Author: Philip

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The Business of Production

Two companies: $8 billion of production

It’s hard to imaging but between them Amazon and Netflix plan on spending $8 billion on original content in 2016.

Amazon is expected to spend $2 billion, subsidized by Prime subscribers

Netflix’s subscribers will finance $6 billion in original programming.

Combined that would be 60 movies with a $100 million budget each. (Typically 400-500 movies are released by studios every year.)

Or 3000 ‘hour’ television episodes assuming a $2 million an episode budget. (Some would be higher, some lower). At 23 episodes a season, that’s one season for 130 different shows.

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Metadata

Metadata isn’t just for production!

Although my focus is very much on metadata for production, and in particular Content Metadata, there’s a whole other area of metadata for distribution, built around the EIDR ID and fleshed out largely by Rovi. But there’s another area where metadata will likely have to apply: distribution deliverables.

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Apple Pro Apps Metadata

Keywords and Roles: friends or adversaries?

We were discussing metadata in Final Cut Pro X after dinner last night, as one does, and Greg challenged me to think about the difference between Roles and Keywords (Ranges).

I’d spent time thinking about how best to translate metadata from Lumberjack into FCP X before we gained organizational folders for Keyword Collections in an Event, and was mildly surprised we didn’t have anything we thought would map well to Roles.

And that was the last time I thought about it until last night. It took a minute or two, but then it hit me, and it was totally obvious why there was no place for Roles in a “logging and pre-editing” tool.

Keyword Ranges (and Collections) are for organizing Clips.

Roles are for organizing a Project (timeline), and I guess for exporting information to Producer’s Best Friend where we make good use of Role information.

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Assisted Editing Interesting Technology Item of Interest The Technology of Production

Which technological innovation will take your job?

We’re all aware that technology changes the workplace. Jobs disappear; sometimes to be replaced by other jobs that didn’t exist before. During the industrial revolution we were replacing manual labor with machines. The coming revolution is for white collar “knowledge” jobs. How soon will yours be among them?

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Lunch

Lunch with Rick Young

Rick Young has worked in television and video production since the late 1980’s. He bought his first DV camera in 1997 and since then, has established himself as a single-operator Producer/Director with a passion for affordable filmmaking. Rick is the editor for Movie Machine, a website devoted to the art and technology of digital filmmaking. He is the author of numerous books including The Easy Guide to Final Cut Pro X (Focal Press) and more.

Rick Key Image 1

You can find more about Rick at his Movie Machine site.

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Apple Pro Apps Lumberjack The Business of Production

The Terence and Philip Show Episode 72: Workflow 2016, featuring Lumberjack

In this episode I get to spend a lot of time talking about the background the Lumberjack System, in the context of  the very unsexy topic of workflow, particularly automating the workflow. I share many of the background decisions related to Lumberjack System – our logging and pre-editing system for Final Cut Pro X – including why it’s limited to FCP X.

Other topics include automation; Digital Heaven’s announcement of SpeedScriber; how Lumberjack has developed based on user, and use, feedback; the post NAB development of noteLogger; Prelude LIveLogger and the Premiere Pro ecosystem and NLE market shares; how development resources are allocated.

Categories
Apple Apple Pro Apps

“Works with iMovie/Final Cut Pro X” Trademarks

Patently Apple reports Apple have filed for Trademarks for: ‘Mac – Works with iMovie’, ‘Mac – Works with Final Cut Pro X’ & Combo of Both.

This certainly isn’t the first time Apple have filed for “Works with” Trademarks, and that’s what makes it interesting. Previously these type of trademarks have been for Apple Ecosystems, like iPhone, iOS, iPad, CarPlay, AirPrint, et al.

While I have no idea what it might mean – developers have no clues yet – it is interesting that iMovie and Final Cut Pro X are being considered as part of a larger ecosystem. For those who don’t know, these days iMovie is a version of Final Cut Pro X with a simplified interface.

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Apple Pro Apps Interesting Technology Item of Interest The Technology of Production Video Technology

The Terence and Philip Show Episode 71: NAB 2016

Terence Curren and I recorded our thoughts on NAB 2016.  Topics covered include general impressions of NAB 2016, and why Terry did not attend this year; Blackmagic Design Resolve; Avid’s business; market fragmentation; HDR and expanded color gamut; Studio Daily’s Top 50 influencers (including Philip); Zcam; Lytro cam; VR; innovation; Apple watch and NDA’d Final Cut Pro X preview.

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Lunch

Lunch with Oliver Peters

Our latest lunch with Oliver Peters was recorded during NAB 2016 in Las Vegas.  Oliver Peters is an independent video/film editor, colorist, post production supervisor and consultant. He is also a contributing editor/writer for Videography, DV and TV Technology magazines. he’s worked in the radio, television and film industries since 1970. Over the years, this has included a variety of hands-on production and post production positions, as well as various facility management roles. Along the way, I have earned numerous awards, including local, regional and national Addy, Telly and Monitor Awards. His full bio can be found on his blog.

Oliver Key image 2

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Lumberjack

Lumberjack Can: A musical tribute

I’ve mentioned in passing that I’ve been learning to sing over the last two years (almost to the day). Well, it seems like a reasonable outlet to sing about the things I love and do. Here’s a short musical tribute to Lumberjack’s three modes: real-time keywording; story building; transcripts and magic keywords. Adapted lyrics by Philip Hodgetts

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