Captions provided by JFD Communications, LLC [SOMBER MUSIC] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Wes Plate:
I was at the SuperMeet at NAB 2011 when Apple announced Final Cut Pro X. I was one of the vendors in the tabletop area just outside the doorway to the theater. Michael Cioni:
My booth was literally the last booth right before you went into the Apple section. So as the line gathered there are photos of us doing our demos with literally hundreds and hundreds
of people just waiting in line. Bill Davis: I actually was the
guy who lifted the ropes to let the crowd into that famous meeting. [LAUGHS]
And it was the most amazing thing because people ran to get seats. Wes (on camera): You’re all crazy! And even the security
guards were shouting like stop running, walk, please walk. Everyone knew something was going
to be announced that night. There was so much anticipation. Bill: The presentation starts. Benjamin Brodbeck: It was surreal. Everybody’s cheering, everybody's clapping, everybody’s happy. Richard Townhill: Good evening! Denver Riddle:
This was a really exciting event because they had completely reengineered
Final Cut from the ground up. They made that 64 bit. They brought it into what I feel is the modern era. Steve Martin:
Everybody was really excited about it. And Randi Ubillos, the creator Final Cut Pro 7 and all the previous,
came up there and he demo’d it. People were freaking out!
They thought it was great! ♪♪ Randy over PA:
So we’ll start out with the organization, all I do is wave the cursor across the frames I can just double-click on the edit here You get all sorts of different metadata
that I can choose to show. Things move around, but the audio that’s associated with that clip moves with it. Ryan Velin: We saw some cool things. We saw some things that we didn’t understand. And we saw some things that we thought, okay, maybe this will make sense at a later time. Thomas Grove Carter: When they did the
demo of dragging out an audio clip and it knocking another audio clip out the way, Peter Steinauer:
You can slide a clip down to the timeline things move out of the way. I was like wow! Benjamin: it’s got a magnetic timeline. And people are still cheering and
I’m like, wait a minute! No this isn’t what I want! What are you doing? Wes: and I can remember especially when they announced the price. Richard:
So we’ve decided to make it available for the amazing price of $299 [CROWD CHEERS] There was just this gasp that
went throughout the crowd as some people were thrilled about the new price and that people were horrified by it. Jeff Greenberg:
So I’m in the back of the room at NAB and I’m watching some interesting
looks on people’s faces. Some are rah rah that Apple
fanboy-ism at its finest. Some people were confused. Some people were cheering because they think that Apple
had really made a misstep. Bill: so I go to sleep that night
I wake up the next morning I go online to my normal sources and everybody is just angry as hell! [LAUGHS]
What happened? Benjamin: It was mutiny. Bill: And you know it’s iMovie Pro! And it’s oh my god you’ve destroyed editing! And everything is gonna fall apart! And I was going, what the heck! There’s a disconnect between
what the Internet chatter is. And what the actual experience
of people with something like a product launch is. Nobody had seen it. Nobody had touched it. But everybody had an opinion about it. That is astonishing! ♪♪ Conan O’Brien:
Apple just released a new version of their famous editing software, Final Cut Pro. But apparently it’s so different from
the last version of Final Cut video and film editors all over Hollywood
are having a very hard time adjusting to it. Randy Ubillos: We had the launch of
Final Cut X, came out, and a lot of the very loud people were the existing users who felt like oh my god the world’s
changing out from under us. You know, how can this be? And so there was a lot of bad
publicity that was running around. Mark Spencer:
It was an exciting time because everyone to understand
how this new thing worked. And there was obviously
also a lot of, I don't know, blowback or people being very
upset because it was different. Sam Mestman:
I remember seeing the video, because there was like a pirated video
that everyone saw on the internet of this, And I was like, this is the future!
And then I opened it up and I realized the future was not quite here yet. Peter Wiggins: I started using Final Cut
Pro X on the day it was released. And I did the thing everybody did is open it up, go oh my god.
and shut it back down again. Chris Fenwick:
I think that my response was, what the hell! Charlie Austin: Oh god, what is this? Kevin Bailey: this could be really cool. And I really hate it. Benjamin: some of those foundational things as editors that we’ve been doing
for so many years was just here’s a piece of paper we’re going to
garble it up and toss it over the shoulder. And the playbook’s out and this is what’s in. Noah Kadner: You couldn’t look
at that software and not be stricken by how radical a departure it was from what had come before. Walter Murch: There was this
shocking event that happened in June which was the publication
of Final Cut Pro Ten or X. I quickly looked at it and said, I can’t use this! There was a better way to take off the bandaid. You know, the actual way that it was done... By simultaneously releasing a product
that we couldn’t use professionally and end-of-lifeing the product
that we were using sent a, kind of, a stick in the eye message. Larry Jordan: It was a disaster. At every possible level of the word disater. Editors were not ready. Apple was not ready. The tool was not ready.
Final Cut X didn’t really become usable until the seven months after the release. [CRASHING] [EXPLOSION] Steve: Apple didn’t help themselves by saying we’re no longer supporting Final Cut 7. We're doing a hard cut from
Final Cut 7 to Final Cut X. and they probably should have done it dissolve. Randy: I had a little a different idea about
the way we should have gone about the transition. I thought there should have been
an overlap between 7 and X. My idea was for every copy of X you bought you should get a free copy of 7. And that would be a way to sort of push it in. That’s not the Apple way of doing things, the Apple way is feet first and it certainly made a big splash. Richard Taylor: Apple presented us with a cliff. On one side of the cliff was Final Cut Pro 7 On the other side of the cliff was Final Cut Pro X. You got to the edge, ah-oh! Either you got to jump over or you have to stay. [SCREAMS] Peter: If you look at the big transitions that Apple has done in the past
they’ve run them in parallel. They’ve said we’re here or there,
we want you to move over at your leisure. With the launch of Final Cut Pro X
they lost a million users overnight. Dave Cerf: Even if it’s a more positive shift it can be traumatic, you know.
We burned down your old house but we replaced it with a
mansion that’s twice as big! It’s like, wow. awesome, I think? This is a really nice house but
you burned down my old house? Are you my friend? Are you my enemy? Esther Sokolow: the main arguments that I
heard a lot of people talking about was frustration about the lack of support for legacy. That they had built whole companies based
on infrastructure that now was obsolete. Noah: There were a lot of
workflows in the industry that were really tightly built
on how Final Cut 7 worked and ecosystems that I could just
picture falling apart completely or needing to be rethought or
perhaps no longer needing to exist. Michael Horton: They invested a lot of money and a lot of their time and energy
into this thing and Apple just said, Sorry, we’re changing and you
can’t buy Final Cut 7 anymore, or 6 anymore and... Philip Hodgetts: I did feel that
many people, I don't know, took them more seriously than it really
had any effect on them in the short term. It’s people like you and Greg and I... I mean, they announced new Final Cut and
our sales dropped overnight. Half our income just goes away. Not many people can lose half their
income overnight and not feel the effect. Gregory Clarke: When X was announced
but before it was released that sort of created an uncertainty. People stopped buying Final Cut 7 stuff thinking, Well, why would I buy something when
I’m going to go to something better? Philip: So frankly if there’s anyone
that’s got a reason to have hated the launch of Final Cut Pro X it’s us. Because it hit us in the pocket immediately after it was shown at NAB. But we got over it and went forward
and supported Final Cut Pro X because of what it is not because
we hated the way it was launched. James Tonkin: I find it interesting
that so many people stepped completely away from Final Cut as a system when Final Cut X came out. And I think a lot of it is that people are scared of change. Alex: I think they found it personally threatening because they didn’t actually know what they were. And if you’re a storyteller it doesn’t
matter what kind of software you use. Larry: People defined themselves as editors second and tool users first. Thomas Grove Carter: It’s not how you do it, whether you’re patching tracks
or making clip connections. None of those things are actually editing. Those are the functions of the
editing software you’re using. Sam: It's the editors who just get
by on their technical ability, they’re the ones who are afraid. Because their entire professional
job is to push buttons. But the people who know the craft of editing? It’s just learning another program for them. Steve: The pushback was more
of an emotional reaction. It was really a more visceral, I don’t want to learn something else. Why did you create this thing for me? Without actually taking the proper time to... Well what is this thing about? Randy: I know there were some people
that shifted off to other platforms. But I also saw a lot of people seeing the potential and seeing what it could do. Szymon Masiak: My reaction was
completely different than others. I remember the internet was crazy about it. But I saw a new interface and actually I liked it. Ryan: I couldn’t let go of the thought that there must be something to this program. Richard: I saw a brand new way of editing and that’s what excited me. Bill Davis: The reason that I dove into
Final Cut Pro 10 Point 0 originally was that for everything I didn’t have I had 5 things that were amazing that
I never had had before that I loved. Pierre Chevalier: Even if at the time of the
launch there were some things missing we knew that it was going to move forward. Jan Kovac: I didn’t understand what people were complaining about because I missed the brouhaha. And when I started to work on it it was pretty solid. Glenn Ficarra: I remember it coming out and there being this big kerfuffle. It wasn’t bad press. It actually had
turned into good press for me Because I’m like, okay, this is actually, they’ve done something so huge here that it's pissing a lot of people off so
I’m automatically interested. Peter: After X was launched and all the you know, people started writing and saying it doesn’t do this, it doesn’t do that, Apple have made a huge mistake. Steve Jobs phoned Randy up. Randy: I was actually at home and I get a call and it's, please hold for Steve Jobs. And I was like, oh okay, what’s going on? And it was Steve asking, what’s
going on here? What’s the deal? And I told him that we knew there were going to be people that were going to be upset. We should have had a better plan for the transition for the Final Cut 7 people. Because they had pulled Final Cut 7. And he said we need to get that
back on the market immediately. so people can buy Final Cut 7. And one of the things he said at the very end. It was actually my last conversation ever with Steve. And he said, So do you believe in this and what
we’re doing with this software? And I said, yes.
