Farcical techno-debates over 'professional quality'
The are times when the cinema and broadcast industries are truly absurd; when the people who work within these fields, and the institutions they work within, display attitudes and perspectives that are truly obnoxious.
The great and never ending debate that draws us all in with remarkable regularity is that over Quality, Image Fidelity, what is and is not acceptable, what is and is not viable for professional production.
This debate masquerades as being technical, of being concerned with scientific and mathematical detail, but in truth it is almost never anything to do with technology. The ever running quality debate that manifests as 420 vs 422, intra vs longGOP, film vs digital is nothing more than a thin veneer over a debate that is really cultural and psychological.
The debate that positions some cinema technologies as unworthy and others as superior is actually about those individuals and institutions expounding these distinctions to justify their own choices, their own decisions about their own work. It's techno-protectionism , an artificial premise to protect the status quo.
I find it difficult to see these ever present arbitrary distinctions between 'professional' and 'consumer' cinematic technologies as anything more than self-justification.
Much contemporary commercial advertising is built on the premise of justification rather than promotion. Apple is good example - ads such as the infamous 'I'm a Mac' are far more about making existing Mac owners feel superior and justified in their choice than they are about convincing non Mac owners to jump ship. Prestige car manufacturers run a similar game, advertising to exiting owners to build brand loyalty as much if not more so than to attract new customers. More Public Relations than Advertising.
This notion taps into the psychological state humans fall into in self-validating their 'life' choices as consumers. Buy 'x' brand of car and all of a sudden you will see that brand of car everywhere. Buy 'x' brand of TV and your eye is drawn to every shop window displaying TV's to see if they have 'yours'. And its this last idea of 'yours' that is so crucial to advertising and brand building - personal investment.
This, it seems to me, is exactly where many of these farcical techno-debates of quality or professional vs consumer, arise.
Case in point...? HDV. Fact: currently the BBC considers HDV marginal for broadcast purpose. Marginal?
Below are stills from the very successful Australian independent feature film GABRIEL. Shot for a paltry $150,000 on a JVC101 HDV camera at 720p.
Marginal for broadcast? You have got to be f%#king kidding me? Gabriel is a film that looks absolutely fantastic, well lit, well shot, a great visual feel, high in visual detail and long on range in the image between light and dark. And I dont believe there is anyone other than a cinematographer who could differentiate any difference between the visuals of this film and anything 1080, 2k or 422 colour space. Indeed it would only be filmmaking professionals who would care.
So why the still ongoing bitchin' and moanin' about HDV inadequacies, motion artifacts, - complaints that now extend to XDCAMEX...? How can the complaints possibly be considered legitimate when you see a 720 long GOP 420 image look This Good, this detailed, this rich?
Is it really technical quality distinction? Or is it much more about personal validation and self justification? Is it more likely about the desperate attempt from those who feel threatened by a $150,000 feature that looks comparable as anything shot on equipment far more expensive.
Sometimes I find it hard to think beyond the idea that there's a whole lot of filmmakers in the world with small-penis syndrome - those who feel their professional manhood so under threat they need to draw a hard and arbitrary line in the sand to make themselves feel secure as big-dicked professionals....
At the recent Belgrade film festival an attempt was made to draw a line in the sand for filmmakers; a line that attempted to declare No More to shallow, puerile, pointless cinema and foster a focus on quality engagement with cinema as an artform for the human experience.
The document entitled the Belgrade Manifesto (which can be read here) opens with the declaration:
There is a crisis in cinema today, a deep malaise, a feeling of artistic exhaustion, of pointlessness. The evolution of cinematic language that is so vital to the continued well-being and relevance of the medium has pretty much come to a standstill. Good films are getting fewer, the informed and knowledgeable audience that is so important for their success has shrunk. The older generation don't go to the cinema any more because so many films are for young people, and the young people today have little idea of cinema's capacity for depth, excitement and complexity. The critics, who should be guiding and educating that audience, are mostly inadequate, and the distribution structures no longer work.
Its hard not to read such a document without seeing comparison to Dogme95, the Manifesto of Chastity in Filmmaking that began in Denmark and stamped its place in cinema history across the world. Dogme95 reads:
DOGME 95 is a rescue action! In 1960 enough was enough! The movie was dead and called for resurrection. The goal was correct but the means were not! The new wave proved to be a ripple that washed ashore and turned to muck. Slogans of individualism and freedom created works for a while, but no changes. The wave was up for grabs, like the directors themselves. The wave was never stronger than the men behind it. The anti-bourgeois cinema itself became bourgeois, because the foundations upon which its theories were based was the bourgeois perception of art. The auteur concept was bourgeois romanticism from the very start and thereby ... false! To DOGME 95 cinema is not individual!
"I swear to submit to the following set of rules drawn up and confirmed by DOGME 95: 1. Shooting must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in (if a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found). 2. The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa. (Music must not be used unless it occurs where the scene is being shot). 3. The camera must be hand-held. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted. (The film must not take place where the camera is standing; shooting must take place where the film takes place). 4. The film must be in colour. Special lighting is not acceptable. (If there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single lamp be attached to the camera). 5. Optical work and filters are forbidden. 6. The film must not contain superficial action. (Murders, weapons, etc. must not occur.) 7. Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden. (That is to say that the film takes place here and now.) 8. Genre movies are not acceptable. 9. The film format must be Academy 35 mm. 10. The director must not be credited. Furthermore I swear as a director to refrain from personal taste! I am no longer an artist. I swear to refrain from creating a "work", as I regard the instant as more important than the whole. My supreme goal is to force the truth out of my characters and settings. I swear to do so by all the means available and at the cost of any good taste and any aesthetic considerations. Thus I make my VOW OF CHASTITY."
