I've been at this a while.

Sony RM-440

For the past 18 months or so, many editors have been trying to figure out what they wanted to do in a “Post Final Cut Pro” era. Of course, they are completely discounting FCPX. I’ve met and spoken with several very accomplished editors who have never cut on anything but Final Cut Pro. I did a little thinking about it and realized that in my 30 year career in this business, I’ve edited on something like 12 or 13 different “platforms”, including various tape based and several digital systems. The long and short of it, is that if you are going to be in this business long term, you’ll no doubt have to keep on your toes and keep learning. 

What is interesting is the dominant reign of Final Cut Pro for the past 14 years. Since it has been around for so long, alot of the younger editors I’ve met just sort of assumed, whether they want to admit it or not, that they would never have to learn a new edit tool. In stark contrast to the last decade, in the 90’s I went thru SEVERAL edit systems.  Learning, evolving and perfecting new tools was part of what it meant to be in this business.

So don’t be affraid to dive into a new app once in a while. 

JJ Abrams doesn't like driving.

I really found this piece inspirational. Not so much about the AVID stuff, but the fact that JJ Abrams has built a facility where he can do EVERYTHING (or so they say) under one roof. That way he doesn’t have to travel all over town to oversee various parts of the post process. 

Assassination is tough work.

In Bulgaria, apparently the punishment for an assassination attempt is kicking, beating and a little thing they like to call, “caning by UMBRELLA”… check out the old man at the end of the video! Moral of the story? Keep your firearms in good working order.

Umbrellas are happy.

This is a unique example of “Tilt Shift Photography” with a twist of “Flash Mob” added in for spice. My friend @planetMitch found this one. You can read all about how it was put together on his site.

Growing your Business.

Wow, what a crazy Friday night I’m having. I’ve been responding to a bunch of tweets about a comment that I made on our show, the Digitial Convergence Podcast, this week. I was talking about sometimes, the prospect of adding ONE more worker to a workforce of one is harder then it need be. The task of managing that person, checking their work, making sure they are matching your style and living up to your clients expectations is VERY difficult, so much so it may be easier to just stay late a few nights a week and do it yourself.

When you take into consideration that this new person probably won’t do as much work as you can do in a day, it FURTHER exascerbates the issue. 

It is my belief that when you look into the prospect of managing additional workers (and mind you I’m talking mostly about post production because, well… that’s what I do and know) the ideal ratio of workers to manager is probably 3:1. Huh, what do I mean by THAT?

Let me give you an example. I work at a small post facility. I am a self motivated and conscientious worker so I don’t need much ‘management’. My boss, the owner just points me to a project and I make good. If we have only one job on the books on any given day, I’ll be cutting it. When we add a second job, my boss will usually jump on it and take care of it himself. But, if we add a THIRD job to any given day, he’ll usually hire 2 freelancers (I’m staff) and he’ll take the job of producer/manager/supervisor. In OUR world everyone is cutting until there are 3 jobs going on concurrently, thats when he gets out of the chair and moves into the supervisor role. 

I don’t think we had ever mapped this out as a strategy but it seemed to fall into place that way over the years.

So, the twitter discussion tonight was all about deciding when to add more people to the mix… and this is my more drawn out answer. 

We also discussed this on this weeks episode of DCP.