And he said, then I do too. And that was kind of Steve’s way of, you know, if we believe in what we’re
doing we’re going to get through this. We're not going to like
just let a bunch of people ranting about something
change our minds. We believe in this.
This is what we’re going to do. Michael Horton: The SuperMeet
launched Final Cut Pro X in London about two years ago. And it is time to take a closer look. Larry: Every single one of us hates change. I would love to say I adopt change with open arms. I’m dragged kicking and screaming
against my will into the new subject. I just want everything to stay the same! Probably the smartest man I’ve met is
Michael Cioni and he had a great quote. He said behavioral changes are
more important than technical ones. And if I hear one comment coming back
in the 300 emails that I get a day... behaviorial changes are at the heart of it. Why did Apple have to change this? Michael Cioni:
People sometimes wonder, why that Final Cut go to X
and not just build 8? Noah: When you look at Final Cut 7 you’re seeing a fully mature piece of software
that does what everybody wants it to do but really has a lot of inherent limitations under the hood. Ché: There was a lot of old code in the classic Final Cut Pro that didn’t take advantage of all the hardware. There were a lot of limitations. Benjamin: So many things are changing that then applications must
also change with the time. Dave: If you think about it in
terms of remodeling a house. What’s the point at which it’s more effective to just tear down
the house and build a new one? Versus kind of bolt things on
and try and make that house like live up to codes and things that you know, a city has implemented. Gregory: I think it was a very
influential thing when Apple said, we are not going to move
carbon forward into 64 bit. So there goes not just the editing application but the entire media framework that it’s based on. Both of them gone. Jeff: Apple had a major problem with Final Cut 7 They were going to have to rewrite
huge sections of this tool. Patrick Southern: If you’re going to take the
time to rewrite code from scratch because you’re doing 64 bit you might as well change some of the functionality application. Michael: Here was a group of people that were willing to take risks
on pretty much every level and essentially start over after they had really conquered quite a bit of territory. Benjamin: For Apple to kill 7 was absolutely that’s what you got to do is just got to kill your darlings. And it was a good run.
But it was old and inferior. Larry: The world is moving away from videotape, was moving away from film, and moving entirely into a digital environment. Mark Spencer: I love that they said let’s reinvent. Let's look at where things are going with digital media and let's reinvent the editing paradigm based on where we think things are going. Chris Fenwick: And in doing so clearly they had left certain features behind. And I think that people really focused on that. Iain: People really should have
maybe been paying attention. But for some reason a whole lot
of people got really emotional and just swore a lot and didn’t look back. Which is a big shame because
the new ideas that Final Cut X brought to editing are really valuable. Glenn: A company doesn’t do that
unless there’s a big thought behind it. Philip: The saying is you can’t make
an omelette without breaking eggs and you can’t have improvement
without some level of disruption. I think people want everything
to get better but never change. And anybody who thinks about that for five
minutes will realize that that’s a nonsense. Things must change in order to improve. Chris: If you had asked Henry Ford what did people really want? He probably would have said
they wanted a faster horse. But instead of making a faster horse he made the car, right? The automobile. Now if you get in an early
Ford and you had sat there and taken leather reins and thought that you could go like this
and it would make the car go faster and pull them back and make the car stop and pull them to one side the
other and make the car turn. That sounds ridiculous! Because we have the steering wheel and we have the gas and the brake. The metaphor changes and the
user interface changes to. [CLACKING] [CLACKING] Dave: It is weird what the
magnetic timeline does until you get the right metaphor for it. If you get the wrong metaphor it feels
like it’s doing things behind your back and confusing you and being smarter than you are. Wes: if you’re an experienced editor... the magnetic timeline can be a real
battle to overcome the understanding. Because everything you know
from previous NLE experience doesn’t benefit you when you’re
trying to use the magnetic timeline. Charlie: People know how Final Cut 7 or Media Composer and now Premiere work. They all work pretty much the same way so there’s not a huge learning curve. Mike Matzdorff: I could go from
here to here and be okay, and from here to here and be okay. And then from 7 to Final Cut X I’m like, why don’t I understand this? Cirina Catania: For an editor who is
involved in a very complicated project and they’ve learned that language and they’re really comfortable with it, right? They don’t have to take
their hands off the keyboard. All of a sudden the new language
comes in, a new interface comes in. You have to relearn everything
that you used to know. It doesn’t take that long but stopping in the middle of something is frightening. Thomas: I don’t begrudge people who say the timeline just doesn’t work for
them they can’t work it out. Because when you use it to begin with it’s like driving a car and the
things are in the wrong place. Or you try and turn left and it actually goes right. You know, they inverted the whole
when you delete a clip it ripples. That’s an inversion of every other NLE. Dave: What we needed to do is at least be confident as designers that we were building metaphors that actually existed in the world. So if you had all your clips as a bunch of little kids blocks sitting on a platform. Then when you pull one of the blocks out then everything would collapse up except no I’m wrong. If you did have all of a bunch of
kids blocks sitting there on a platform you pull one out they wouldn’t close up. And this was exactly the problem. So what we did was we took
this concept of the blocks on a platform and we put it at an angle. And when you put the blocks
at an angle and you take one of the blocks away they do
close up because of gravity. [CLACKING] [CLACKING] [CLACKING] [CLACKING] Chuck Braverman: You know the
magnetic timeline was very disorienting for about 10 minutes and then you realize how brilliant it is. Peter: Then you suddenly get it. And once you pass that point it's fine. Charlie: It’s a cliche but there is like an, Oh! Okay, now all this makes sense! And then once you cross that Rubicon... Yeah, there’s no going back. Mike: My brain was very much not into it. So when I actually I started meditating. Not on that in particular but just
someone said that was a good idea. And after I did I was like, well I need
to take another look at this software And so I did without prejudice and I ended up almost immediately sort
of seeing the value in it. Kevin: The paradigm of cutting in Final Cut is the way I intuitively think about it. Where other NLEs I’m thinking
about how to make an edit. Randy: Everything kind of up through Final Cut 7 and a bunch of the other systems that are out there... Were really all based on the tape metaphor. Source. Record. And very much individual tracks that
are all separate, completely independent. And as people would work on a project it became much easier to mess it
up when you change something. If you had an hour long project people didn’t want to do anything
at the beginning of the project because it would change something
20 minutes downstream or 10 minutes downstream that you wouldn’t know that
it was going to mess up. You'd have to run down and verify
that everything stayed in place. And so things just felt fragile. And that was because there
were a lot of relationships between the items and the timeline
that were in the editors head. The software didn’t know those
relationships they were just, oh you put two clips
next to each other in the timeline. Why did you put them there? Is there a particular spot in this piece of audio that is supposed to line up with
this spot this piece of video? You line up a particular way but why? And a big part of Final Cut X was
trying to get rid of those boundaries and those barriers and just make the editing be much more about the content and the result. Peter: When you look at it to
start off with you know you think why have they abandoned tracks? But what they’ve done is actually invent a better way of editing. Ryan: Everything is connected to each other. So audio is connected at a certain point in timeline. Jesús Pérez-Miranda:
It’s kind of like an assistant editor. It frees you from dealing with
tracks and dealing with whether you’re in sync or not. Thomas: It’s quicker for me to
do a change for a director than argue myself out of doing that change because I’m coming up with the reason why I don’t think it’s going to work. Peter: I don't have to sit there and worry about if a producer wants me to alter something because I know it can just pick
something up and drag it. Richard: it’s very simple to do. Grab a clip, move it, everything moves with it, timeline closes up opens up
where the new clip is going. Jan: I kind of really embraced it, new paradigm. The idea that you know you have clips we don’t film, we don't have tape. So why do we need tracks right? Jesús: The other editors are kind of linear. And I believe it’s for a reason. I believe they are not so good at
handling non-linear operations and they try to cover that. They try to show you first the linear tools because the other tools don’t work
so well in a track based paradigm. What happens if you want to
change the order of this shot? Alright so, you know let's try to move
it with the default selection tool. See what happens. See, nothing moves, you leave
a gap and you overwrite stuff. What could I do in Premiere? Of course use a modifier tool to
reverse the default behavior. Okay. So I’m just going to press command here when drag the shot and you see this is Premiere warning me something is going to happen here. Be careful. You know I’m not so good
at handling non-linear operations. Okay? So yeah. Let's try to do that and see what happens. This is a mess right? I have a gap here. I have two gaps here. My whole music track is broken in half. I have another gap here.
