>Does Apple Perpetuate Mediocrity? Company Releases New Video Editing Bundle
Yesterday at NAB in Las Vegas, Apple announced its new video editing suite, Final Cut Studio 2. As always, the new package of software is a bundle of upgraded previous software that makes life even easier if you are a professional video editor… or amature video editor with extra cash. On one hand, Apple has been bringing great tools to the entertainment world for years, on the other hand, film festival submissions are up by thousands every year with the same number of submissions accepted (In 2007, Sundace received over 6,000 and accepted only 48 films). Outside of the professional world, this clearly indicates that Apple has instilled confidence in just about every Tom, Dick and Jane who at one point in their lives wanted to “get into movies.” Steve Jobs has enabled our creative souls, and yes, a whole lot of movies are being made that will never see the light of day and shouldn’t. This sparks a new conversation that us career content providers in Hollywood have been kibitzing about for years.
As a filmmaker, allow me to be the first to encourage the young movie maker, venturing out to expand his or her horizons. Private film schools are popping up everywhere because the current undergraduate programs are filled to capacity. It’s the digital era and the leader undoubtedly is Apple. The company clearly recognized a void several years ago when it decided to chase AVID, a $60K+, out-of-the-box non linear editing system for professional editors that’s been around since the early 1990s and has always run on modified Macintosh machines. Surpassing all competition (Adobe Premiere, Lightwave), Apple is now just about the only system you’ll find at film schools and in high school video classes. New media education has never been stronger. The irony, however, is that not everyone is suited for a career in the most competitive industry on the planet which by the shear numbers gets even more competitive as each filmmaker is born after a few months of playing around with Final Cut. But, stop me right here. That doesn’t matter. All of those people can go work on the web.
Hence, with Apple’s ever-improving video compression, I arrive at a fool’s theory of why reality TV will NEVER die — no matter what. There are a lot of talented people (young and old) who are creating videos, cartoons, shorts, and spoofs and then posting their masterworks on You Tube. What happens? The cream rises to the top and ultimately gets noticed by the world, but is still in direct competition with the professionals whose work is also posted on YouTube. But, the most shocking, clever homemade nuggets will always prevail, and eventually, Hollywood will come a callin’. And these nuggets overwhelmingly consist of reality content. Does reality TV perpetuate medicrity, sensationalism, voyeurism and laziness? There’s certainly an argument there, but I suppose that’s a bigger discussion for another time. (I, for one, couldn’t get enough of Bravo’s commitment to bring fashion and vanity into my livingroom every week.)
At the end of the day, regardless of the mediocrity found on the web, the quality of narrative movies and television will always be dictated by the story tellers, then most importantly, the bottom line. Is there a profit? The profit is policed by the studio executives in the ivory tower, but the story tellers, in this case, are writers–people who have learned to create the blueprint for a film or show by writing, by studying literature and other movies, and by more writing–not so much by non-linear video editing. The media revolution has already begun and Apple makes it easier and more inviting for anyone to jump on the train, for the better or worse. The promising aspect to this analysis is that even though medicrity has never been higher, positive creativity has never been higher as well, and the Web, with its ability to share and distribute content, will no doubt find itself pushing the media envelop as it unveils new forms of content every few months.
Apple in the millenium is doing for video what it did in the ’80s for Desktop Publishing, it created the standard as Microsoft capitalized on that standard by combining windows with the most prevalent platform - IBM. In the ’90s, the standard was elevated to the design world for photography, graphics, and audio. But in the end, however, not all of us are writers and not all of us are editors, so when it comes to the newest shiny enablers from companies like Apple, we must ask ourselves: do we drive the tools or are the tools driving us?
A suggestion from one fool to another, don’t use this great new software from Apple just because you can. Try making a plan and using it with a purpose and mission in mind that, perhaps, might even exceed YouTube or MySpace. Push yourself beyond mediocrity, look around at what everyone else is doing, and “think different.” Hmmm, something even Apple encourages…
See what some filmmakers are doing with Final Cut Studio:
David Fincher (Director of Zodiac, Fight Club, and Alien 3)
The Coen Brothers (Directors of O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Fargo, The Hudsucker Proxy)
Miranda July (Independent Filmmaker of Me and You and Everyone We Know)
If you thought this was foolish, check these out: