Mike Jones Digital Basin
cinematic media rinse cycle

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. It’s 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 I’d 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 it’s 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, EDL’s or Timecode. It’s 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 it’s 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.

Posted at 01:00AM Apr 02, 2008 by Mike Jones in industry comment  |  Comments[9]