April 2013
1 post
February 2013
2 posts
January 2013
1 post
December 2012
3 posts
April 2012
1 post
January 2012
1 post
Final Cut Pro X: a sketchbook for students?
Science writer and filmmaker Tom Levenson asked me for my thoughts on the whole Final Cut Pro 7 vs Final Cut Pro X thing, because he was wondering what he should use with students in his filmmaking classes. I wrote my thoughts to him in an email, but figured I might as well share them here too. This was prompted by an app I saw that purports to convert FCP7 project files into FCPX files. If it could also convert them backwards to FCP7 — so you could hot-swap your projects between both editing paradigms — that would be truly awesome.
I’m torn. It seems obvious that Apple is going to have to let FCP7 die at some point. And it also seems clear that they’re distancing themselves from serving pro markets — the Mac Pro tower hasn’t seen a decent upgrade in years. That doesn’t seem to bode well for putting much stock in FCPX as a truly professional-grade postproduction solution.
However…
Just because Apple may be distancing itself from serving the pro market in terms of feature filmmakers, TV producers, and other “big scale” production workflows, doesn’t mean they’re necessarily leaving mixed-media/multimedia producers behind. I’ve heard that FCPX can be pretty powerful for quickly putting together short films for the web shot on DSLRs and other tapeless media that outputs h.264 rushes. And because you can edit any codec natively without transcoding, it sounds great for remixing and collaging footage from the internet. It can also (apparently) run like lightning on a Macbook Air.
So FCPX might be a pretty great teaching tool. Like a sketchbook for short-form editing or experimenting. If I had the money to buy an Air just for the hell of it, I’d put FCPX on it for exactly this purpose. Not as a bulletproof postproduction solution, but as a sandbox for messing around with ideas on the fly, like this (a mix of original DSLR footage and found stuff from the web, cut together in about a day):
July 2011
2 posts
June 2011
6 posts
“The blue of rest stops (F.S. No. 15090), the brown of recreation signage (F.S. No. 10055), and acres of instructional green (F.S. No. 14115) sprang from America’s expressways like ripe military-industrial fruit.”
—
Americhrome by Graham T. Beck - The Morning News
Fascinating reportage on Federal Standard 595, the government equivalent of a Pantone color chart.
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Could Better Displays Prevent Nearsightedness? - Technology Review →
technologyreview.com
My wife and I are both nearsighted as shit. We’ve made peace with the fact that our soon to be born little nerdling is probably going to be fitted for specs before he/she hits 1st grade.
But what if we could actually limit the damage to our sweet little coke-bottle-eyed angel? There’s an interesting theory that underexposure to bright outdoor light exacerbates or even causes juvenile nearsightedness. (That’s why it correlates with being a nerd: you were inside reading while the jocks were out playing ball every day.) If screens on iPads, laptops, and other things that my kid will inevitably be using all the time could be made to perform better outdoors, maybe he/she would be more inclined to do their nerdy development outdoors and save their eyesight. Maybe.
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May 2011
7 posts
“The pointer onscreen briefly turned into a spinning beachball as “the program” called “bin Laden is still out there” suddenly hung, then halted… and then, doink, process killed, pointer restored.”
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How it felt (or, non-felt) when I heard the news. Why that’s a good thing:
April 2011
30 posts
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“I have the funny sense now when I’m reading a good book that I’m reading the news—it’s fresh and important and happening now—and when I read the news I’m reading sort of tepid fiction.”
—An excerpt from Peggy Noonan’s media diet, from The Atlantic’s most excellent series ‘What I Read.’ (via erin)
“People—myself included—frequently part with their money on the web, but only when it’s easy. If iTunes has taught us anything, it’s that easy beats free.”
—Mandy Brown: On the news
“The Pale King is not a finished object. Reviewing it as a novel is like eating whatever was in a dead person’s fridge and calling it a dinner party and comparing it to the dinner parties the deceased gave in the past.”
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Scocca : David Foster Wallace Wrote Two Novels, and The Pale King Is Not One of Them
I have to agree. But I’m really glad people are writing about it.
“You want to transform peoples’ lives into games so they feel as if they’re doing something worthwhile? Why not just shoot them up with drugs so they don’t notice how miserable they are?”
—Gamification: Ditching reality for a game isn’t as fun as it sounds. - By Heather Chaplin - Slate Magazine
“You can either see founding a company as something you’re doing because you want to produce good software, or you can see it as something you do so you can sell your stock and make a killing and move on.”
—Wil Shipley: Success, and Farming vs. Mining (via marco)
“Was it the idea? The execution? The timing? There are a lot of excuses being floated,” an executive told the Times. Here’s a hunch: maybe it was that whole “THE CHARACTERS LOOK LIKE THE %*#@ING UNDEAD” thing.”
—Did The “Uncanny Valley” Kill Disney’s CGI Company? | Co.Design
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