Episode 47
FCG047 - Wind Breaks or Wind Mills (feat. Joe Gill)
Joe Gill understands Hollywood. In his years in the business at various positions he has gained an amazingly clear view of what we need today. IT based workflows are good, but not enough. Today we need “data - based” workflows and FCPX is uniquely qualified to give us just that. There is some VERY interesting insight into what is going on at Apple to. I’ll let you listen “between the lines”.
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Featuring
- Chris Fenwick
- Joe Gill - @joegill
Transcription
00:00.720: Hey, good morning, and hold on.
00:04.480: Good morning, and welcome to another episode of Final Cut Grill.
00:07.440: This is Final Cut Grill 047, if my records are correct.
00:12.040: And today we're going to talk with Joe Gill.
00:14.040: Now, Joe, you know, people who find me, you know, and pique my interest, they come from various places.
00:22.440: As you know, many people come from Twitter.
00:25.020: But Joe was recommended by well, let's just I'm just gonna say we have a mutual friend.
00:31.660: And they contacted me and they said
00:33.460: Get Joe on the show.
00:34.500: He's going to be good.
00:35.860: So I very much enjoy talking to Joe.
00:38.260: Joe works in LA, and he's a.
00:41.540: You know, he's kind of a var.
00:43.379: He's got a strong edit background, but he fully understands the ecosystem of what is going on in the industry right now.
00:53.240: So if you're looking at the three As and you're like, I'm not really sure what I want to do, you should definitely
01:03.080: Listen to this episode.
01:04.360: I think you're going to enjoy it.
01:06.280: Also, I want to say that I was stoked over the weekend.
01:09.160: I noticed that on the premiumbeats.
01:11.240: com, they put one of my first tutorials up.
01:14.000: I don't know when the second one's going to come out.
01:16.320: But it was really fun.
01:17.920: And I apologize as an editor.
01:19.680: I was like, oh, I just realized the lip sync was way out.
01:22.400: And I was so excited about getting the lighting that I thought almost looked good.
01:26.420: So I might actually replace that and fix that.
01:30.900: I f it should have been much better.
01:33.380: Anyway, I'm so thankful that Premium Beats has been supporting the show.
01:37.880: And it makes all of this possible.
01:41.560: So I implore you, friend to friend, right?
01:46.280: We're all friends here.
01:47.560: Go check out Premium Beats if you have not.
01:50.640: I have been using the crap out of it lately.
01:54.480: I just doing something for a client, and we I think we had like eight music drops in it.
02:00.100: And so easy.
02:01.780: It was so easy to find stuff that we could use and worked really well.
02:06.820: So definitely go check out Premium Beats.
02:09.380: They tell me there's a big website update on the horizon.
02:14.040: I don't know exactly when that's going to be.
02:15.799: I hope I'm not telling you something I shouldn't be saying.
02:18.599: Sorry, guys.
02:20.360: Anyway, go check out Premium Beats or PremiumBeat.
02:24.360: com.
02:24.680: I always throw in that extra S.
02:26.560: I should check that.
02:27.280: I wonder if you type the S if it auto-redirects to them.
02:31.200: Anyway, go check them out, and we appreciate them.
02:34.959: So, without further ado, we're going to go to Joe Gill, who's down there in LA Town, the big LA town.
02:41.959: Powerhouse, know-it-all, Mr.
02:44.200: Big Brain, Joe Gill.
02:47.799: So, Joe, I was contacted by a mutual friend of ours, and he said, You gotta have Joe on the show.
02:55.599: And I will say I know you work in LA, but why don't you tell me a little bit about the kind of work that you do?
03:03.120: So
03:03.840: The latest reinvention of myself is as a technologist.
03:07.360: So essentially, what that means is people have technical needs, whether they know them or not, but they'll feel it, and then hopefully they reach out to me in some fashion.
03:17.440: and I come in and talk to them about what they're trying to get done.
03:21.200: And then we look at a number of solutions to kind of, you know, scratch their itch.
03:26.640: Interesting.
03:27.280: Yeah.
03:27.920: I think you hit the nail on the head there when you said whether they know it or not.
03:31.840: I got into a discussion today with one of our editors here.
03:35.680: about somebody that we both know who works in a way his workflow causes a whole lot of extra work and he's done it for so long he doesn't realize how hard he's working.
03:48.620: Yeah, that's often the case.
03:52.940: To age myself, when I first started transitioning my editors
03:56.660: From flatbed film editing to the magic of non-linear editing, they would start out with the mouse on the screen and
04:06.140: They were still really excited.
04:07.340: Like, this is great.
04:09.500: I can click on it.
04:10.540: And I'm like, no, here, look, put it on the desk.
04:12.140: And he'd go, Whoa.
04:13.940: Oh, this is much better.
04:15.780: That actually reminds me of the first time I started to I was trying to teach my dad how to use a mouse.
04:22.800: He was holding it.
04:24.960: It wasn't one of those crazy.
04:26.560: Remember when Apple had those ridiculous round mouses?
04:29.280: Mice?
04:29.919: The upside-down mice?
04:31.040: No, it was the puck.
04:32.600: Remember the package.
04:33.160: Yeah, the fuck that you couldn't tell how it was oriented.
04:35.960: So it wasn't one of those.
04:37.480: It was actually an oval one, but for whatever reason, he liked the feel of it sideways in his hand.
04:44.120: And I said, Dad, you're going to go crazy.
04:46.340: Look.
04:46.660: And he's like, oh, yeah, that's much better.
04:50.340: Okay, so they're putting the mouse on the screen.
04:53.300: How did that how did that go?
04:55.700: Well, you know, so it's it's just the kind of thing of
04:59.280: Working with people who want to have a creative solution, and their editors or their animators or their producers.
05:10.880: And so once you talk to them and say, well, what do you want to get done?
05:14.400: They'll explain it to you.
05:15.440: But often they'll bring a lot of baggage to it in terms of, I saw this on TV or I was in the video village.
05:23.220: and the stuff on the screen looked really flat like this, and then you go, Well, you know, that's because it's in log, and here you go.
05:30.180: This is what it could look like, and they go, Oh, that's way better.
05:33.139: But you have to get past their initial
05:35.600: This is what I want to solve my problem with.
05:38.480: And you go, Well, you could try these other things.
05:40.960: Yeah.
05:41.360: You know, I mean, I can remember when I first started messing with computers.
05:46.120: as opposed to, you know, video production switchers.
05:51.159: You know, my idea of making a graduated background was
05:56.000: you know, call up black on color generator one, call up dark blue on color generator two, do a number two horizontal wipe and turn the softness up.
06:06.639: I was like, well, how do I do that in this computer?
06:09.199: Well, you don't.
06:09.919: Well, then this is a piece of junk, isn't it?
06:11.600: Because I can do that on my Switcher.
06:13.360: Well, there's a thing called, you know, a gradient tool, huh?
06:17.539: You know, and it's just a different way of thinking, you know?
06:22.819: Yeah.
06:23.780: Now, so, yeah, the background way back in the Jurassic days was started as an editor.
06:29.120: And always loved computers, so the first foray to be able to edit on a computer was in audio editing workstations
06:36.660: And eventually, computers got fast enough where you're able to do video on them.
06:40.660: Right.
06:41.460: And that was really super duper.
06:43.300: And so
06:44.900: You know, from a certain perspective, like, you know, like things have changed a lot, and things haven't changed at all, where it's still the same deal.
06:50.580: Like, you got a guy at a desk who wants to take this thing and make a story out of it.
06:56.540: You know, and the technology is much, much different now than then, but the essential need is still totally the same.
07:02.139: Gotcha.
07:03.580: So, are you editing these days, or are you just assisting and consulting?
07:10.440: So at my day job, I currently do not do any editing.
07:15.080: The job before this, I was in charge of the editorial department.
07:17.800: I did lots and lots of editing, which was really great.
07:21.699: So now for the last year, it's really mostly been looking at technologies to help bring a company from being a Final Cut Pro 7 shop to being a something else shop.
07:30.900: Right.
07:32.759: And I'm assuming because our mutual friend said you need to talk to Joe, you're very interested in helping them become Final Cut 10 shops.
07:43.780: Well, I think that Final Cut X is an incredible, incredible product, and it solves a lot of problems that people have that they don't realize yet.
07:54.180: And this is typical Apple form.
07:57.240: Where they'll design something and give it to you, and for the first couple minutes, you sort of do a 2001 and scratch your head and stare at it.
08:04.760: And then it goes through a couple evolutionary iterations, and as it does that, you'll catch on to it.
08:10.740: Side note, that was my first evening with the iPhone.
08:14.900: I literally felt like the apes with the obelisk.
08:19.700: You know, I'm just like looking at it.
08:21.300: I'm looking at the pretty picture on the screen side.
08:23.960: and I'm turning it over and I'm like, well, where does the picture come from?
08:27.800: You know, I mean, just I really felt like one of the apes in the beginning of two thousand one.
08:32.279: It was really hysterical.
08:34.220: Yes.
08:35.020: So with Apple, it's really like a trust exercise where you have to look at the device and say, where is this thing going?
08:41.580: And you have to kind of get into the mindset of the engineering team.
08:45.040: And once you just sort of let go and let them guide you into what the app is doing, you know, 99 times out of 100, you'll discover yourself saying, I never realized I wanted that.
08:55.519: Right.
08:56.880: That I think is the coolest I think that's the moment where you the sort of light bulb goes off, and you're like, oh, I didn't know that was such a problem until you put it that way.
09:09.980: Yeah, so you know, on one hand, I'll tell you that I'm a big believer in there's always a really great tool for any particular need.
09:20.920: So sometimes, you know, like I was at my old place of work and they were telling me they're really excited about having gone to Avid.
09:28.440: And, you know, I kind of put my finger
09:30.060: My hand on my head, and I pointed out a few issues that could arise from that.
09:33.500: And the guy went, Oh, yeah, we hadn't thought about that.
09:37.100: I'm like, Well, you, yeah, remember when I was leaving, and I said, Here's a road map for you.
09:42.200: Do these things, and they're like, oh, oh, yeah, oh, that's why.
09:45.640: I'm like, yeah, that's why.
09:47.640: You know, but if you look at other super short-form editorial work, some of it really at this point.
09:54.380: Won't benefit as much from Final Cut 10 as it will from other programs.
09:59.100: But the thing that I was talking to a bunch of people about is that
10:04.100: In order for there to be a lot of different ways to approach this situation, it's really helpful for there to be a bunch of different editorial platforms.
10:11.060: And right now, we're kind of reaching a point
10:13.420: where we may be looking at a one or two major system environment.
10:17.980: Where there are like it's not like the old days where, yeah, if you had the choice of using the fast editorial workstation, if you were so inclined.
10:26.079: You know, and Lightworks has always been around, and Premiere's sort of always been around, and Final Cut's been around for a really long time.
10:33.440: Right.
10:33.759: And Avid's been around for a long time.
10:36.220: But looking at what might be happening, maybe there there's a world coming without Abbott.
10:42.140: Yes, given the business issues that they've had about getting knocked off the NASDAQ and stuff like that.
10:48.380: Oh, yeah.
10:48.780: Do you think that's a credible threat?
10:50.720: I think that if yes, if you look at the way the company is currently structured, it's really possible that the company is going to be broken into component pieces and reformed.
11:02.020: But if you look at how Avid is faring against Premiere and against Apple, Final Cut 10 has a Final Cut Pro 10, I think, is the actual full name.
11:11.440: has sold more copies in this iteration than every single other version of Final Cut ever, including all of the upgrades, including Express.
11:19.800: You know, so it's a despite what you, you know, like, and as you've said in your podcasts, initially the reaction to Final Cut Pro 10 is, ah, yeah.
11:28.660: It's iMovie.
11:29.540: Like, no, it's much more than that.
11:31.140: But it's, you know, now it's getting to a point where people are starting to get hungry for Final Cut Pro 10 editors.
11:38.380: And the perception of, oh, it's going to take a month to go from being a Final Cut 7 editor or an avid editor to that, it's true if you come to it thinking, I want it to be just like an avid, like, nope, that's not this program.
11:49.820: Yeah.
11:50.720: If you give into it and do what it wants to do, then nine times out of ten, you'll discover that it's so much faster, it's so much more powerful, it's so much more flexible than you had thought that the thing could be.
12:04.180: That, you know, yeah, some guys say it's a month, but really, I've seen the editors who are willing to embrace technology and they do the transition in probably as long as they survive that first day, they're good
12:16.420: The end of the night.
12:18.259: The first day is the toughest.
12:20.420: You know, it's interesting that you say that.
12:21.779: And I want to reflect a little story, my own personal confession here.
12:26.660: I've done many demos and talks and expositions where I have highlighted the fact that I still like to use kind of a string out workflow.
12:40.300: Especially in regards to B-roll, and I'll just take all the B-roll, throw it into one time line, skim through it, go, Oh, that looks good, and I promote it up a track and then I end up moving those th those
12:50.339: Clips that I liked into my final cut.
12:55.139: No pun intended.
12:56.899: But in the last couple of month weeks, rather, I'll say, not even months, but weeks, partially
13:03.779: Because of some of the egging on of some of the past guests of the show, I did a couple of edits where I said, you know what, I'm going to totally embrace
13:15.980: Keywords, favorites, and I love keywords, don't get me wrong, but like the favorites, and then the
13:23.540: the little control that you can turn on, I can't remember what it's called, where it shows used media by highlighting it in orange, you know, in the bin.
13:32.620: And I was like, I'm just gonna embrace it.
13:35.740: And I gotta say, my speeds have increased.
13:39.339: You know?
13:40.259: You just got to go with it, man.
13:41.860: Yeah, and this is a guy, I mean, I've been fairly vocal for the last six months in my own acceptance of the application.
13:50.920: And even still, I'm realizing that I am still learning, still adopting, still embracing, and still getting faster.
14:02.580: And to some extent, if you're talking to a union editor who's reached the venerable age to think that they no longer want to learn anything new.
14:14.740: You know, even then, like, even though, you know, like, because, okay, wait, let me go on a little bit of an ellipsis here.
14:21.380: So, one of the clients that we have is a huge network.
14:26.579: And they were looking to do the same.
14:28.660: What do we do next stage?
14:29.940: So they tested out all of the major players, and they have, you know, like
14:34.980: great teams of like crusty editors who've been cutting the same type of material right for twenty-five years, for in some cases the same show for
14:46.620: 10 years.
14:47.500: So these are definitely like low threshold for change people.
14:52.380: And they teamed them with younger guys, and they found that
14:56.160: Once everyone survived the initial cold water shock of Final Cut Pro 10, that far and away, the most satisfactory editing platform experience was moving to 10.
15:06.720: And even the guys who
15:08.339: remember switchers and remember piles of three-quarter tapes and remember translating EDLs and all that stuff were
15:16.440: Revitalized by using Final Cut Pro 10 because it doesn't just take what you already know and make a crummy digital version of it.
15:24.040: It creates a whole new mental workflow.
15:27.160: So
15:28.240: I think in terms of just that, like Final Cut Pro 10 really gives new life to editors, not only just to the process of editing, but to the people themselves, where they stop thinking of it in terms of
15:39.420: A12 probably goes somewhere close to A2A.
15:44.220: Yeah, yeah.
15:45.819: So can you share what that network is?
15:48.860: No.
15:49.579: Okay.
15:50.459: But it's a network we've all heard of.
15:52.720: Oh, yeah.
15:53.520: It's probably got about 50 letters in its name.
15:56.560: Yep.
15:57.280: Okay.
15:58.080: And you know, again, and this is something else which is interesting with talking to those guys.
16:03.620: They were starting to lean into Premiere.
16:06.420: And they said, Well, you know, we're really excited because Premiere has, you know, the support team that used to be with Avid, Van and his guys.
16:14.320: Have moved over to Premier, and the support they're giving is incredible.
16:18.880: And so some of the other old guys and I
16:22.480: Said, well, you remember that Premiere's gone away on us a couple times and they got a blank look.
16:27.520: And I said, Look, I was one of the first users of Premiere.
16:31.720: And I was really having a great time with it, and then it went dormant, which was really strange.
16:36.680: Right.
16:37.560: So then it came back
16:39.259: And I talked to them and they said, oh, well, the best platform to you to be on is the Silicon Graphics O2 with a whopping 180 megahertz processor.
16:48.820: I think it took one gig of RAM if you really maxed it out, but it did have SDI out, which was phenomenal.
16:55.860: So at
16:56.759: At Adobe's urging, a bunch of us dumped a fair sized car's amount of money into these systems and it EOL'd on us on the first release.
17:06.280: Wow.
17:07.160: That was that you know, that's a little embittering.
17:09.620: And then for Macintosh and SGI, it went dormant again.
17:14.500: And then it came back again.
17:16.020: So in terms of people who say, well, who knows what Apple will do, they don't listen to us.
17:22.820: they don't give us feedback.
17:23.940: They actually do.
17:24.500: They'll really carefully consider everything that people are talking about.
17:28.340: And they'll look two steps ahead like a responsible technology company and say, well, here's
17:33.240: Here's where we see this going, and here are some solutions.
17:35.880: And yes, they won't make every button for every user, but they don't have a big record in terms of their editorial or creative processes in terms of killing a topic.
17:47.160: a product, where Final Cut Server went away and Luke and his guys wrapped into Final Cut Pro 10 and came back and it's just sort of the same program mushed together with a couple of other things.
17:59.419: And re-engineered and it's fantastic.
18:01.900: It's interesting that you say that the thing about Final Cut server
18:07.200: Alex McLean, the guy, my co-host on Digital Cinema Cafe, he's actually been sort of imagining, because he's been looking at Final Cut 10 pretty closely too.
18:17.040: And he sees that there really is the potential of like, you know, a preference setting that you could just
18:26.840: you know, tink on, and all of a sudden you really do have most of the functionality of what Final Fett Server used to be.
18:35.740: I think that since over time, I've run into almost all of the Final Cut Pro server guys working on Final Cut Pro 10.
18:43.900: I think that your friend is really seeing the truth.
18:46.220: Interesting.
18:47.100: Yeah.
18:47.419: And as that comes out
18:49.620: Man, that'll be fantastic.
18:50.900: But you know, right now, those guys have released an amazing number of updates in such a short period of time.
18:57.419: The product, you remember what it looked like when it came out.
19:00.220: It's way better than it was then.
19:02.140: Oh, yeah.
19:03.020: And you know, yeah, it's it's for a second it's totally terrifying when they say we're not going to deal with time code and videotapes 'cause it's an end of life format as far as we're concerned.
19:12.019: But just use the third party guy.
19:15.059: And yeah, that that actually makes sense.
19:17.539: Black Magic, a bunch of other guys make totally usable.
19:21.139: Capture this clip.
19:24.120: Utilities.
19:25.080: Right, right, right.
19:26.760: You know, speaking of, I'm going to do something I've never done on the show.
19:30.440: You're talking about third-party utilities.
19:32.920: Are you familiar with
19:37.260: The Final Cut 10 change utility.
19:40.940: Do you know this?
19:41.899: Quitna Stafford Frazier.
19:43.820: So there's an issue that happens where you are dropping.
19:50.700: You have to reconnect media and for whatever reason, and I don't totally understand it, but Final Cut 10's protocol for reconnecting media is it absolutely positively
20:04.679: Must be exactly the same.
20:07.960: Right.
20:08.440: And so this Quentin Stafford Frazier is a guy who.
20:13.120: Made a utility, and I have mentioned it a couple of times on the show.
20:17.600: He actually I'll say called in, I don't even know how to say it, but we put this utility on our website where people can call in and leave.
20:24.940: A little voice message.
20:26.779: Bear with me.
20:27.340: It's 90 seconds.
20:28.139: Will you listen to this with me?
20:29.820: Yeah, yeah.
20:31.019: Let me see if I have this right here.
20:33.820: This will be interesting.
20:34.700: I've never done this.
20:36.460: Speaker 4: Hello Chris, this is Quentin Stafford Fraser and I just thought I'd drop you a quick message because on the last two episodes of The Grill that I've listened to, first a guest and then you referred to my FCPX change utility.
20:50.940: Speaker 4: Which tries to fix this problem of Final Cut not relinking files if it thinks that the media doesn't quite match the original perfectly.
21:00.300: Speaker 4: I think this is
21:01.840: Speaker 4: a problem mostly with older projects created on earlier versions where the codecs have changed since you first imported them or the way Final Cut interprets them.
21:11.520: Speaker 4: I'm I'm not sure.
21:12.400: Speaker 4: But anyway.
21:13.540: Speaker 4: FCP Exchange tries to be less fussy about this process and let you essentially relink things even if Final Cut won't.
21:24.020: Speaker 4: As you have discovered, it doesn't always work.
21:27.560: Speaker 4: But it does for some people.
21:29.640: Speaker 4: So I decided not to charge for it, not because I didn't want to support it, but really because I just couldn't get enough information
21:36.200: Speaker 4: about why it didn't always work.
21:38.680: Speaker 4: And I thought it would be too painful for people if they paid me some money and then I couldn't provide them with any information.
21:44.600: Speaker 4: So I would encourage people to try it.
21:46.600: Speaker 4: I'm happy to look at it.
21:47.800: Speaker 4: Often that would involve sending me the XML.
21:50.440: Speaker 4: And the media, if there's a problem, so that's the difficulty.
21:53.559: Speaker 4: But it has worked several times for me.
21:55.480: Speaker 4: So if people want to try it, send me info if it doesn't work.
21:59.140: Speaker 4: You can find it at telemark.
22:01.220: Speaker 4: com.
22:01.540: Speaker 4: That's telemark with a Q on the end.
22:03.780: Speaker 4: Hope it's useful.
22:04.740: Great show.
22:05.940: Anyway, that was something, you know, I wanted to kind of set the record straight because I think I had.
22:11.560: mentioned a few things that were slightly diff wrong.
22:15.720: I'll just say wrong.
22:17.160: Have you ever used that utility or looked at it?
22:19.620: No, I heard about it on your podcast and I'm looking at it now.
22:22.900: But man, I've really felt the need for this a lot.
22:25.460: Right.
22:25.860: And again, I don't understand what Apple's logic, motivation, whatever.
22:31.540: But anyway, I just wanted to give Quentin a moment to explain that and kind of set the record straight.
22:37.300: So yes, I think one of the things that i impresses and actually excites me the most is
22:44.019: the amount of third party developers out there doing some really incredible things.
22:49.779: That's and the thing about that is this is one of my moments of shame where early on I said to Apple, well,
22:58.200: You know, when I have guys who need stuff, like I have IMAX guys who need to build film, you know, relink files for 15 perf long frames.
23:08.419: And before we could work with your dev team, and now your dev team is totally different.
23:13.620: What do we do with this?
23:14.419: And they said, well, you're going to get a third-party group.
23:16.419: And if you guys if you really need it, you'll make it.
23:19.340: And if a lot of people need it, then everybody will make it and it'll become a successful third party tool.
23:24.460: And I gave them the third degree on that.
23:26.780: But looking back on it
23:28.620: It's a really successful business model where it gives people, you know, like to build a product like this and go, well, I'm not really clear how this works, but this solves my problem.
23:39.580: Here's the free version.
23:41.140: If a lot of people use it, then he will get more API support from Apple, and then it can become a more robust product.
23:47.540: And this is kind of a way, I think, that Apple's encouraging not only a kind of a Kickstarter approach to technology development for their product.
23:54.919: But it kind of gives a great rebirth to the good old days of lots of people wrote all kinds of fancy plugins for their applications.
24:02.820: And you'd come across a couple that were free because they were written by some guy who was just working on it.
24:07.380: And those things would then turn into a company that did lots and lots of exciting development.
24:12.180: Yeah.
24:12.420: It's almost as if Apple has created a platform or a framework
24:17.660: for developers to jump in.
24:20.620: And so far, in what's it been now almost three years, that's really what's been happening, it seems to me.
24:28.980: Yeah, it's really exciting.
24:30.660: The last time I saw this kind of an approach to it was with, believe it or not, with discrete logic, where they really wanted guys to get out there and write Spark special effects for stuff.
24:42.019: people, yes, they did really well.
24:43.779: But man, you got a lot of super cool companies that exist now that we all use for various plugins that had their same genesis working for SGI.
24:53.360: In effect.
24:54.320: Yeah.
24:54.880: So it's it's a great idea.
24:57.840: A lot I've heard a lot of people say, you know, over the I really started to listen, I think, in the last six months since I've started this show.
25:06.419: But I started to um one common theme that I heard a lot of people saying was, Well, you know, when Final Cut, you know, if Final Cut will never be serious until Hollywood adopts it.
25:21.000: Can you talk a little bit about the type of editorial work you were doing and the type of
25:29.260: I know that there's a lot of confidentiality things, but what can you tell me about people that you know in LA that are using this?
25:38.260: So what I can tell you is, my approach to this again is, what's the right tool for this job?
25:46.419: If you are cutting a one time only music video with a really limited amount of footage,
25:52.460: Then, you know, it doesn't really matter which platform you go with, but you know,
26:00.040: Final cut, you won't be using all of its strengths.
26:02.760: You'll really just kind of be skimming along the surface of it.
26:05.800: If you're cutting super short form stuff like trailers
26:09.660: where you get in and you cut the spot, and there's no metadata associated with the picture, and everything's based on like five to
26:19.820: 35 frame long Edines, where you're just putting shots together as fast as possible.
26:27.260: to create these huge iterative things that are driven by marketing.
26:30.860: Again, like there's no data kind of driving those things.
26:33.820: It's a lot more of a here's the marketing plan.
26:37.020: But if you're cutting B roll or you're cutting
26:40.160: multi-editor, long form stuff, or if you're cutting a lot of the reality driven content, where man, if you have a real good database
26:50.380: You are set.
26:52.220: Right.
26:52.780: You know, like you had a you had a fellow on who was talking about his business making videos for the mold.
27:00.340: They took mold at mold damage out of walls.
27:02.740: There's a fancier term for it.
27:04.580: Water restoration.
27:06.180: Yes.
27:06.740: Yeah.
27:07.460: He was episode one, by the way.
27:09.880: Yeah, that kind of stuff, that stuff, you know, making of EPK, behind the scenes, long form, television, all those guys.
27:19.820: Once they start to tie together the back end of Final Cut Pro 10, which is, you know, uh from all appearances Final Cut Pro Server
27:28.120: A file on that server, then suddenly you're going to see all these people and the lights going to go off.
27:33.320: Because remember when Avid came out, they partnered with somebody to release that whole stringing together
27:41.040: Yeah, a clip of people saying a phrase.
27:43.040: So you'd have guy A, guy B, guy C, guy D, each saying one word.
27:47.040: Right.
27:47.360: And you could then cut them into sentences.
27:49.200: And that's kind of funny and cool.
27:51.040: But that grew out of the technology of transcription.
27:54.720: And so that was a huge coup for Avid.
27:58.000: But now with Final Cut being so driven by data, as soon as people start to understand how
28:03.860: Important that data can be so that when they're pulling a best of clip, there isn't this guy that you go to in the back room and say, Jimmy, what was, wasn't there like a funny shot of micro getting hit with a
28:13.740: Fish and he goes, Yeah, episode 23, like in the last five minutes.
28:18.940: You could say with a cod, yeah, you know, now go find a tiny media, yeah.
28:24.919: Yeah, now instead of tying into all these crazy contamo or levels beyond huge systems, it's really I think it's really going to start being felt in Final Cut.
28:36.360: And people are going to pull that stuff up, and it's going to change the way that editors work, it's going to change the way that assistant editors work, it's going to change the way that producers and li
28:44.360: Librarians work with the footage?
28:45.960: Yeah.
28:47.140: Oh, yeah.
28:47.700: No, there's one of the groups that really has taken to Final Cut 10 with a lot of success is it's the guys who own a lot of the old game show content.
29:00.519: And so they take it and they reformulate it.
29:03.080: And they have had a metadatabase since the 80s.
29:08.039: And so suddenly, you know, their new editor came in
29:11.320: And he is a big Final Cut Pro 10 fan.
29:13.800: And when we tied him into that database, he went bonkers, and all the editors went bonkers, and the producers went bonkers.
29:19.800: Because now Apple has done this thing of instead of doing here's your day, your day is like 1% figuring out what you did that day and making your hour sheet.
29:29.340: and then it's thirty percent sitting with the producer or the AE trying to find these particular shots.
29:34.700: And then the remaining fifty nine percent or sixty nine percent there, that's fun editorial stuff with some technical difficulty.
29:43.820: Now suddenly Apple is giving you the ability to lift all of that burden, all of that infrastructure off of the editor and producers, and it just kind of falls into the background.
29:53.480: You know, there is a project that we have started in our office.
29:58.840: And I'll give you a little bit of background.
30:00.680: And frankly, you might have some insight as to I
30:04.419: how I am organizing this.
30:07.220: We have a client who's a realtor, and he sells the most expensive houses in the San Francisco Bay Area.
30:13.620: He's a very successful realtor and
30:16.460: You know, if you have $20 million to spend on a house, you're going to buy it from him.
30:20.940: And we have done, I will say, dozens of home tour videos for this guy.
30:29.240: And in these home tours, quite often they refer to, and it's close to this school and this shopping center and this neighborhood and these Silicon Valley businesses.
30:40.220: And so we've decided that we are going to create one library that is the stock, you know, kind of evergreen shots that get used over and over and over.
30:54.720: And what we're doing actually is although typically we do not import media into the library, we leave in place
31:04.919: In this particular instance, we're going to import in this new library, which is for the sake of this conversation, we'll call it the
31:14.120: the Evergreen library, meaning things that we will always be using.
31:19.960: I don't know why Evergreen gets used for that, but I'll call it that for now.
31:24.240: Uh so what we're doing is we're importing all of those reused shots into the actual library.
31:32.380: For that project event.
31:36.540: All those words are wrong.
31:37.500: I can't use those words anymore.
31:38.700: Anyway, into that library.
31:40.940: I'm then going to create.
31:44.760: You know, daily, whatever, updated XMLs of that that can be distributed around the office so that
31:55.780: Oh, maybe that won't work.
31:57.700: I want to be able to open up that library.
32:00.660: Or no, that's it.
32:01.780: I can import that XML into a local library.
32:05.720: And then can I reach across the network our our gigabit network and get access to that media if it's in that library?
32:15.580: Yeah, that shouldn't be a problem.
32:17.580: Now, if I remember correctly, you have do you have a central server?
32:21.580: Because I remember you saying you had like 302 drives somewhere.
32:24.620: Oh, yeah, but they're in a closet in cardboard boxes.
32:28.840: Oh, no.
32:29.640: No, we don't have a central server.
32:33.160: I'm wondering if I'm working my way into, I got to do some testing before we get too deep into this.
32:39.740: So basically, what we're doing right now is we're making a library that has access to all of this footage.
32:46.140: But I don't know if I can access that library.
32:49.580: The feature I'm really looking forward to using is the whole
32:53.220: Gimmick of when I have two libraries open, which I don't understand why I can't open up two projects in Premiere, but whatever.
33:01.540: When I have two libraries open, or rather, After Effects.
33:06.620: And I drag a shot, let's say I need a shot of a school, from the Evergreen library into my current working library.
33:15.519: If it comes from the library, Final Cut X will say, Oh, you're dragging that from a different library.
33:24.799: Let me copy it into your current library.
33:29.220: Whereas if it's not in the library, it will just create a link to it, and that could get broken if a drive gets unmounted or something.
33:37.660: I don't know if this is way too complicated to be doing it as an audio podcast, and maybe I'll cut all of this out.
33:44.140: But am I making myself?
33:46.220: Nobody ever.
33:47.500: Yeah.
33:48.059: No, nobody ever edits their podcast anymore.
33:51.660: No, that what you're talking about is exactly one of the strings.
33:55.820: that getting away from a you know this R mag holds these shots and these shots go in this bin and this bin feeds this sequence.
34:04.860: You know, by having and a bunch of places I'm at, especially the game show place, do an enormous amount of that, where they have a central server that holds
34:13.720: You know, I've helped them digitize vast libraries of content.
34:17.399: And so their editors constantly hit this stuff and go, oh, here's that shot of the game show where the person says this and that.
34:24.359: That's a really great bit.
34:25.639: We'll throw this in.
34:27.320: And what you're talking about is exactly one of the things that we're talking about coming down the pike, which is that instead of you going to the GIMP and going, hey, GIMP, where's the shot of that shopping center called Blob?
34:38.340: Blah blah.
34:38.980: Or you're looking at sheets of paper that you printed out showing the contents of a drive.
34:43.220: Or you're looking even in Evernote for the, you know, like the XML or the scan of the contents of the drive.
34:48.840: You're just looking at it in final cut and going, Oh, yeah, here, put these in, give me that, put this here, this is great.
34:56.600: Yeah.
34:57.880: Yeah, but I I think the trick is that what you'll need to do is either you'll need to go the route of having the actual media available
35:05.940: Or you may need to go one level up in complexity if you have a huge pile of it, which is a bunch of guys will create
35:14.760: A proxy file, which holds like the first like second or so of the QuickTime movie.
35:19.960: And then have you ever created a fake junk file just to test transfer speeds and stuff like that?
35:25.080: Um, yeah, I ha I mean, basically all I've done is I've just made a a folder of you know, I I have a folder on on some of the hard drives in the office that says five gigabytes of crap.
35:36.920: Oh, is that what you're talking about?
35:38.920: No, no.
35:39.400: So there's a way on Macs to NPCs where you just there's a there's a program in each called like Junk Maker or something like that.
35:46.140: And you say, hey, make me a 5 gig file, and it'll create a file instantaneously that says I am 5 gigs.
35:52.700: So if you're copying or transferring that file, it will take as much time as 5 gigabytes of data.
35:58.240: However, it's created out of the pure ether.
36:00.400: Poof.
36:01.200: That is much more efficient than what I've done.
36:04.400: Oh, yeah.
36:04.960: But so what these guys do is they take the first second or so of the clip.
36:09.020: And then the rest of that duration of the clip is created from pure nothingness so that it appears to be the whole clip so Final Cut doesn't panic and unlink it and run in circles, which it loves to do.
36:19.420: And then you then use that as to scan through and find it.
36:23.260: You go, okay, I need this file.
36:24.620: And then that's pulled out of a tape archive or off of the drive.
36:27.740: But those are usually bigger systems.
36:29.980: Like that's where you're getting close to having a smaller robot library with like 500 LTO6 tapes that sit around and they do the little robot dance, which is cool.
36:40.299: But you may be better off doing just like a centralized storage thing.
36:44.140: But with the new compression codecs coming out, those things are going to get pretty small, and hard drives just get bigger and bigger, and network connections get faster and faster.
36:54.460: So soon, things, it won't be that it's so burdensome to have a server.
36:59.340: You'll just have everything live in the cloud and it'll be really nice and close to you.
37:03.400: And then that will be really easy.
37:04.680: And that'll be Nirvana because then you and I can share files back and forth.
37:09.160: And I can say, oh, yeah, you know, I know where that is, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
37:12.600: And I give you the shot, and you go, oh, that's wonderful.
37:14.760: And now
37:15.080: Or looking at certivinix
37:16.559: Expanded world of like royalties or sharing royalty-free stock footage.
37:20.319: Right.
37:20.880: That's exciting.
37:21.920: Yeah, exactly.
37:23.039: And you know,
37:24.880: This isn't even royalty-free stuff.
37:27.200: It's just my footage.
37:29.200: I have a ton of these neighborhoods, schools, and shopping centers, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
37:35.680: Yeah.
37:37.180: I think I've learned from this conversation that I do need to kind of reexamine.
37:41.020: I'm going to take a closer look at what I've done so far before I get too deep into it.
37:46.619: Yeah.
37:47.740: It's exciting stuff.
37:49.099: So what are some other interesting story consulting things that you've ran across that you can share?
37:57.500: Again.
37:57.800: I'm going to sit here, Joe, I'm going to be sitting here and I'm going to be twisting your arm to tell me things that you can't tell me about.
38:03.320: So you're going to have to come up with something.
38:05.840: Oh, no, that's fine.
38:07.280: So well, so here's the one that will keep you up really.
38:10.800: I'm just going to go straight to the worst case scenario.
38:12.960: Okay.
38:13.680: Which is
38:14.980: That you go and you do the dog and pony show for a bunch of editors.
38:19.780: And so you have your independent teams, guy, you know, team A, the control team who's working the way everybody has been working.
38:26.340: And then you have B, C and D who are using the other flavors of current popular NLEs.
38:32.500: Actually, I don't think people say that anymore because there's really no linear to compare it to.
38:36.340: They're using the popular computer editing programs.
38:39.099: And they come back and they say, well, you know, we're going to pick Avid over Final Cut 10 because even though Final Cut 10 is much more popular and much faster,
38:51.680: And once you get over that first day or so, it's not as much a process of learning how to make it do what you want it to do, but working with it to do stuff that makes sense for the project.
39:05.060: You know, all of the Final Cut Pro 10 team, those guys were so excited about the product.
39:10.500: Those guys are so amped to use this thing.
39:13.860: You know, like they've started round tripping with Resolve.
39:16.180: They've started round tripping.
39:18.200: You know, more with the motion guys.
39:19.800: The graphics guys are coming out of their After Effects shell.
39:22.840: Everyone's getting really excited about this stuff.
39:25.960: But
39:26.820: We have a technology director who's really much more comfortable using his current ISIS
39:35.240: or Isilon drives.
39:36.840: And so we've decided that even though it makes way more sense and it's much more popular to go with Final Cut Ten
39:43.799: We're going to go with, and they wouldn't be so bad if they said we're going to go with something really weird like Lightworks.
39:49.160: You know, wow, okay, be bold.
39:51.340: That you know, they say we're gonna stick with the Favid because we just don't want to embrace the change.
39:56.780: We don't want to do the new thing
39:58.940: And we've also fallen prey to the whole concept of Apple's this giant monolithic device that turns us upside down and shakes the money out of our pockets and doesn't care.
40:07.579: Apple is a good one.
40:08.220: So that one.
40:08.859: Apple is what about Adobe?
40:11.380: I don't know if you've been following, but for the last 48 hours, it just went back online.
40:17.380: And just for reference, this is Thursday, May 15th at 7.
40:21.539: 30 p.
40:22.099: m.
40:23.240: But literally for the last forty eight hours, Adobe's authentication process has been offline.
40:29.560: Okay?
40:30.200: So like if you are a Premiere editor and you
40:34.420: are at somebody's studio and you've logged on with your cool Creative Cloud license, and you're like, okay, well, I'm going to go home now.
40:43.840: and you log off, when you get home, your system is dead.
40:48.240: You have all the bits on your hard drive, but you can't launch anything.
40:52.960: That's infuriating.
40:55.880: That's crazy.
40:56.839: Oh, yeah.
40:57.400: And it yeah.
41:00.200: Well, remember the long periods where Adobe and Apple didn't get along, so we were all just sort of left out in the cold?
41:05.880: The Frenemy era.
41:08.420: Yeah.
41:10.180: Yeah.
41:12.100: Which we may still be in, I don't know.
41:15.940: Yeah.
41:17.300: Sorry.
41:19.300: No, it's like it's one of those things where it's so frustrating to talk to the creatives who are actually the tool users
41:29.220: and they love the product.
41:31.220: And then as soon as you get above a certain level, you have people who don't who ha who saw that thing, okay, the Conan thing was it was pretty funny, and it was kind of a pressure relief for the shock.
41:43.580: I've seen three years ago.
41:46.060: Aren't we over that?
41:47.820: That's like three years in this industry is like ancient history.
41:52.220: No?
41:52.940: Is it just me?
41:54.140: No.
41:55.260: They're holding on to it.
41:56.620: Wow.
41:57.880: Okay.
41:58.359: Yeah, I don't know.
41:58.839: Like Steven Seagal is back, but that hasn't been forgiven.
42:01.720: I don't understand how the dynamic works either.
42:07.060: How do we let Steven Zagal back in the building?
42:10.740: Yeah, I almost forgot about it.
42:13.140: But yeah, that was like three years ago.
42:16.400: Crazy.
42:17.840: And then seeing people turn around and really heavily invest in Adobe, who's like really like if you talk to people about Apple support
42:28.200: definitely Apple's Apple Final Cut is not what it used to be, where you had super high powered teams of guys from Apple who would come out to hold your hand.
42:37.340: Or you had the digital film tree guys who would come out and those dudes are so smart, they know everything on earth to know about anything that has anything to do with anything you might be doing.
42:46.620: But you have guys like Sam who are, yeah, they're very different.
42:50.500: And Salmon, the FCP Works guys, are much more low-key and they're much more like, hey, this is something cool.
42:58.240: So, you know, like I was, I was at NAB and I went to their suite and I was talking with them.
43:03.120: You know, like I talked to a bunch of people in the room and it was really exciting.
43:06.620: And then I was talking to Sam later and he's like, oh, well, you know, um and then of course the name of course escapes me again.
43:14.220: The guy who wrote the X to seven and seven to X stuff.
43:17.180: Philip Hodgetts.
43:18.860: Yeah, he's like, oh, Philip was there.
43:20.380: I'm like, he was, you know, and in the old days, there would have been a glowing neon banner saying Philip Hodgins, and it would have flashed, and there would be an arrow pointing to the bottom.
43:29.500: It wasn't glowing, but I will say there was a.
43:31.920: There was a banner.
43:33.280: It was just wasn't glowing.
43:35.920: Yeah.
43:36.720: So, you know, like things aren't what they used to be, but nothing is what it used to be.
43:41.280: You know, like editing isn't what it exactly used to be.
43:44.000: If you think of
43:45.059: the technology behind it.
43:47.299: But, you know, what we do is still exactly the same, which is here's a raw pile of stuff and we craft it into this gem like thing that transmits emotion and story and message
43:59.780: and hopefully money.
44:01.860: And then that's our end goal.
44:04.420: So whether we're using fire and charcoal or watercolors or film or bits, whatever it is, we want to do the same stuff.
44:12.180: And if you can learn a new way to do it,
44:14.560: Do it.
44:15.280: Get out there and experience a data-driven workflow.
44:19.120: It's really something else.
44:20.960: And a lot of people, because they don't get it, don't do it.
44:24.240: Yeah, I mean, I I think back and I I may have told this story before, but I there was a guy I used to cross paths with occasionally just because some of the shooters I knew would work for the guy, and he was
44:37.680: You know, and I'm talking I should give context to the this would be like mid 90s when I started doing computer editing.
44:45.119: And he had an A B role edit suite in the den of his house up in the hills.
44:51.120: And he had, you know, three BVW well, one BVW 75, we're dating ourselves here, a couple of 65s, I believe.
45:01.160: I believe it was a Sony editor.
45:03.400: Maybe it was CMX.
45:04.600: I don't know.
45:05.080: But it was, you know, a CRT with a bunch of numbers on it.
45:09.000: You know, monochrome.
45:12.039: And he didn't get it.
45:15.000: He's like, Why would I want to put everything into a computer?
45:17.400: I can just cut it here.
45:18.520: I'm like, okay.
45:20.299: Knock yourself out, dude.
45:22.539: I'm not going to fight with you.
45:23.900: I'm not going to try and tell you that this round wheel is better than the octagon wheel you have on your cart.
45:29.980: Because if you don't feel the difference, I can't help you.
45:33.020: You know?
45:34.740: Oh yeah.
45:35.380: No, I used to fight with the onliner guys all the time.
45:38.260: You know, because you'd go in with your EDL that was generated by Avid or by D Vision or whatever.
45:44.440: And they'd say, ha, didn't work.
45:45.880: And you're like, well, let me sit down for twenty minutes and you'd conform it properly.
45:49.560: And then it worked.
45:50.839: But every time after that, you would way outperform them.
45:54.119: And eventually, they all got symphony systems or they all got smokes or whatever they got.
45:59.200: Or flames, and then boop away they went.
46:02.320: Yeah.
46:04.240: You know, it's the time it's we're reaching another weird dinosaur kind of phase where things are going to really change without most of us noticing it.
46:12.340: And if you really get in there and embrace it, which probably unfortunately means mostly that you're under 25, or you're one of those dudes like you and I who totally love, okay, let's take the rules and throw them out the window.
46:23.540: Let's look at the situation with fresh eyes.
46:26.099: You know, my client needs the best possible fix for this.
46:29.060: What is it right now?
46:30.339: Oh, okay, it's this thing.
46:31.700: I've never tried it, but it looks to be this.
46:33.619: Let me try it, and I'll get back to you.
46:35.060: Hey, that's it.
46:35.780: Yeah, and I think that there's
46:40.080: You know, there's I almost see like three generations here, and I don't know how old you are, Joe, Joe, but I was born in 1962.
46:48.000: That's no secret.
46:49.619: I think your under 25 crowd, they don't care.
46:52.819: Just give me, you know, they're going to open up a laptop.
46:55.460: A laptop, that's crazy.
46:57.040: And they're going to search for something that says editor, oh, fine, I'll cut in this.
47:01.120: Boom, they're done.
47:03.200: It's the twenty five to thirty-five crowd, maybe a little older, that are
47:09.580: that have maybe never worked professionally in an era without final cuts, you know, four, five, six, and seven.
47:18.599: You know, that's all they knew.
47:20.359: It's like, well, you mean I might have to learn a new app?
47:23.240: And I go, yeah.
47:24.520: You know, I got news for you.
47:25.720: This is the 12th or 13th platform I've had to learn.
47:29.240: And you've only been using this one, but the last ten years or fifteen years have been very unusual.
47:36.680: And then there's guys like me.
47:40.260: And maybe you, I think you're about my age, probably, who are looking at this and going, you know what, I've been here before, I've seen this happen.
47:49.200: You know, we've done these transitions, and I'm at the point now where I realize when I see those transitions happening, I actually do want to get ahead of it because it's going to happen.
48:01.120: I'm not going to stop it.
48:02.740: it doesn't matter how hard I dig my heels in, it's going to happen.
48:08.180: And I want to get ahead of it.
48:09.460: And I think the aha moment for me was when I realized, you know, it it's one thing to do like a tape based workflow
48:17.420: and transition to an IT-based workflow.
48:20.700: In other words, I'm taking data off of cards instead of digitizing tapes.
48:25.440: And I think for a lot of people, a lot of people still can't deal with that.
48:29.119: You know, they want all their stuff on tape.
48:31.040: I was like, ugh, whatever.
48:32.320: Okay.
48:33.520: Knock yourself out.
48:35.560: But I think the next step is really it's that transition from an IT based workflow to a data based workflow.
48:46.260: And I'm not saying database, but I'm data-based.
48:50.020: You know, two separate words there.
48:53.340: And I think that it really has to do.
48:56.380: And Philip Hodgetts hit the nail on the head three years ago when he started pounding his fist about the metadata, metadata, metadata.
49:04.460: And I was like, yeah, whatever, Philip.
49:06.740: And I got to say, Philip, I apologize, you were dead on right.
49:11.860: And that really is about that.
49:13.540: And as I'm looking at this little real estate project that I have
49:16.720: which is one of these things, and it's an interesting Bellwether project because it's a thing that is growing out of hand really quickly.
49:26.720: And I think that, that's the kind of thing that people need to be aware of is that these sort of problems that you are going to run into in a fully IT based workflow
49:39.640: They will sneak up on you.
49:42.600: And not having things cataloged and searchable, and you know, it's going to be a nightmare.
49:50.040: And you've got to get ahead of it.
49:53.240: Oh, yes.
49:54.040: If any of that, no, you're totally on the ball.
49:58.680: Where you know, now that we've seen a bunch of changes, you see change coming.
50:03.160: And I think it was
50:05.160: I think it was good old Chairman Mao who said, you know, when you see the wind coming, you know, like you can build a wind break, but the really smart man builds a windmill.
50:17.060: Like, oh, okay.
50:18.580: That makes a lot of sense.
50:20.900: Like, rather than protect yourself and your point of view from change, go with it.
50:27.480: Because, yeah, there's no stopping the wind.
50:30.600: Right.
50:31.080: It's going to happen.
50:33.080: That's a great thing.
50:33.800: Oh, yeah.
50:35.760: Thanks.
50:36.320: Yeah, I was, you know, mouse at it.
50:37.760: I just, I think I, you know, I think I saw it in a movie, actually.
50:41.839: I think that's going to be the name of this episode: Windbreaks or Windmills.
50:45.860: So uh I believe um I believe you have a little bit of a history, and uh correct me if I'm wrong, of cutting trailers.
50:54.740: Is that correct?
50:55.700: Did I hear that correctly?
50:57.900: So the place so right now, the industry that I've been working in in the last year has been the trailer industry, and we're all looking a lot at
51:07.760: You know, how to embrace change driven by the studios, how to embrace change driven by the content.
51:15.700: You know, trailers, in an interesting way, trailers are kind of a microcosm of the film industry where you look at the piece and it's a 30-second summation.
51:26.020: Of the most palatable parts of the film, where you can watch a trailer and you go, That looks like a great movie, and you get to the theater and go, I don't even see most of these shots.
51:36.500: What happened?
51:37.220: I thought I was gonna like it.
51:38.500: What happened?
51:40.560: So, you know, but for me, it's really interesting in that, you know, unlike working, you know, like more on the long form side.
51:50.500: You know, like in this industry, we're exposed to every major production that's happening.
51:54.820: We'll send you all kinds of content.
51:56.980: They'll send you three GP movies for BlackBerries.
52:00.740: For, you know, like here we only have this day's worth of shooting at 320 by 240.
52:06.820: So the data on the shot is totally unusable and there's no metadata.
52:10.740: And then you get like weeks and weeks of Red and Alexa stuff with beautiful metadata all over it, and you'll even sometimes get C D L's.
52:20.320: So in terms of excitement and change, this is an incredibly rich environment to be in from a technological perspective.
52:27.680: And the editors, they range from guys who are twenty two who just came from cutting
52:33.820: You know, snowboard really, really great snowboard pieces to guys who have been in the industry for 30 years and have been cutting trailers for 30 years.
52:43.860: But the guy who's been in it for 30 years is an incredibly open-minded, ready for change, ready for what's next, ready for the right tool to do a better piece.
52:53.720: And so but the thing is that in marketing, there's so little time, and it's so important because you don't want to be the executive who decided to save fifty bucks
53:04.420: And so when you save fifty bucks by not putting a spot for Tin Cup up, it bombs.
53:09.540: And everyone says, Well, how come nobody went to the movie theater?
53:11.860: Whose job was that?
53:12.820: And all the fingers come back to you.
53:14.960: Wait, so you really want Tin Cup bombed?
53:17.680: Wait, Tin Cop bombed?
53:19.600: What happened?
53:21.120: I thought that was a good movie.
53:22.960: Sorry.
53:23.520: Well, I'm just saying.
53:24.880: So.
53:26.520: In terms of an evolutionary process, this is really exciting.
53:30.839: And it's also that a lot of the engineers now, thanks to the interwebs
53:36.440: We're able to talk to each other and say, well, I'm doing this.
53:38.839: Is this working for you?
53:40.040: This is working for me.
53:41.800: And so it's kind of gone from being a bunch of guys working in these isolated mad scientist laboratories waiting to flip the switch to launch the nukes.
53:50.000: And not having any idea what's going on in the outside world.
53:53.040: It's a much more interwoven technological community and
53:59.900: It is definitely different from a lot of the other formats in terms of the stuff that comes in is so driven by the marketing and other work that
54:10.220: You know, there isn't as much of a like working with Baz Luhrmann is something else where there's Baz and there's Baz's vision of what you're gonna do and that's what's gonna happen.
54:18.700: And you can show Baz or you can still show Steve Jobs an iteration on what they're thinking of.
54:24.720: And they're really clear about, I don't like that.
54:27.119: You know, or if it's Steve, he says, that's crap.
54:29.359: Right.
54:29.839: And that's it.
54:30.400: Like, that's the end of that thing.
54:32.340: And this is much more of a people go, well, I don't know.
54:35.460: Let's test it and we'll see.
54:37.060: And oh, the test came back, and audiences like it.
54:39.460: Although, you know, if you've been around, you've been to the testing audiences, they're terrifying.
54:44.420: Yeah.
54:45.839: So in terms of how trailers are different from the other groups, hopefully I'm kind of describing it where it's really strange in that we're sort of a petri dish of super fast change in some areas.
54:58.720: And then driven by really, really unusual factors.
55:01.839: So it's kind of great.
55:02.720: It's like being a white mouse in one of those army laboratories where we live
55:07.120: For about six weeks, and there's like 18 generations that happen in six weeks.
55:11.120: So you get to see all these changes and changes and changes.
55:14.160: And then eventually they put you into one of the
55:18.300: Want a centrifuge, and then they pull out your DNA and go, oh, so that's what changed.
55:22.780: So, yeah, I'm probably ready for the centrifuge pretty soon.
55:25.820: But man, it's really been super exciting.
55:29.060: Yeah, it has been.
55:30.420: De most definitely.
55:31.700: And I think that the last time I remember getting this excited about a piece of software was like Final Cut Two.
55:44.760: And I would have been more excited by Final Cut One, except I had just spent a bunch of money on a Media 100, so I was kept convincing myself it wasn't good, it wasn't good, it wasn't good.
55:55.520: A MIDI 100 was a really interesting, interesting thing.
55:59.840: It really was because it was tied to hardware, and I don't think most people fully understood that.
56:04.359: And if you go back, look here, we're going to go old man here for a little bit.
56:07.560: So if you go back to that era and you hear everybody trying to compare the Media One Hundred software to the Final Cut
56:15.580: one software, and they didn't understand why you couldn't have more video tracks.
56:19.660: And I was like, 'cause the software's just a remote control to the hardware.
56:24.620: They didn't get that.
56:25.820: They couldn't wrap their head around that.
56:30.820: And I do realize that eventually Media One Hundred came out with a software only version, but I'm going back to like late nineties when it was just tied to the XR card or whatever it was.
56:42.799: And then the Vincent.
56:44.079: Oh, yeah.
56:44.799: Oh, yeah.
56:45.200: The Vincent.
56:45.839: Yes, that was the 6.
56:47.119: 0 card or whatever.
56:49.440: Okay.
56:49.839: Okay.
56:50.160: We're losing people here.
56:53.200: So Joe, what do you think we need to be on the lookout?
56:58.560: What interests you most in the near term?
57:04.540: The thing that's interesting is we're coming across a bunch as you were saying, a bunch of editors who've never used anything but Final Cut 7.
57:12.840: And Final Cut 7 and the predecessors were fantastic.
57:17.800: I really loved working on them.
57:20.280: They did a lot of things incredibly well.
57:24.520: But now these people who've never used anything but that one product, it's like the scene it's like Logan's Run, where they come out of the dome and there's the wide, wide world outside and their minds are blown.
57:35.380: And so these guys need to get out and like listening to podcasts that tell them about all the cool stuff that Final Cut X does, even going and like some of the stuff that the other companies are talking about with their Super Everywhere product.
57:48.740: And I have people come back and say, Oh, this is incredible.
57:50.980: And I go, Well, we could we did this in seven.
57:52.740: Remember when I showed stuff to you at your house?
57:54.980: Oh, yeah.
57:55.620: Yeah, that's how we did that.
57:57.140: Yeah.
57:58.180: So it's really kind of, in my mind, it's shepherding all these people through this
58:02.940: We're going to open this door, and behind the door is the actual world of lots of choices.
58:08.220: And you need to really kind of get familiar with all these choices, but in doing so,
58:12.940: the thing you're going to get to know is yourself, where the software is going to bring up what are your limitations cognitively, where are your fear points for adventure.
58:22.380: You know, it's those things where guys who've used the same platform for their entire career never have experienced a lot of
58:30.240: What am I doing moments?
58:31.520: You know, they're like, okay, here's the shortcut.
58:34.320: Yeah.
58:35.440: And that's the thing I've always said: that you know, editors, we by nature, we are people of process.
58:40.800: And
58:41.520: we get so habitual about the way we do things that it's just difficult to rethink, you know, that process because it's what we do.
58:51.920: It is what we do.
58:54.339: One last question.
58:54.900: Yeah, it's a highly technical.
58:56.500: Yeah, yeah.
58:57.060: Yeah, one last question.
58:58.099: So I'm going to, and this is something I've been asking people recently.
59:01.140: If you could sneak into the
59:03.359: the Apple buildings in Cupertino and find the guys that were right picking the the features the next features to put into Final Cut 10.
59:10.640: 1.
59:11.200: 2 if it hasn't come out yet by the time this this plays um
59:17.240: What feature would you like to see added?
59:20.920: Multiple screens.
59:24.520: Explain.
59:25.240: There's I mean you could say there's multiple screens now.
59:29.039: Well, so one of the points where I do struggle with guys, and what they're really used to doing is if you look at one hundred Final Cut seven users
59:40.440: Yeah.
59:40.839: Maybe fifty of them will all use the standard template, but then the rest of them, none of them will have the same thing unless they learned from one of the other guys.
59:47.800: Yeah, it's crazy town on the other s display.
59:50.119: Yeah.
59:51.360: Yeah, and yeah, like so I have guys with four 24 inch 2K displays that are running all kinds of stuff all over the place.
59:59.640: And you know, yeah, I guess I could bug them about you know, I remember when I was cutting stuff on a monitor that was about four inches by four inches compared to your entire desktop.
And I don't know if you need all this real estate, but they really love it. 01:00:10.320 So but again, like this is one of those things where Apple does need to kind of let loose on this one, I would say. 01:00:14.640 and let us break it apart. 01:00:20.920 And yes, that's going to cause some difficulty, but by letting us reshape the way that we experience the UI, 01:00:22.280 Then the UX, the user experience of the user interface, will change the way that the program interface is with us. 01:00:30.380 And that's one easy way for Apple to get our contextual feedback back in terms of, hey, have you noticed that no one ever opens that thing? 01:00:38.000 Yes, you don't need that thing. 01:00:45.920 Yeah. 01:00:48.740 No, I would agree. 01:00:49.540 I would like to be able to customize the user interface. 01:00:50.500 But I will say, and maybe this is some of their logic, and it's always interesting to kind of, you know, you know 01:00:54.500 peek behind the curtain into the the chocolate factory, so to speak, that I've talked about. 01:01:02.080 I wonder if 01:01:09.440 Not that I wonder, but I do know that when I'm showing, when I'm teaching the software to people, it is easier because I know where everything is and they haven't splattered their menus all over. 01:01:12.960 It's like, ah, where'd that thing go? 01:01:23.359 So maybe that is some of their motivation. 01:01:25.240 But I agree, it would be nice to be able to say, I want to keep my scopes open and I want to keep them over there. 01:01:27.880 Yeah, although honestly, at at this point, when I go and talk to the elves who make the final cut stuff, the first thing you have to do is you have to hug them and say, I don't want eight. 01:01:35.099 I really don't want eight. 01:01:43.740 I love ten. 01:01:45.260 Someone else has already made eight. 01:01:47.020 You don't have to worry about it anymore. 01:01:48.540 I'll never mention it to you. 01:01:50.140 I promise. 01:01:51.660 Yeah, let's make 11. 01:01:52.559 I'm really excited for 11. 01:01:54.079 Let's go. 01:01:55.599 Yeah, no, I'm good. 01:01:56.240 I don't want eight either. 01:01:57.440 I'm perfectly happy. 01:01:58.559 Joe, if people want to learn more about what you're doing and find you down there in LA Town, what's the best way to find you online? 01:02:01.020 Are you on Twitter? 01:02:08.620 I am. 01:02:10.820 And in fact, on Twitter, I'm Joe Gill. 01:02:11.460 Perfect. 01:02:16.180 Which is amazing. 01:02:17.300 Yeah. 01:02:18.260 That's probably the best way to get a hold of me. 01:02:19.160 I've got like 10 email addresses, including an AOL one. 01:02:21.160 Yeah, I know. 01:02:24.440 But just hit me on Twitter. 01:02:27.579 That's the best way to do it. 01:02:29.740 Perfect. 01:02:31.020 Yeah. 01:02:32.380 Joe, thanks for your time, and we'll do this again sometime, okay? 01:02:33.099 Awesome. 01:02:36.859 All right. 01:02:37.500 Take care. 01:02:37.820 So there you have it. 01:02:40.700 Did you catch that Chairman, Chairman Miao, a quote he said about 01:02:42.220 You know, if the wind is coming, you can either build a windbreak to hide from the wind, or you can build a windmill, which is going to provide you power. 01:02:48.099 And I think that it is a great analogy of what's going on in the industry right now. 01:02:58.640 I think the smart people are looking at the way 01:03:04.960 Things are changing. 01:03:08.320 And I'm not even talking about Final Cut 10 at this point. 01:03:09.360 I'm just talking about the fact that we are generating so much more data 01:03:12.320 that we need to have so much more access to. 01:03:16.240 And it really does fall into that category that Philip Hodgetts has been talking about for three years, metadata, metadata, metadata. 01:03:18.640 And if you're smart, you're going to figure that out. 01:03:26.320 And that's what we're trying to do in our business. 01:03:31.600 And where I work, and it's highly likely you should be doing the same thing. 01:03:35.680 So, anyway, that's another episode of The Grill. 01:03:41.839 Thanks for listening. 01:03:44.640 We'll have another one on Monday. 01:03:45.599 And oh, and by the way, I just want to say a little thing here. 01:03:47.700 Monday's episode, the one with my mom, she was really touched that people were like tweeting and talking. 01:03:54.100 Yeah, my 81. 01:03:58.660 She's actually 81, I say 82. 01:03:59.780 My 81-year-old mother is a she's on Twitter. 01:04:01.380 Yeah, she's pretty cool. 01:04:04.580 And she was like, Really? 01:04:05.940 People are listening? 01:04:07.140 I go, Yeah, mom, really. 01:04:07.940 A lot of people listen to the show. 01:04:08.980 She goes, Yeah, you should really do this. 01:04:10.340 I go, Mom, I do do this. 01:04:11.940 I do interviews all the time. 01:04:13.700 But anyway, I had a great time talking to my mom last week on Mother's Day, and thank you for listening and indulging me in that. 01:04:15.460 Once again, that's it for this episode. 01:04:25.100 We'll be back next week with another, or next Monday, with another episode of Final Cut Grill. 01:04:26.860 Later, later. 01:04:32.300