There no doubt that the creators of the Belgrade manifesto would have been looking and hoping for some of the success of Dogme95 but I have my doubts that this act of defiance will make anything more than an ignored ripple in world cinema.
Dogme95, defiant though it was, had a good dose of humour, self-deprecation, dare I say fun about it. You only have to watch any of the wildly successful Dogme films such as Mifune and The Idiots to see the exuberance for cinema pop right out from the screen. Dogme95 in many ways didnt actually take itself that seriously. It was framework and a creative ideology rather than a socio-political one. And its that which I fear fails the Belgrade Manifesto.
No one deplores Hollywood excess more than I; no one finds shallow, mindless, lowest common denominator Hollywood filmmaking more distasteful and infuriating than I do. But its hard not to read the verbose prose of the Belgrade Manifesto as anything more than self-indulgent, pompous bitchin and moanin.
The story is given exaggerated importance; the study of its crude mechanics has become an industry in itself with consultants and experts in every financing agency and production house, part of an ever growing and unproductive bureaucracy whose purpose is to sniff out the trends and fads of the day and to select and develop (and distort) productions in accordance with those predictions.
Whilst Id be first to deplore the industry of self-help, instant success, screenwriting formulas (something I wrote about here on DigitalBasin after presenting at the Los Angeles Screenwriters Conference) the declarations that The story is given exaggerated importance and that Nobody pays attention to form, without which, as our predecessors understood, nothing worthwhile can possibly develop seems to me to be exertion towards Style over Substance, something I would have thought the authors of the Belgrade Manifesto would be seeking to fight against.
I find it hard to read the Belgrade Manifesto and Not picture a whole bunch of filmmakers (no-doubt wearing black and sporting designer eye-ware) who cant find the success they believe they deserve, gathered together and looking to find someone to blame for their un-success. Complaining that theres too much focus on story? and we need more focus on Form? Youve got to be kidding me! Thats exactly the problem with the worst of Hollywood all glitz and no guts; all effects and no engaging narrative.
The Manifesto singles out cinematic language as failing to move forward but I simply do not think this argument can be sustained; evidently the authors dont get out much or view very widely. The range of cinema craft techniques that deliver new language constructs for cinematic meaning has never been more diverse. If you were to watch only banal feature films you could be forgiven for buying into this perspective. But look a little wider than the narrow confines of the multiplex to the flood great TV drama over the past 8 years, computer gaming, online video, hybrid documentary, interactive forms, music videos, motion graphics, media art these are not the fringes of cinematic language, this is the mainstream. The virtual camera, multiple layers, blended imagery, 3D environments, motion capture control, motion tracking, low-fi cameras, handheld devices, DV and HDV; the shift in cinema language driven by new technologies has never, ever, been more dynamic. The moving can do things now that it has never been able to do before; the boundaries of cinema language have never been more pushed than they are now perhaps not in mainstream every day move theatres but Everywhere else. If youve missed it then youre eyes havent been open.
Where Dogme95 was simply about crafting a Point of Difference, a way to make films unlike that which dominated cinematic form, the Belgrade Manifesto seems little more than a public whinge session about how hard it is to be an artist. I feel like shouting Shut up and go make a film!
Its only at the end that the Belgrade Manifesto I think finds any traction of tangible and proactive energy:
it is now possible, because of the huge reduction in costs, to bypass existing funding channels and make high quality films WITHOUT PERMISSION. In addition, we need to adapt and develop those models of distribution and exhibition that are already being pioneered and begin to identify new sources of minimal funding. It is time to take responsibility for our own future and establish a committed, interactive community that can share ideas and work together to find viable ways to make and show our films and build audiences that will want to see them.
I do love the line make high quality films without permission yes indeed! That is what the digital age demands we do. I fear that if the authors of the Belgrade Manifesto put as much energy into making the films they want to see as they did into the writing and publicising of the Manifesto they may have achieved more credibility.
The fact that the Belgrade Manifesto has less than 70 signatures world wide saids perhaps Im not alone in feeling this way.
The software industry is shoe-horned into a mould that it just doesnt fit. Software is unlike any other 'product' and yet software developers have trundled along for decades selling software like they'd sell shoes. Pay your money get a box - software as tangible product.... Only there's a catch, printed manuals aside software ISNT a tangible product, its not something you can hold. Its not a physical thing. Its not a commodity. The irony is that despite the fact that its sold like a commodity it doesnt legally fit any of the ownership traits of a commodity. You dont own the software when you buy it, you have licence to USE it with permissions and restrictions. Give with one hand take with the other. Sold like a commodity but without any of the benefits of Ownership that belong to every other Commodity.
The fact that because you only own a licence to us the software you cant legally modify it, alter it, change it, apply it in different ways and contexts is the equivalent of buying a Toyota and wanting to paint it green and Toyota suing you if you do because it breaches the Licence you purchased.
The truth is that software is not a commodity and should never have been bought sold as if it was. A significant proportion of the worlds software developers are starting to see the light in this regard and hence we have the rise in open-source solutions or hybrid, service-based economic models. Software more readily fits the mould of being a Service tool rather than a Product Commodity and it seems that creative software giant Adobe have begun to see the light in this regard.
Adobe are now offering Creative Suite3 Design Premium (the bundle that includes Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Flash and Dreamweaver) as a Subscription service. No big upfront commodity product fee but rather a software service you subscribe to by way of annual or monthly fees.
Its a very bold and forward thinking step form the Adobe monolith that is obviously serving as a test case to ultimately be rolled out across their product line. In considering the ramifications outside of economics I cant help but see big wins for users.
The first is that youre only paying for what you need when you need it. Heading into post production for a 3-month period; subscribe to get Premiere, After Effects and Audition. Got a 6month gig thats going to need Flash, subscribe only for that period, dont pay for software youre not using.
Second, youre always up to date with the latest version, no more saving up the big outlay for a new version or being a version behind. Subscription would include always being the latest version without the upfront outlay.
Third, much more regular updating and improvements. Under a subscription based development model developers could be making changes, additions and fixes constantly to the core application without having to roll out a huge release or a new version every 2 years.
This, I believe, is the beginning of the avalanche. From this point forward over the next 5 years were going to see the Product/Commodity structure of current software sales dissolve to a much more flexible, efficient and adaptable Subscription/Service based model. Pay for what you need, when you need it, only for as long as you need it.
Now there's headlines to grab you attention.... Could it be true? It was a rumour masqurading as informed opinion that floated my way recently. Its not a new idea. Over the past 5 years I have heard all manner of Apple take-over / sell-off rumours. - Apple being bought by Sony - Apple breaking into two - software and harware - Apple being bought by Dell - Apple moving out of selling computers all-together And of course this isnt the first time the Apple Buying Adobe boat has been floated.
An argument could be made for all of the above - perhaps not a strong or water-tight case, but a case none the less. But Apple buying Adobe? My repsonse. Not bloody likely.
Perhpas what is more likely is that which Bob Cringley floated in his weekly column. That Apple would sell off it's ProApps - FCP, DVDSP, Logic, Motion, Aperture. Apparently Apple have been 'shopping around' for a buyer of late. is there merit to the idea?
Selling off Pro Apps has been on the cards for a long time - a rumour with more probability than most. The reasoning is simple economics - Apple is a
public company and share holders are only interested in what makes big
money. I-phone's i-pods, i-tunes and now, to a growing extent, laptops
make big money. ProApps do not. The running joke for many years has been that
a MAC is a giant dongle for ProApps. :)
If ProApps were availible cross platform would we all bother paying twice as much for a MacPro as for a custom build PC of the extact same components that come form the eact same assembly lines (Intel, Western Digital, nVidia etc)? Sure many love the neat lovely package that is the Mac, its OS and ProApps but in the end its the software not the operating system that the digital media producer has to deal with day to day - if you could run that same software on the same hardware at half the cost could it be considered anything but a no-bainer? It would for a significant part of the digital creative community - perhaps not the diehards but its not the diehards that make business finacial decsions for a production company or a post-house.
That aside, sooner or later the Apple shareholders start asking questions about why their
company is pouring big resources into products that are a VERY small part
of its overall business and a very small share of its income generation.
Selling ProApps off to a company focused on a more dedicated creative market makes a
lot of sense. Apple plays in a big pond and ProApps dont sell in big pond volume like I-phones and I-pods do. ProApps dont make sense for a company focused on the big public pond. But for a dedicated company who only have to compete in a small pond of creative fish, ProApps make a lot of sense.
In any such sell-off Apple of course would retain a share; perhaps even a majority share. that would be the smart move; hive it of to a company who a more singularly focused, keep a big finger in the pie to ensure that the Mac remains the Dongle for ProApps. best of both worlds, reap the same benefits as they crrently do without the development of finacial burden for keeping ProApps competitive.
We live in a very different world; different from that just a few decades ago. There are lots of things that make it different and many of them are focused on technology. But technology is just the surface manifestation of culture and if you want to udnerstand the real change we have to look at the cultural shift.
The computer was made. And then it was made small. Then it was made cheap and cheap made it accessible. So now we all have computers (and by 'we' I mean the over-privilidged western world as there is a very lareg proportion of the world's population that is yet to make or recieve a phone call) Those computers are in effect fast moving calculators designed to 1 and only 1 thing - make copies.
DIGITAL is Zeros and Ones, binary code; this is what it is but this doesnt really tell us about the digital culture. What computers do is use Digital Binary to copy thing, to make infinate perfect copies, copies that can be moved, manipulated and modfied. This is what Computers are and this is what they do.
And its at this point that we hit a very big problem, the sort of problem that draws analogies with elephants sitting in corners. We live in a post industrial revolution society built on the idea of ownership. Everything about our legal and social structures is built on the premise of ownership. Descreet and indivudal ownership and control over 'things'.
Thats all well and good and worked quite well until the computer become small, cheap and ubiquitous with its untold ability to copy. The prevailing culture of 'ownership' sort to do what it had always done, sell the ownership of 'things'. So this culture sold Computers and because there was a great desire to sell lots of computers the great engines of marketing and salesmanship went into overdrive and we were all duely convinved that we MUST GET OURSELVES A DIGITAL LIFESTYLE AND GET IT NOW.... So we did.
The problem is that those selling the 'digital lifestyles' and employing the methodologies of ownership to sell this 'thing' negelcted to realise the cultural implications of what it was they were selling..... The idea of selling a 'thing' relies on owning the thing and owning the thing' is really about controlling the 'thing'. But the whole system falls in a hole when the 'thing' you are selling has a sole purpose of infinately and perfectly copying and distributing other things that you may other wish to own/control/sell.
They told us we had to have the computer and the digital lifestyle but now they seem terribly upset when the thing they sold us is put to use doing exactly what it is designed for - copy, alter and distribute - three things that directly undermine the very deffintion of ownership and control...
What a strange world we live in....
But the world doesnt stop, it simply changes culture and it's in this light that this article from WIRED entitled 'FREE! Why $0.00 is the Future of Business" presents an insight into the new cultural directions of how we think about economics, ownership, capaitalism in light of this much changed world.
The Culture of Editors - is FCP to blame for medicority?
Accusations have been leveled at contemporary industry editing culture by Studio Daily writer Scott Simmons. In this detailed micro-essay the charge is leveled that there is a prevailing culture of editing software 'button pushers' rather than informed and knowledgeable post production technical artists. And at heart of this issue, according to the article, is Final Cut Pro and the commoditization that FCP brought to the industry.
The article focuses on the culture of editing that goes along with FCP and the authors assertion that FCP editors are all to often severely lacking in real technical post production knowledge. That they know where the buttons are but have little underlying knowledge of workflow.
Scott builds much of his argument around the process of online/offline editing and that FCP Editors often do not have any understanding or comprehension of this process. Scott finds this problematic, I find it an obvious and necessary evolution in editing; one that is inevitable, right and proper. Online/Offline is an archaic legacy process from a time when computers were not powerful to edit online; no more no less. In the 20th century (short of 2k and 4k digital cinema for the time being at least) there simply is no valid reason to offline. When a fast laptop can online HDV and a well built, sub $15k system can online full raster HD and uncompressed why the hell would you bother with an online ?
Now before the old-school start ranting and raving with their off-line ire, let me be clear that the real source I think of many editors concern over the loss of an Online/Offline. Its really not about any apparent lac of low-res to high res conversion but more conceptually about missing that step from Assembly to Polish; from Construction to Finishing, that comes from a 2-step process.
But in truth Id argue the solution is not hang on with clawing fingernails to an archaic and outmoded online/offline process but rather to simply invoke a more concerted approach to editing workflow, one that values the art of finishing, management, project clarity. And its at this point that I find myself all too readily nodding in agreement with Scott albeit with perhaps with a different perspective on the root cause.
I don't believe that the popular take up of a creative process (by proxy of the accessibility of the tools) leads to a mass of low creativity and mediocrity. Quite the opposite; more artists means more chance for the cream to rise from the milk, more chance for the Mozarts to emerge. History confirms this argument. From the dark ages there were few artists an little access to art resulting in a cultural void. To the Renaissance where every man and their dog was an artist and subsequently an art explosion with the glorious pinnacles of Michelangelo and Leonardo DiVinci rising from the artistic mass. So I don't believe the commoditization of editing that FCP heralds is of itself the source of these issues of 'Button Pusher' culture. Rather I would contend that the issue might actually be Apple's approach to software design and FCP's own internal logic.
At the very heart of Apple's approach to software is an 'ease of use' mantra. On the surface this would seem no bad thing, until however the search for maximum ease of use becomes an 'at all costs' pursuit. My biggest criticism of Apple's approach to software is that it seems to continually and persistently seek to hide underlying processes from the user. The thinking being that by hiding away core technical process the experience for the user is made easier. A tool like I-Movie is designed for the Everyman but the problematic irony (from a pedagogical perspective at least) is that its possible to edit with I-Movie for years and Never actually understand what is happening to your video, never actually engage with the underlying process. This may be fine for Mums and Dads users but is highly problematic for those with greater expectations. Final Cut Pro might seem a big step from i-Movie but there is in fact a whole lot of the I-Movie mentality carried over into FCP.
FCP is an editing system that hides a great many of the core elements of production, presents a timeline focused interface that tucks away in hidden and mal-named corners those key items needed to under stand the post production process; sequence settings, codec, format, scratch disks and so on. An install of FCP will see it default to a position of not asking what sequence settings the user needs but simply assuming or guessing.
As someone who teaches editing and post production on a daily basis I'm often appalled when I see young editors who know how to push clips around but have no idea what 'sequence settings' are or what a codec is or what YUV colour space represents. All these are things that FCP largely hides. It quite possible to install FCP and start moving clips around immediately but this is done at the expense of a real understanding of what the NLE is and how it works because FCP deliberately avoids prompting the user to answer or respond to these technical elements required for the process. FCP defaults to guessing what you want or choosing for you the specifications you need and this effort at ease of use hamstrings the user for gaining real knowledge and understanding.