And I have to fix this mess. Let me show you how simple is this in Final Cut. Here have the same shot. It’s overlapping the audio, split edit as well. And I’m just going to swap the shot. And that's it. That’s how easy it is to just make
a change in your sequence. Iain: I’ve heard good user interface design described as make the simple things easy and the hard things possible. Steve: Apple has done a tremendous job of keeping the interface simple. Kevin: You can’t mistake
simplicity for a lack of power. Benjamin: Editing itself is hard enough. I don’t want to screw around
with complicated software. Alex: One definition professional
software is it’s really hard to use. So that means you have to
lots of work into learning it which means you can charge lots
of dollars per day for doing it. Noah: It’s a little bit of a gatekeeper concept where you’ve got very difficult to use professional applications that only
a few people can really figure out. Wes: Final Cut's a bit different because
it’s so accessible to new users. And I think that’s what Apple is going for. I think that they wanted some software that a new user could pick
it up and not be scared by. Ronny Courtens: We were in Bareclona. Blanquerna school. And they only teach Final Cut Pro X. Nothing else. So I asked the manager I said,
why on earth are you doing this? he said, Final Cut Pro X is
the easiest NLE to learn, to get familiar with. And so that gives us much more
time to teach them editing. And once they're editors they can learn any NLE. James: We’ve been able to teach
producers that were working on the road or just teach other people how to cut and edit. And as soon as you share this knowledge all you end up doing is
basically growing your team. Mads Larsen: It is very easy to learn
how to do simple editing in Final Cut X. On the other hand for
more experienced editors who need the complexity
Final Cut X also has that in it. Ronny: The best thing in Final Cut Pro X is performance and stability. And coming from a broadcast
background that is all we need. Jesús: If you don’t have a feature that you need you probably can find a workaround. But if you don’t have the performance
you can’t really work at all. Wes: By the way is anybody in
the room using Final Cut X? I mean is there some animosity with anybody? Yeah? Okay. No I, Listen I want to be very open about this. I’m sad that people hate Final Cut X and I’m sad that the people who love
Final Cut X feel like they’re oppressed. I just want us all to get over it. [LAUGHING] I think the animosity towards
Final Cut X by now is unfounded. I mean it’s such a professional app it’s so powerful that people who today say that it’s not good just haven’t given it a chance, they haven’t learned it. James: There's sort of this
stigma that’s still attached to it. Which I find sort of ironic when
you think how Final Cut to begin with really changed a lot
of the post production industry. Ronny: I started calling all my friends and said, do you know Final Cut Pro X?
