Tuesday, June 28, 2011

The Final Cut

Apple released the latest incarnation of their vaunted Final Cut Pro software. The professional community has been most vocal about the huge changes in the basic assumptions in the software. Gone are dozens of features common to video editors of days yore, and in their place, heavily streamlined (dare I say 'dumbed down?') interface and features more tuned to the modern 10th grader.

Video pro's don't like this: it's their domain, after all. What's this, a new set of tools that makes their existing skillset obsolete? Hello music business in 1993?? This is the video editing world's ADAT.

Apple has realized the future isn't with the professional class: it's with the amateurs right now. Here Comes Everybody, as Godin famously quipped. Attendance to movies continues to fall - people just don't have the time anymore, and don't care. So who needs a product to make movies? Very few, that's who.

FCPX is made for people that don't have backgrounds in editing, and don't care to, either, They just have something they need to show/say RIGHT NOW and getting it on YT/iCNN with all due haste is the primary objective.

I'd like to say I didn't see it coming, but I did. I've been saying for years the film business only started its technologically induced transformation - the distro and exhibition side got hit first, but the real revolution in production is just getting started.

If you cling to the old shit, you're going to be eclipsed by people more passionate than you.