RE: DS and FCP

[Kristen Maxwell <kris(at)evilcyborg.com>]

I agree that Final Cut's democratization of editing tools (to a larger 
extent than Adobe did with Premiere) has chruned up a lot of "dregs," 
and along the same lines there are producers who want to exclusively use 
FCP and drive the rates down.

However, I know that the inverse has been true for a long time- yahoos 
who can afford an AVID system and a Beta deck (probably DVCPRO these 
days) go out charging 100+ hourly bench rates and don't know a story arc 
from a hole in the ground (you know, these are the yutzes who all have 
spinning globes as their logos). I've worked for these kinds of people, 
and they're no less annoying or damaging to the field of editing than a 
punk kid who "knows how to edit" because he can drag n drop a clip into 
a timeline.

I think that we as editors have the burden of dispelling the myths about 
the platform determining the value, and therefore the price of our 
services, to our customers. We can't really expect them not to want to 
pay less for a FCP editor when there are still plenty of editors out 
there inflating their prices because they have Avids. If we really want 
to have people value our skills and services, then we have to move 
beyond the old model of "selling the system."

In my mind, an editor who is nimble enough to take a project in and out 
of Final Cut, Motion, Shake, After Effects and Soundtrack to get the job 
done is worth more than the staunch Avid user who only ever uses the 
defaults on all the tools. Again, this is not because FCP is any better 
or worse than Avid- it's all in how you drive it.

Kristen Maxwell
www.thecacophone.com


--
"It's not that I fear failure. I just fear failure in front of other people."
- Robert Rodriguez, "Rebel Without a Crew"

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