Are you using it? And then I found out that there
was so much misinformation about this application. And I said we’re using it on really high end jobs. I have friends who use it on feature films. How can you tell me that this is not a professional application? Philip: Now it’s clearly been
demonstrated that Final Cut Pro X can be used on feature films. The fact that that is news is because
98% of feature films are still to this day cut on Media Composer. Partly because of the comfort of intrenched workflows, partly because Avid supports that studio system. Mike: It’s harder to get it into
places which are well established because studios do not like uncertainty and that’s why they go with what
works and what has worked. Sam: Right now in Los Angeles you
have to speak Avid if you want to work professionally on all of
the big Hollywood movies. Iain: The vast vast vast majority of
things are still cut on Avid for lots and lots of reasons that are all about not changing something that already works. And not about saving money. Chris: it’s the people that
get kind of mired down in what I like to call the machine. Well everybody you know everybody in the film and you
know reality TV uses Avid. So I have to use Avid! Eh... Ryan: I don’t care if Hollywood
uses Final Cut Pro X or not. We use Final Cut Pro X every day successfully. Mads: Here at Metronome we've cut more
than 50 seasons of various TV shows all cut in Final Cut X during the past five years. Ryan: We are 200 people working
at a huge organization. We have many many editors. We have many many pre editors. We have journalists. And they are all connected to a central server. Mads: When we began editing in
Final Cut X we had to find a way to work together in a server environment. You can exchange your sequences
using transfer Libraries or XML or use Keyflow Pro as an intermediate drag and
dropping between the users. So we collaborate all the time. Ryan: And many people tend to think that if Final Cut Pro X doesn’t do the exact same
thing as Avid does then it’s not suitable for professional work! Alex: In the pro world you can't
tell how good something is unless you find out what
has been used for previously. Be it a piece of equipment,
a person, or some software. And it all it takes is the right person or from other people’s perspective the wrong person to use Final Cut Pro X and then
everyone will have permission to use it. Michael: If nothing changes,
if you don’t change anything you can count on having a default future a predictable very very
simple predictable future. And that’s not what the people
on Focus are interested in. That’s not what I’m interested in and my close friends are not
interested in default futures. Some filmmakers love to be the guinea pigs because they feel like they’re walking in new territory and
that can be creatively inspiring. Other filmmakers want control and they want to be able to predict it all. And I can’t say one is better than the other but I can say which one I identify with more and I certainly identify with the people that are not settling for what is expected. Glenn: John and I, my partner, we... we decided we’re going to do our next movie digitally. I was looking into Final Cut,
I just got really interested in it and I just wondered well,
can somebody... Can you do this? The internet said no you can’t make a movie. Which immediately made me think, oh sure you can! Michael: John Requa and Glenn Ficarra
are two great examples of filmmakers who are basically saying, how can we push the walls
of creative control back? Glenn: At the time we’re very lucky. John and I were in really good
standing of Warner Brothers. We put out there I think
we want to use Final Cut. And they went okay, we’ve done
plenty of movies on Final Cut. And I kind of bit my lip and said,
okay let's just leave it there for now. And let’s get our test going. Jan: We were kind of trying to find out
what’s possible and if we'll be able to edit in Final Cut Pro X in a studio environment. Glenn: Mike Matzdorff was around. He was very instrumental
in selling it to the studio And he took them through
it and he said this is stem to stern how it’s going to work. Mike: We were able to just find out what worked. Find out what didn’t work and
what needed to be different. And you have to you have to stress test things if you want to prove them out. We were able to like laid down
a trail of bread crumbs as it were for people in the future. Michael: And with Jan's help who
was willing to take on the risk and the pressure of being
able to deliver a product that was better and faster and more
collaborative at higher qualities, that was something that you have
to have the right mindset to do. Jan: Since we were shooting digitally it seemed like a natural choice to kind of move the post-production world kind of into the future. Glenn: Jan was in the trailer nearby as we’re shooting so we would pop in there. Either go over dailies with him or he would just slop assemblies together. Michael: I mean I think a lot of editors are saying, we don’t know if we’re ready for that, if we want the directors to be able to do that. And other people are saying, oh, this would be really exciting if we had that type of collaboration. Glenn: Editing is the only department that gets the movie
for two weeks after you wrap and they get to do whatever they want. And then you go through this six
week process of breaking it down, building it back up, and it’s better to go on that journey together, you save so much more time. Michael: There’s an expectation
of what you think is possible but if you’re really innovative
you create more than that and you go further than you thought and then you get hungrier and you start building your own tools that
make the process better for you. Glenn: When we started Whiskey Tango Foxtrot we had bigger ideas. Jan: One of the big changes we did was deciding to carry original negative on our SAN. Glenn: We were cutting in original native resolution. Being our own lab. Not getting charged to pull each shot and send it to the visual effects company. Esther: Our artists were just down the hall. So my editor can hand me a shot
that he wanted to send to VFX and we could sometimes have that shot back the same day. Glenn: Mike Cioni at Light Iron is fanatstic. Even though this is taking money out of his pocket he was down with this idea. Michael: What was really cool
about Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is that the files that they
were actually editing with were higher quality than I would say any other motion picture at the time. Kevin: Final Cut being resolution independent allowed us to work in very very
high resolution 2k footage. We're looking at the camera original quality in pixel for pixel what’s going to
be on the final 80 foot screen at every theater in America. Glenn: Other director friends
that I brought in for notes and things like that just you know would say, why does your movie look so good? [LAUGHS] You know? Michael: When they’re screening
it for all these test screenings, it looks like we did a whole online. And they did the whole- and they did! They just did it themselves for free with a button. And those are the things that Final Cut does do better. But those are things that are hard to demonstrate. And so a lot of cutting rooms are missing out. But if you told editors and they understood that you could
be editing with hero media, log access, without having to de-log it yourself, without any time penalties, would you do it? Esther: There’s a sense of,
oh this is the way it is. And this is the way it always will be. But that isn’t really how film in general has been. We're an industry of technology and we’re an industry of thinkers. Glenn: We were at a time
when we did Focus where Post was kind of topping out. It was like, oh this is kind
of the way we do things and we don’t need to do it any differently and it just seemed wrong headed. Sam: The reason Hollywood hasn’t
switched over to Final Cut X is because they don’t care because they don’t have to worry about money. It’s a fraction of what they pay their A-list actor. If you are an independent filmmaker it is probably the largest part of your budget so the process with which
you create your movie has to be almost perfect if you want to have any hope
of monetizing your movie and getting to make another one. Mike: They’re going to be slow
to change because they’ve got stuff that works. Stuff that wins awards. Stuff that puts stuff on the air. And they're not going to want to change. Because there’s no motivation for them to change. They'll just say well this is how we do it here. You want to work here? And one day they will find that the people who are making the great stuff, because great stuff comes from young minds will be saying [BLEEP] you. We're going to do this. We’re going to do this we’re
going to put it on YouTube. And we’re going to we’re going to
have a million people viewing it and we’re going to make more revenue from that. And if you don’t like it, that's just too bad. Alex: It’s really cool to get
people into editing by saying you use the same so it could
be used to make feature films. That worked 10 years ago. Now, the task to create a
video is different in our lives. Everybody really does have access
to world fame and world notoriety and they don’t have to pay their dues or going up through the hierarchy of a business. Or through an industrial process. Their picture at any moment could be taken from the internet or their video could be taken from the internet and it could be put on a big billboard. That is how people see the Internet
and their own position in it right now. There’s no paying dues. So the idea of Final Cut Pro use it because it’s been used by pros is irrelevant. Now Final Cut Pro use it because
it’s really easy to get your story out whatever that is and then
people will trust your story as the one that needs to
be shared with the world and you can change the world with it. Larry: Has it changed the
definition of professional? Yes. Has it changed the market?
Totally, made it much broader. And this often threatens people who
have spent years learning a craft because they’ve spent years learning a craft and now some 20 year old got
750 million followers on YouTube and generating a billion
dollars a year in revenue and are not part of the priesthood. They’re totally separate from it. Jan: I do personally really enjoy the idea of me and John and Glenn working on a big feature on exactly the same software that a kid is using cutting his own first video and uploading it somewhere. Mark: We see it being adopted very quickly by the next generation coming up
who are using video literacy as frequently and as commonly
or probably more so than writing. Wes: I have a daughter and you know for her generation communication isn’t about writing essays. It isn’t even necessarily about photography. It's about sharing experiences through video. Alex: It’s day to day currency for
millions and millions of people. It’s an impulse that people just decide to create a video and send it
without thinking about it and then they may start thinking about it when they start thinking about it they’ll start thinking about how to tell stories. Jack: Throw leaves up in the air. Keep doing it. [RUSTLING LEAVES] Stop! Sam: People are going to start getting
together and realizing that filmmaking and movie making is actually not
something that only studios can do but it’s something that’s
actually like a recreational thing. You're going to make movies
with your friends and family and you’re going to share them
with the rest of your friends and have a good time and have
a barbecue in your backyard. Gregory: I think that that
was the goal of Final Cut X was to grow the market. Philip: Final Cut classic opened
that market unexpectedly. Andrew Baum who is the Product Manager
of Final Cut when it was launched said, we expect to sell 20 to 25
thousand units in the first 2 years. I believe they sold 120
thousand in that period and started to really look at
video seriously and realize that, no this wasn’t a tool for Avid's market. This was a tool for the entire world. Charlie Austin: It's the democratization of video. I think what Apple did with desktop publishing they're trying to do with video. Steve Jobs: We think desktop video
