. It is a professional tool
>
> That is pretty much on the mark, I think.

Derek: You are right.

> When I work with musicians, seeing "keyboardist"
> on somebody's resume tends to lead to assumptions
> that the musician knows theory, composition,
> arrangement, and multiple styles of music,
> especially classical music. Seeing "guitarist"
> leads to none of those assumptions!
>
> FCP is a much more computer-literate piece of
> software, with principles that are more modern and
> easy to understand. Avid was geared much more
> towards editors who have already gotten used to
> non-digital, cut-and-paste editing.
>
But with respect I don't know what you mean by editors that have already gotten used to cut and paste editing. I've never used apple c, apple v, apple x or shift v in avid ever in twelve years of editing although you can but it's considered a bit daft. In Avid it's more about lift, extract, insert, overwrite, trim, slip, slide etc ... To move things around the most common method is to option extract to clipboard and insert elsewhere with the yellow arrow which would be a cut and paste or to mark an area in the timeline and option drag from record window to source and reinsert with yellow arrow which would be a copy. But maybe I misunderstood your post.

In terms of computer literate I assume you mean that FCP adopts allot of it's architecture from other programs or mac based commands so if you are mac savvy you can get into FCP and start rocking right away as opposed to Avid that uses it's own language independent of anything else which means you have to learn that language first before you can jam?

> The smart producers also tend to realize that
> hiring good talent saves you money in the short
> run. Hiring a low-priced hack will lead to much
> larger problems, including lost money, time,
> confidence, and in some cases even technical
> catastrophes. It's the low-end projects where
> producers pinch pennies and hire the wrong people.

Absolutely correct but I find that this happens on larger budget gigs too. It's entirely possible to have unsavvy producers at the higher levels because often times people will "schmooze" themselves into positions they may not be qualified for.

> I don't know what you mean by editors that have already gotten used to cut and paste editing.

I meant editors who were actually splicing physical film.

> In terms of computer literate I assume you mean that FCP adopts allot of it's architecture from
> other programs or mac based commands

I meant more than that. There's a reason why FCP is easier to pick up for ordinary users, even users who have never touched a Macintosh before in their lives. FCP's basic concepts -- drag-and-drop, especially -- are much more tuned to modern computer programs. Better? Not necessarily, but easier to understand for non-film people.


www.derekmok.com

>I meant editors who were actually splicing physical film.

Tape to tape editing too. That seems to be where the 3 point edit system came from- source tape, record tape, and you add a timeline which is the tape you are recording to.

In FCP, a lot of users simply grab the clip from the browser and throw it into the timeline. It's an easier function to understand, not that I agree with the principles, but it depends on what you are cutting, and it may not make sense to have to go into the viewer and insert into the timeline (eg. logos, etc.)



www.strypesinpost.com

Oh I got ya now Derek.

Although I do dig FCP now my first turn off was the actual simplicity of it. It felt dumbed down. I felt intellectually insulted. The whole drag and drop, click and drag etc way of working seemed the way an animal would edit. It was like I went from Chopin vodka to moonshine. Especially when I am used to rocking out asymetrical trims on 8 channels of audio at once while on the phone and eating a bagel and hungover without a hitch but on a FCP job the guy in the next room would be using the track tool to move something forward to trim a shot five frames and then move it back. UHHHHGGGG. Dude!!! What has my super smart world turned into was the question.

But I do think that learning to "jam" is a process and the Avid is such a hard language to learn because it removes the "path of least resistance" like a library that removed all of the Judy Bloom and only left the Noam Chomsky, you gotta struggle but you'll be more sophisticated for the task when it becomes innate if it does which takes a long time.

That's how I thought then but I think now that there are very smart ways to work in FCP but for the newbies they have to get into the mindset of an editor and not just the mindset of a person who is editing. I think the mouse jockey drag and droppers, track toolers to trim folks eventually do develop more sophisticated workflows over time. I think if you work on tight schedules you have no choice.

Quote
derek
The smart producers also tend to realize that hiring good talent saves you money in the short run. Hiring a low-priced hack will lead to much larger problems, including lost money, time, confidence, and in some cases even technical catastrophes. It's the low-end projects where producers pinch pennies and hire the wrong people.

It not the budget nor the software that makes a project go wrong. Its the communication and lack of diligence that make its go wrong.

Big budget projects have a lot of hand-off in them. Therefore more chances for someone to miscommunicate and more chance for a catastrophe.

A small 5 man production house may have the GFX guy doing color or audio 25% of the time or a audio guy that films sometimes. Also, because they are small everyone knows everyone else's habits so the margin for that miscommunication is much smaller with a small crew than a large one.

With a smaller crew the pricing is much leaner not penny pinching but leaner. when someone ask me to cut someone else's footage i might have a rate of say 150 bucks an hour. Thats because i don't know what i am getting and i do not know what style it was filmed in or the motivation of the originating client.

But having hands in the entire process then i know i can shoot say, dvcpro 1080p24 and that i was there to see the shots, help plan them or have enough familiarity with the cam op to know what style i am getting. so i have less to worried and contemplate because my hands was in process.
So now i charge say 100 buck an hr. Over 30hrs saves the client 1500 dollars and the work is still the same quality.

I think its smart for companies to hire someone based on their style and previous body of work. Then let them choose the software that they use to create what they have seen and liked. At the same time i think its important for editors and creative professional to know more than 1 app for creating things.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

Boy did this thread suddenly take a dive.



www.strypesinpost.com

I think that this post should be retired.

The original post was referring to assistant editors.

The original point is that when it was all Avid there was a bit of a velvet rope around post and now it's all opened up which is a good thing but also can be a bad thing because allot of unqualified people are getting into the mix so producers need to know the difference between a fanboy and a professional.

Knowing software doesn't mean you know post and when it was all Avid the learning curve was so long that you learned post at the same rate you learned the software. Also you couldn't get access to an Avid outside of a professional environment so if you are going to open the floodgates you just need to make sure people are qualified before you bring them into the production or bring them in as a trainee and that producers know that knowing software doesn't mean you know post.

Let's retire this thread.

points have been made. All good. Thread closed

Michael Horton
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