FCP does, to some significant degree, take the position that you're a more creative focused editor for not having to be directly responsible for technical elements. I would argue that such an editor is simply an incompetent one. Cinema IS technology, cinema IS a technical construct. Cinema IS a special effect. All the creativity in the world is for nothing if you can't export your film correctly or manage its workflow in an efficient and technically correct way. I'm actually not the slightest bit surprised when I meet FCP editors who don't under Pixel Aspect Ratio or Compression, Lossy and Lossless formats, EDLs or Timecode. Its not there fault, FCP is designed this way.
My intention with this line of thought is not to pick on FCP, other tools share similar guilt of placing the mask of 'ease of use' over real competency (aka style over substance). Rather my point is to pull out what I see as the true great failing of the industry over the past 10 years, the issue that leads to all the problems Scott points to but in a broader context. We have all to often been happy to accept 'software brand proficiency' as a substitute for real creative-technical knowledge.
This is a line of argument I have kicked around many times before in the Manifesto on Filmmaking Education and here on DigitalBasin. One of the great tragedies of media making education over the past decade has been the supplanting of real knowledge, skills and core competencies with software specific, brand allied pseudo-skills. An editor, skilled and knowledgeable in the craft, technology and artistry of editing as a process, should be more than capable of sitting down in front of any editing system, any editing tool, and be able to produce functional quality work. A carpenter is not rendered useless by changing to a different type of circular saw..!
Sadly however we are in an era where instead of demanding this universality as a bench mark from creative artisans we accept the corporate-driven brand allegiance of software specific skills. Software and technology Users rather than real Technical Creators. Any institution that teaches software specific functions above, or worse, in place of core processes is fundamentally dis-empowering their students and directly damaging the broader creative industry, making it slavishly adherent to corporate marketing directions rather than the needs and skill demands of production.
Furthermore, any cinematic education that provides only one type, one brand, one form of tool or system of production in exclusivity rather than providing options and diversity of tools to students - so that they might find the right tool that suits them and their internal methodology of working - is detrimentally hobbling those students. These students are rendered under-skilled servants of a software company rather than comprehensively skilled artists and craftspersons with abilities and understandings beyond the tools. Each and every software tool for creative cinematic production carries with it an internally logical philosophy, a conceptual mode of perceiving the creative production process instilled on inception into the tool by those who made it and the direct imperatives of the corporation for which it was made. Thus a creative media maker in choosing a particular tool for production is by default 'buying into' a tacit, if not proactive, acceptance of that tool's philosophical approach. Their work with that tool is subsequently governed, influenced and shaped by that philosophy.
If a young editor is restrictively indoctrinated into a particular tool (and its respective philosophy), without wider consideration of a personal creative, conceptual, technical and philosophical approach, then their work will be dictatorially shaped by the tool itself rather than by their own creative imperatives. The tool will dictate what can and cant be done and how it will be done rather than the creator seeking out these pathways to suit themselves and the needs of the project.
Whilst standard technical formats provide functional benchmarks and uniformity, the idea that there are Industry Standard creative tools is fundamentally abhorrent. There is NO SUCH THING AS AN 'INDUSTRY STANDARD' creative tool. The very concept is anti-creative. It is a prescribing that there is only one way to work and that other techno-creative approaches are of lesser value or unacceptable. It implies that a work is only acceptable if made with a particular type of technology and this is absurdly destructive and the very concept must be done away. We must ensure cinematic producers are not conforming creative vision to needs of the tool but seeking the tool to extol the creative needs of the production.
The only true measure of intelligence and knowledge is the ability to learn, acquire and apply new skills and knowledge. Thus an 'editor' whose comprehension of editing process, technique and technology has been built solely through the confined prism of one particular tool's presented philosophical paradigm is fundamentally weak; dis-empowered and at the mercy the ever changing whims of software developers rather than a servant of the creative process where by the tools are means to an ends.
So its here that we can return to where we began. The issues Scott raises I believe are highly valid. The number of Editors has risen but the knowledge-base is now spread very thin. The fault is cultural certainly but I believe, as does Scott, that culture has been driven by the software tools themselves and the philosophical leanings they inherently hold.
The problem is much bigger than just one particular software editing tool and its much broader than the simple supplanting of traditional Online/Offline process; the problem stems from a devaluing of knowledge and a near slavish adherent faith in corporate marketing rather than independent skill and knowledge.
The sooner our educational institutions and services start focusing on Editing Process and Technology rather than Software Specific Button Pushing the sooner we can circumvent the culture of mediocrity.
Avid's 'New Thinking' isnt 'new' to anyone but themselves.
The news that Avid were discontinuing their Xpress Pro line came as a surprise to noone. Consolidation of their absurdly varied and disjointed product line was a no-brainer business decision that should have been made a long time ago.
Similarly the big price drop for the remaining Media Composer (software only) system was also written on the wall for some time. Economic physics dictates that offering a product on the market that does Nothing more than any of the other players on the field, but charging twice as much for it, is never going to do well. Consumers are often stupid but theyre not THAT stupid. The new breed of media-makers have been voting with their feet away from Avid for the better part of a decade, the price point obviously wasnt helping.
That Avid has massively cut the academic price for Media Composer is also a move that can hardly be seen as bold. Software developers have been using the drug-dealers strategy of get em hooked while their young and theyll buy from you for life for (literally) decades. Apple, Adobe, Sony have all been working the education market hard fro many years and have reaped the benefits (to Avids detriment) as a result.
That Avid have launched a new online support portal for Avid users that utilizes a peer/user ranking system to rate the usefulness of posts and tutorials is positively laughable for its lack of vision. Where have you been Avid? The rest of the digital production world has been fully engaged developer-sponsored, on-line peer-exchange for years. Welcome to the 21st century, we hope you enjoy your stay.
This set of changes have been termed by the geniuses at Avid HQ as New Thinking
With a startling lack of newness the only people who will find anything New in this 'New Thinking' are existing Avid users living in the Avid silo who havnt yet peered over the bubble's edge to see the brave new world outside of the cloistered Avid mentality.
The roots of traditional media run deep and thus the tree above ground is very bloody difficult to knock over.
TV broadcast, theatrical release, the film festival circuit - these are the standards by which the cinema maker (of what ever form or mode) turns to as the means to reach an audience. This structure is as much cultural as it is industrial, technological or financial. For the indie filmmaker the process of an audience 'seeing' a work via these three - TV, cinema or festival - is fundamentally a process of legitimization; of being legitimized as a creative professional. Other forms of distribution such as online, whilst much lauded for their growing importance, fail (in the minds of many) to legitimize either the maker or the work.
This same pattern can likewise be seen in professional writing and publishing. Online journalism is a major part of any professional writers income and professional practice and yet no writer would argue that an article 'going live' has anywhere the personal satisfaction or professional standing as those lovely printed characters on paper in newsprint or magazine or book.
It seems that in both these cases very often the culture of perception is rooted down irrespective of the audience reach (which it is safe to assume is a primary driver for filmmakers and writers alike; to have the work seen/read by as many as possible).
In this regard I can take my own work as an example. As a writer and journalist I have written near on 300 published essays, articles and reviews as well as three books and authored content for a number of resource websites. All this is professionally paid work and a significant part of my income. (This is also not including the 4 posts per week here on Digital Basin)
Now, the ratio of online content to print content of this body of work over the past 10 years is roughly 65:35- 65% online, 35% print. And this ratio is not even close to indicative of the ratio of readers where the number of people who've read my stuff online massively eclipses the number who've bought my books or flicked through my printed magazine articles with geographically limited circulations (excess copies of my books prop up more than a couple of dusty tables).
And yet despite this massively outweighed ratio of readers for my online writing to my print writing, what is it that sits at the top of my CV? It aint the online articles...! Its the books and magazines despite the fact that they are read by little more than 4 guys and an over eager pet dog. It is the books and print magazines that gather weight on the CV far more than copious online articles that gather a 1000 readers a day.
In the same vein we can see film and video projects. Broadcast and theatrical screenings have the legitimizing power but my recent online documentary series, Motion Sketches, has garnered more than 10,000 viewers and its only 3 episodes in. There is no documentary film festival in the world that would let such a small, tiny budget production, reach 10,000 viewers (and growing daily).
And yet despite this numerical truth there is still the cultural perceptions that get in the way; a perverse fact that a film at a festival seen by a few hundred people carries more 'weight of legitimacy' than 10,000 viewers online.
The old media tree stands with great indignation but its status is no longer born of audience reach, but rather simply of legacy and historical association. But, all that said, the times they are a changing and the observations of this article now, in 2008, will not be true in a mere few years from now.
If you haven't seen Motion Sketches you can join the 10,000 here with the latest episode, number 3: Aural Architecture.
You can also view Eps 1 and 2. Eps 4 and 5 are in production right now. Stay tuned.
For many years the concept of developing a technical workflow process for a project was a largely irrelevant idea as the means of constructing a movie varied not at all.
In traditional celluloid the processes of work-prints, telecines, edls and answer-prints remained largely unaltered from project to project. Likewise in video; a consistent workflow process regardless of size or nature of the project.
But amoung the myriad of changes that have come with the digital age one of the most significant and challenging is the notion workflow options and multiple possible solutions.
Weaving together separate elements of software tools, codecs, formats and resolutions the craft of constructing a workflow to meet the specific needs of production in a dedicated way is a remarkably new concept.
Moreover the development of a project-specific workflow is essentially a process of defining aims, priorities, biases and hierarchies and thus is ultimately about deciding and facilitating creative direction and focus. The same project with a different workflow, using different tools and prioritizing particular areas over others might well turn out a very different film irrespective of writing, direction and performance. Colour grading, compositing, motion graphics, 3D, sound mixing, encoding, delivery medium - all processes directly dictated by workflow - have profound impact on the aesthetics of a work.
It's in this light that an article such as this from Studio Daily that explores the development of a dedicated workflow for working with the RED camera is so interesting.
Even more so is the notion that this workflow is just one of many possible solutions that will quickly evolve over coming years
This is not a 'best of' list or any kind of award, but rather a list of the most influential tools of 2007.
I've long held the belief that the broad industry and community of
media creators need to be proactive and dynamic in their criticism of
creative software and hardware developers. Such developers become
complacent and self-serving when their users are not clamouring for
'better' and demanding "more."
Every developer strives for the
coveted 'brand loyalty' but such loyalty is nothing more than the
deliberate crafting of user ignorance to ensure that customers
aren't tempted to jump ship to a competing product when the product
developers drop the ball. Brand Loyalty is nothing but a corporate
directed insurance policy design to keep users singing the product's
praises even when the product is ill deserving of praise.
Brand
Loyalty does the industry no good; it does the tools we use no good.
Brand Loyalty begets Blithe Acceptance and that hamstrings innovation
and creative possibility. So its from this perspective that I take a
very serious approach to reviewing creative tools and make no bones
about being highly critical of almost all the major developers. Now,
with that said, one must also take the 'Credit where Credit is Due'
approach to ensure that when developers do good, they continue to do
good.
Robert Rodriguez has long championed the 'Rebel' culture of indie film production and much of this approach is embodied in his much lauded 10 minute film school videos. Inherent in this is the mantra of Film Is Dead and its this idea much expanded on here in his "Film is Dead: an evening with Robert Rodriguez".
It's easy to become complacent about the impact of technology and new communication landscape of open exchange forged by the Internet. A video interview with Peter Horrocks Head of Multimedia News at the BBC is one thing... That same interview conducted by 8 independent media professionals from all parts of the globe as an online interactive Vlog represents something else all together.
The project is the brainchild of seminal UK video journalist David Dunkley Gyimah And presents a broad and eclectic set of questions that probe Peter Horrocks for his perspective on the changing face of news, current affairs and the culture of digital exchange.
I had the pleasure of taking part in this global vlog project and Peter Horrock's answers show a tremendous amount of forward thinking which has in the past been lacking in the major media institutions.
It feels like a hot new topic - the demise of Avid amid corporate shuffling and cryptic press releases - but the truth is that the demise, and the discussion of the demise, began a long time ago....
Avid was built to replace tape-to-tape and flatbed editing. And this is indeed what it did. At the time Avid were smart, smarter than their competitors and predecessors such as Quantel, they designed a paradigm for digital post-production that mimicked, emulated and utilised the language, nomenclature and paradigm of analogue editing. The result was that old-salt editors who had slaved their lives over analogue systems, could make the step to the digital landscape very easily. The great cleverness of Avid was to bridge the digital divide at the narrowest and most accessible point. It worked and they were greatly successful.
But the same successful approach was their undoing and the writing has been on the wall since the gap was bridged. The analogue paradigms Avid emulated in the digital, its workflow built on hardware and stoic linear assembly (despite being technically a non-linear tool), was a system constructed around how editing Was, how editing Had Been and not what editing Could and Would be. The Avid interface, the Avid mentality, is one born out of keeping traditional editors relaxed and comfortable, designed around ensuring traditional broadcasters felt secure in their major financial outlay on hardware.
But every year since Avid's inception there have been less traditional editors to keep relaxed and comfortable. Every year there were new editors to take their place. Editors who were Digital Natives, not Digital Immigrants. Editors for whom the analogue language, the tape-to-tape paradigm, the hardware base, the stoic mechanics, made no sense - seemed simply old, archaic, inflexible and even irrational. The Digital Native editor whose life centres around a laptop so powerful they barely understand the idea of an 'off-line' edit, looks at the Mojo and the Adrenaline with the same quizzical smile as computer nerd looks at a 'mainframe' computer as big as a room from the 1970's.
Avid Failed.... Every year since Avid began they failed to evolve, failed to account for what was to come, failed to look forward rather than back, failed to change their language, failed to predict new mindsets. No matter how good their product was, no matter how reliable or successful, no matter how many they sold, Avid Failed year after year after year. They Failed to re-think the Editor.
When the original Première proved a domestic computer could edit video how did Avid respond? They raised not an eyebrow. When Final Cut Pro comoditized the professional editing environment from the bones of its Première ancestor to deliver a capable NLE, free of costly hardware, how did Avid respond? They created new hardware for their software. When Vegas matched Avid's format agnostic and resolution independent real-time timeline with software-only how did Avid respond?A condecending scoff and throw-away remarks about 'real professionals...'. When every year Final Cut Pro captured the imagination of the Editor's of the Future how did Avid respond? By appealing the editors of the Past.
The complete sinking of the Avid ship will happen very slowly. But the water in-take in the bilge began a long time ago when the ship left the harbour with holes in the hull. Those who have invested great sums of money in Avid systems did so because expense breeds comfort; the more you spend the greater the perception of security in what you have bought. A process of self-justification, of justifying your professionalism by the expense you can afford. But, like an arrogant ship captain, those same buyers will refuse to believe the ship is sinking until they have to jump in the life boat and row for the smaller, leaner, faster, cheaper ship on the horizon. A new ship that doesn't look at all like the big sinking Titanic they are fleeing.
This discussion and speculation on the future of Avid is all over the web. The cryptically depressive survey issued by Avid some months ago did little but make the company look tired.... Some may feel sad about Avid's demise. Perhaps feel that a great tool was brought to an untimely end by cocky young upstarts and the 'cult of the amateur'. It strikes me as somewhat like the feeling you have when the company making amplifier valves finally closes the door conceding that their time has passed.
I don't feel this way. I feel a little angry. I feel angry that a company with such dominance, such power, such influence over the creative artform of our age was so condescending of its users as to refuse to grow with them, refuse to let them grow, refuse to aknowledge new ideas from new younger minds. I feel somewhat angry such a company would not seek to be more accessible, more efficient and instead trade their business on excess, superfluousness and a culture of snobbery whose only means of distinction was to forge a hard line in the sand and declare Real Professionals on their side and Child-like Wannabes on the other.
Fortunately that warning, so inherent in the Avid culture, has been ignored by the digital native and we find ourselves at this juncture; speaking of the great Avid sell-off / buy-out that so many think is near.
But maybe that's just me.....
When an institution such as the BBC move away from Avid to leaner, meaner solutions like Final Cut Pro many obviosuly point the finger at 'Cost' and the all pervasive dollar factor. But it would be a mistake and a simplification to think that the only ill-concieved element of the Avid structure is the expense. This from the BBC on their move away from Avid :
"What drives a broadcaster to implement a radical new concept in
programme production? One of the most obvious answers is cost, but in
this case, there was far more to it than that. All organisations,
whether public or private, need to function efficiently to meet the
demands of media-hungry audiences; procedures must be streamlined
without hampering productivity, resources and skills must be flexible
and transferable without compromising creativity.
This vision of the future of broadcasting, along with the
aforementioned cost savings and tight deadlines, is what motivated the
BBC to make use of predators - part producer, part editor..."
In other words, cost aside, what has changed is a cultural shift in what we percieve the Editor to be, how we percieve the role of the Editor in creative process. Avid every year since it began failed to re-imagine the Editor's job. And they are now, and will continue until their demise, pay the price for their short-sightedness. Whether an Avid system, as a tool, is good or bad, better or worse, is irreleveant when they have become so out-of-tune and out-of-touch with what the Editor as a creative role has become. Avid could well be the greatest system on the planet but it wont matter one iota when the paradigm by which they have defined the Editor no longer matches the inherent digital-native sensibilities of the "Prod-Editors".
Over on the Creative Cow, Tim Bird has written an eloquent but forceful post about the demise of Avid and I shall end on his words rather than mine.
About 15 years ago, my old film prof suggested that although Avid had the popular GUI at the time, their approach to system configuration was deficient and the company had a fairly self-centered business model (my words, not his.) At some point, he suggested, another manufacturer will come along with a better interface, better business model and a more open platform and Avid will decline in popularity.
Since that time, the issues of openness and corporate business model have been the major gripe of Avid's customers. This is manifest in Avid's lack of response to customer feature requests, openness of the systems, ease of integration with 3rd party software, overall cost of product etc. The Dec. issue of POST Magazine carried an article describing Avid's new CEO's plans to re-invigorate the company and respond to user concerns.
Having been a dedicated Avid user, multiple system owner, ACSR, beta tester, and instructor of more than 400 Avid editors over the last decade, I was tickled by the POST article. How many times has such a publicity campaign been waged by this company with little or no change in corporate mentality or customer satisfaction? Yet, they are still perceived as the industry LEADER?
Meanwhile, the Avid system I used everyday for so long has not been turned on in nearly a year and will soon show up on eBay (I've adopted a more capable and cost effective platform.) If Avid is to remain a leader in this business, they have a lot more to decide than just answers to the questions posed Harcharan.
A few years ago, Oliver Peters suggested to me that "Mojo is just a dongle for uncompressed." True. It is not capable (as is) of HD output of any kind. Mojo and Adrenaline cripple the the very systems they are meant to enable. Mojo was introduced as an I/O add on to Xpress Pro. This combination of crippled hardware to accompany crippled software was Avid's answer to the growth of Final Cut Pro... but it came nowhere near the capability of FCP with an AJA I/O (for example.)
Now we wonder what Avid will do two years from now? Responses seem to favor Mojo as a suitable interface for Avid for the future. Ridiculous.
Stop drinking the kool-aid.
Everything customers are asking Avid to provide by 2010 is offered NOW by other manufacturers. Avid is over.
We live in a very different age than that which has passed. We live in an age where the world's corporations have told use emphatically that we NEED a 'digital lifestyle' and should have it NOW...! And so, like dutiful little lemmings, we went out and did just that - we bought all those machines and devices they insisted that we buy and we hooked them up to the 'information super highway' that they said we had to connect to... But now they're angry at us; they're very afraid of what we might do with the devices of the digital lifestyle that they told us we had to have.
Turns out the devices and machines we bought have only ONE purpose, only ONE function, only ONE true ability - the ability to Copy, the ability to Replicate and the ability to Diseminate. Whether big or small, thats what a computer does. It makes copies, it stores copies and it distributes copies. But now the movie studios and record companies and software developers are all very grumpy at us for using the devices to do exactly what they're intended to do....?
Arguments about Right and Wrong a largely irrelevent - the computer 'tool' is designed for one purpose - to copy - and so when we flood the world with copy machines we really shouldnt be surpirsed that they start... you know.... Copying... Much like America's gun-laws - If you're going to have a national community flooded with 192 million guns which have no purpose other than to maim and kill you really shouldn't look surpirsed when 30,000 people per year are maimed and killed by firearms. Its bleeding obvious.
But this is the very different age we live in - an age where laws of 'ownership' and 'copyright' developed in the industrial revolution suddenly find themselves hard pressed to be relevent in an age of mass-duplication.
Agan, this is not about theft or morality its simple pragmatics. We - creators - need to re-think some of the paradigms. Not because we want to but simply because we'll have to. We live in a very different age with very different sensibilities driven by the technology that knits our society together.
In this context we get Steal this Film. A documentary that made headlines in 2006 now has a sequal in 2008. Whether you're a staunch believer in copyright protection or a futurist looking for alternatives like Creative Commons - this film is certanly worth the watching.