is going to be the next big thing. Imagine this in classrooms. Imagine classroom video reports. Imagine this with parents. Imagine the Steven Speilbergs of the world being able to use this technology when they’re kids. It's going to be unbelievable. Mark: The skill of storytelling using video is becoming something that
everybody needs to be able to do. Walter: You are not going to
graduate from high school now without making a movie. Visual literacy is part of what we need to teach. Even if you don’t become a filmmaker you need to know what goes into making a film
because films will manipulate you through the media if you don’t know
what’s happening with them. Philip: It is expected that you will make video as part of your job. And that is going to be the sort of thing that the next generation grows up with. That'll be just what they do. Video production won’t be special. Doesn't mean there won’t
be people are still making great film, great television. But what it means is that if I have a great idea and I’ve a few friends we can
probably make something without having to wait
10 years to get together a 700 thousand dollar budget
to make our short feature. Sam: Final Cut Pro X allows you to fail cheaper. You can fail for a fraction of the cost and make your 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 50th movie for what it costs me to make my first one. Gergana: I strongly disagree with
the previous state of the industry where only people who have
access to a lot of money can actually learn how to make movies. That’s not fair. Chuck: Today you have very little excuse not to make a film if you
really want to make a film. Because you don’t have to buy the film. You don’t have to process the film. You don’t have to transfer the film to videotape. You don’t have to have negative cut... Jeff: When the printing press was invented. The church wasn’t so happy in general because suddenly they
couldn’t control the message. And we fast forward and the word processor
becomes ubiquitous. Laser printers become ubiquitous. I can do desktop publishing. How many Hemingway’s are there out there? But suddenly, there's no longer the excuse, I don’t own the typewriter. I don’t own the pen. I don’t own the tools. I have a phone in my pocket that I as a filmmaker in film school would have killed to have a
picture of this sort of quality. Chris: You can shoot video on your phone. You can even rough it together in iMovie on your phone. And if you’re really smart you could push it off to
Final Cut from there. Cirina: How many times as a creative
do you have a story in your head and then what has happened in the past is, okay, it's a great idea but there’s
no way of making it come true? There’s no way of making that happen? And now there’s no excuse. You don’t have an excuse. If you’re a creative person
and you want to tell a story you have everything it takes to tell a story. So if you don’t do it it’s your fault. Sady Paulson: With video I can tell stories, influence people, and connect
with others on a whole new level. I get a lot of inquiries from people wanting me to do small to
large projects for them. I have two buttons that control certain actions and commands
when hooked up to my Mac. The accessibility works really
well with Final Cut Pro because it is the same operating
system so I don’t get glitches. While doing the video I am using
my keyboard for Final Cut Pro X. The first thing that I do, look at every video and pick my shots and then start my editing process. Second thing that I do, put in any transitions, titles, and/or effects. After that I start with the sound. Make sure the levels are good. During this process I am watching
the film over, over and over again. Switch control has made
such an impact in my life. It has given me the opportunity to express myself both
personally and professionally. It has helped break down barriers and allows people to see the real me and to see my true talents. Chris: Randy Ubillos, he gave us a tool for the common man that is... It’s vital for our future. Randy: The mechanics of editing
have kind of gone away and it really now comes down to storytelling. Making it easier for somebody to tell a story means that someone’s more likely to do it. If they have a story and they can tell it easily that means we get to see more of those stories which I think is really cool. Sam: The big thing in terms
of change is that it happens in a largely unclean way a lot of times. Often the most significant changes
don’t work at all In the beginning. It is very easy to dismiss powerful ideas at the beginning because they are not yet fully formed but this is no longer where we are. I think it is extremely clear that this platform is continuing to innovate. I think probably the best thing that ever happened to
Final Cut X was that launch. Because everyone abandoned ship. Everyone said, you know what?
This is unprofessional Apple’s dead you know, it’s never going to happen. And then what ended up happening? All of the things that tie Avid down and all of these other applications? Well that was completely freed
up on the Final Cut side, they could do whatever they want because none of the professional
community cared anymore. Michael: I love that Apple’s infrastructure is so forward thinking and that
they’re willing to start over. I think that was very brave. I think that there's a better way to do everything and hindsight being 20/20. You could play this out 20 different ways. But I don’t think it changes
what the product is. The product we have today
is an awesome product. Whether or not the marketing was good or bad. Whether or not it targeted the
right people the wrong people. The product stands on its own two feet and I’m really really glad that it’s out there. Steve Jobs: You know
Randy along with this team have invented all of this stuff. It’s amazing. Randy: The time that I had at
Apple was I look back and I feel very fortunate to have been
there in the time that I was there where software was a big component of things that were going on at Apple. And I just love hearing all of the people’s lives have gotten to touch indirectly through the stuff that I've gotten to work on. It's been, it’s really rewarding
to have gotten to do that. [INSPIRING MUSIC] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪
