For a number of reasons Multicam has been a topic of conversation around our house. During the discussion today, I realized that it was a fairly serious trend that I don’t recall covering in my look back, nor on the Terence and Philip Show’s 2013 predictions.
I have a strong interest – personally and professionally – to want to automate the boring parts of post-production away from humans to computers, extending to some of the basic string-outs. This seems to infringe on the “human” role in postproduction, at least according to some of my associates. Well, lately I’ve come across a whole series of stories on how traditionally human roles, like doctors (and assistant editors), can or will be automated out of existence. That’s led me to think about what is the essential role of the human that can’t be automated? It’s not a simple question.
2012 has been one of the most interesting years I’ve had in a long time. The year started with the release of 7toX for Final Cut Pro followed by Sync-N-Link X to mark our fourth piece of Final Cut Pro X software. Then came the intense planning for the Solar Odyssey journey and production, followed by the disappointing reality that it descended into. Fortunately a lot of good has come out of the experience. It’s also been a year where the maturing of Final Cut Pro X has won over more people, and the consensus is favoring big sensors. Terry Curren and I took a look back on the trends of 2012 and Larry Jordan also did a good take on the trends on his blog. This is much more my subjective take on my year.
I recall seeing the first of the training films from John Cleese’s then company, Video Arts and realizing that they were a cut above what I’d come to understand as “training” videos. High production values, great writing and amazing talent. John Cleese and the founding partners sold out decades ago, but current CEO Martin Addison spoke with beet.tv  about how the role of video has changed since Video Arts launched thirty years ago.
Addison says, “The role of video has changed. When we began it was very much a specialist market and the cost of entry of having a film camera was very high. That’s changed completely now. All of us have the potential to be filmmakers with a camera that we have in our pocket on our smartphone.”
Or, in other words, democratization has occurred and video is just another literacy.
Another episode of The Terence and Philip Show – Episode 48: Who should be using which NLE?
I recall this as a very interesting discussion and a good follow on from my own thoughts with Terence’s unique perspective.
I’m a regular reader of Seth Godin’s blog, and owner of a couple of books, so needless to say, I think he’s “on the money” with his marketing and general business advance. Today’s post really hit home:
When everyone has access to the same tools
About a year ago, Terry Curren and I tackled the topic of Temploratization of Creativity, and now it’s here! With directr you choose the template and the app then tells you what shots to take. It then builds them into a video based on the template.
During the last week I caught up with the (in my totally biased opinion) excellent take on FCP X and the Future of Editing by David Leitner in Filmmaker Magazine. He outlines the process of democratization that has happened since Final Cut Pro 1, and how that affects what is needed from a modern NLE. That article set me thinking about how hard it is to hide complexity in a simple interface and how that affects the learnability of the software.
Yes, finally, another Terence and Philip Show! This time Terence grills Philip on what really happened during the Solar Odyssey, the production lessons learnt and what else has come out of the experience.
Disappointing 3DTV sales makes 4K the Next Big Thing http://t.co/N0xVEBfk
The problem is that these “big things” are not driven by consumer demand, but by the tool makers who need to keep selling more production gear, and – perhaps more importantly – more consumer equipment to get the hardware turnover faster. Given that the average TV sits in the corner for 10 years or so, something has to be “created” to induce consumers to want to buy the next “big thing”.