[Frameworks] query for those who teach filmmaking

[Flick Harrison]

David, all your arguments are reasonable (and I always love reading your posts) but gear wears out, updates break things, and cameras and tape break down.  I've seen whole computer labs lose firewire because one person plugged a shazzed-up cable into all ten cameras in a single day.

That's the sad technical reason to eventually leave FCP7.  But more importantly, for creative reasons:

We are only catching up right now in video land to the power of cinematic lenses for no-budget filmmaking a la Pip's Super-8 program - i.e. DSLR video.  64-bit editing is what we need now to make best use of that.

If you want to shoot DSLR video, then you shouldn't be using an old computer with FCP 7.  The overlap of those technologies was too short, the file sizes of DSLR footage too big, and the memory-space of 32-bit software is too small.  FCP7 will sloooooow you down, and that's bad creatively.  Nevermind the more-intuitive interface, and the ease of capture and file management if you let FCPX handle everything, which can get students up and cutting faster without messing up their codecs, formats etc.

With Premiere or FCPX, you can edit DSLR footage properly.  I worked on a feature on FCP7 last year and only when I transferred the whole thing to Premiere did I see the actual frame rate it was shot at in full resolution; FCP7 just couldn't play it properly, on the same exact computer, rendering or no.

SO that's a solid reason to leave FCP7 behind.  The other is general rendering / speediness. I think I get more creative when I can scrub through potential effects in the FX browser than throwing them into my timeline, tweaking them, and watching it render before I can even see what it will look like.

I HATE planned obsolescence for all the same reasons you do, and I am NOT an early-adoption evangelist, quite the opposite.  I read recently that social uses of any technology only become interesting when the technology itself has become boring.  And I agree for the most part.

As for putting tape on a shelf; I burn the camera card to Blu-Ray the same time I capture it to disk, or for FCP I archive projects like this:

http://blog.flickharrison.com/2014/02/long-term-archiving-projects-for-final-cut-pro-x/

Video is not film; a 50-year-old camcorder will probably not power up or connect to working equipment.  If it did you would find no video tape available, or that your old tapes had crumbled to dust.  We don't control these things, any more than we can control the disappearance of 16mm film stock, technicians and projectors.  Experimental artists are a sideshow in the industries of the world.

I left FCP7 for Premiere as soon as I saw the writing on the wall.  I prefer to abandon ship when I have time to do so smoothly, rather than in a panic when an update breaks something I relied on.  Here's two articles I wrote as to why:

http://blog.flickharrison.com/2011/07/software-of-the-spectacle/

http://blog.flickharrison.com/2013/04/switch-to-premiere-pro/

But after a few years, I started to see that FCPX had surpassed Premiere for me as an experimental / media artist:

http://blog.flickharrison.com/2014/03/fcp-the-once-and-future-king-of-editing-software/

I wrote lots on those articles so I'll pass the mic now and shut up...

- Flick



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* WHERE'S MY ARTICLE, WORLD? http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Flick_Harrison 

* FLICK's WEBSITE: 
http://www.flickharrison.com

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