When I hear things like this I always remember Barry Stevens saying how happy he was to have worked until hd became a reality after so many years of 'coming soon'.
We need to keep perspective.
There's a race for cheaper production, be it Bmd cameras for a grand or edit systems that come free with cornflakes, but that doesn't mean the end of good storytelling.
We were the rockstars of film, being a flame guy in the 90s I made more money than the English prime minister - and I enjoyed it but it was kind of out if whack. I have a friend who is a relatively famous musician who was comparing how much they make now compared to say Bowie in 72 dropping 40k a week of warners cash at the Beverly Hills hotel on room service alone. But he points out that those years were the anomaly, not the present.
You see the story tellers, the singers, the minstrels were never meant to make more money than rulers if countries. It was a bubble. An odd convergence of rapid increase in demand and rarity of supply. Spurred initially by a similar move to cut costs moving finishing from labs to videotape and then driven by the capabilities of digital.
But it's not hard anymore. No need to learn about 8 field sequences or consider concatenation effects in compositing. No generation loss, no sch phase errors, no quantization errors or other technical silliness.
Ok yes we are struggling with file formats and colour spaces currently but a newer version if Aces with automated device transforms will fix that soon enough. So what then?
Well then ANYONE will be able to edit. And that's when it will get truly interesting. I see it already with my son even at 10 he was cutting skate videos and now at 27 he's at MPC working on nuke on films like Skyfall, world war z and the 300. To him and more so the next generation audio visual literacy will be as natural as reading and writing.
What we gave lived through is the video equivalent of the Middle Ages with monastic reverence of the process of writing. I'm sure those guys stressed about the race to the bottom to a world of scruffy handwriting after spending decades perfecting their calligraphic skills. Why it seems just anyone can write these days....
But more editing, more people trying and succeeding to tell their own stories means better stories. Guys like Steven king would have been too busy eating soil in the Middle Ages yet look how many great stories have been written since the democratization of writing.
The same will happen in our small industry. It's everyone's right to make films now and like Barry I'm glad I've lived long enough to see edit systems be in the hands of editors rather than corporations. I've owned big facilities and small but nothing gives me more pleasure than having an Avid, Smoke and Davinci at home as well as the office.
I love that boxes like hitfilm exist and I welcome the next generation of fearless young people into our fold. Yes it's going to wreak havoc on wages but I'm probably only going to live another 10 years anyway - it's nice to know the business i've loved is transitioning from an exclusive club to a wide audience partition sport.
I'm reminded of the video toaster catch phrase - in the future your favorite show will be made by you or someone you know.
I think it comes down to this, video is less rock and roll now than it was, but so is rock and roll. You can either act like a Rick dinosaur or you can embrace YouTube jams. There's a hell of a lot of fun still to be had you just won't make more money than the PM doing it anymore.
But trust me just like in the written word, film is only just beginning the best stories are yet to be edited.
Best regards
Mike
On 24 Jun, 2013, at 10:25 AM, James Culbertson <albion@speakeasy.net> wrote:
> Wouldn't it be more true to say that we have lived in a sweet spot of production history?
>
> If anything visual storytelling is more of a sweet spot then ever before in history.
>
> James
>
>
> On Jun 21, 2013, at 9:31 PM, Terence Curren wrote:
>
>> We have lived in a sweet spot in storytelling history. The tools were very specialized and expensive which gave the advantage to those who were willing to suffer for the chance to be a part of the system.
>>
>> But now the tools are available to nearly everyone. Which matches the rest of human storytelling history. So, welcome to the troubadour, starving artist, traveling minstrel universe.
>>
>> --- In Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com, "donbrt" <donbrt@...> wrote:
>>>
>>> You know, this is really no laughing matter. I was laid off this week after working for over 18 years at the same facility. Places like this place, unqualified people who learn how to use an Avid and call themselves editors (and take a MUCH lower rate) and reality TV budgets have cut the heart out of this industry. The situation seems pretty bleak and the problem is that the people involved in making decisions with how a show looks don't care about telling a story anymore, they care about coming in under budget and on time. We are stuck with 42 minute montages. This part of the industry is dying a slow death and what was once a craft is being reduced to painting by numbers.
>>>
>>> --- In Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com, "Terence Curren" <tcurren@> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Zoinks!
>>>>
>>>> <<https://www.videopixie.com/>>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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