"[Craig Seeman] "Let's hope the COW gives Evan Schechtman of Radical Media and OutPost Digital equal coverage...."
[Herb Sevush] That implies that you question whether the COW is neutral on this issue, which to me is ridiculous. Mark Raudonis is a major Cow contributor who chose to write about his experience......"
On matters like this, the COW is ALWAYS neutral. We posted some of the web's first professionally oriented FCPX tutorials, and still aggressively court them.
Although I haven't spoken to him since I left the east coast, I know Evan casually. In fact, I wrote a very nice article about him (if I say so myself) in 2007, in the 4th issue of Creative COW Magazine! (Note that I was focusing so much energy on the magazine at the time that the web layout is genuinely weak. Oh well, it happens. Download the PDF instead.) 2012 rolls in, still no Evan in the COW. Whatever. I don't take it personally and will greet him warmly the next time I see him.
Here's the thing: Creative COW Magazine comes out of the people who are IN the COW. We didn't do the magazine to do a magazine about The Industry. We did it to focus on this specific community, which just happens to comprise the smartest and best-looking people the industry has to offer.
I have precisely zero interest in hunting down somebody from outside the COW to give a perspective that is VERY well represented here already. You can see it on the threads in the Debate forum where some people are very articulate about why they like it, or at least see its potential. Even among the struggles, you can see a pretty general positivity in the FCPX Techniques forum, which is, surprise surprise, one of our most popular forums. A meaningful percentage FCP-ish folks either actively likes FCPX, or is still actively poking at it. Good for them.
Worth noting: the #1 poster in the history of Creative COW, Walter Biscardi, is done with FCPX. The #2 poster in the history of the COW, Jeremy Garchow, likes FCPX quite a bit, and sees it as a strong answer to the requests that FCP-ers have had for years. Both have written much commented-upon articles about it, which we featured prominently when they came out.
Bessie is neutral.
So why feature Mark? On one hand, it's obvious to many folks who've been around the COW for a while, or who have seen Mark in the dozens of forums he has posted in, but it's a legitimate question in this context, and I'm happy to answer.
As Herb notes, Mark has been part of the COW for a long time, posting since 2003. Even more important is that he is a very professional, level-headed guy who has been very generous with his time and experience here at the COW.
When Bunim/Murray Productions switched to FCP, it was A Very Big Deal in the industry -- only natural, because under Mark's leadership, BMP's post operations really have been the model of success for companies of this scale...and there are really only a small handful of them. When BMP said the water was safe, other people jumped in -- not just BMP said so, but because MARK RAUDONIS said so.
Earlier this year, in the weeks leading up to NAB, Mark had indeed spoken a little about his impressions of Apple's FCPX preview, and I gotta tell you, I was bugging him immediately after the show to get him to write something official. Nope, he said, the thing's not even released yet, so we don't even know what we're looking at yet.
See? Not in a hurry to pipe up for its own sake...although we encourage that if that's your bag. :-) I touched base with him again in October or so to bug him again, and he told me that they'd come up with something by the end of the year. Wouldn't even give me a hint.
I asked again in December, and he said that he'd have something to say in January...but still no hint.
Note that, up until a couple of weeks ago, I had NO IDEA what he was going to tell me. That is the essence of neutral. I wanted to hear Mark's story because I knew that, no matter what he and BMP decided to do, that it was going to be well-considered, and that Mark was going to be very articulate about his decision-making process.
Please also note that I asked Mark to include some information about his background so that readers can see that he, too, is neutral. He wasn't screaming about Avid when he chose FCP, and he didn't feel abandoned or betrayed by Apple when he chose to move back to Media Composer. He carefully made a call, and I wanted to be first in line to get him to talk about it, WHATEVER HE DECIDED.
I committed to him that I'd put the story in the magazine, whatever that story was, because I knew it was gonna be good. And of course it IS a good story. I just decided last week to slip it on to the web early, because the magazine won't be in print until the end of the month, and I saw the attention generated by the press release. Better to have Mark's version of the story out there sooner rather than later.
That's probably more than anyone wanted to know, but again, this is an important story. Yes, Avid is an advertiser...as is Adobe, Autodesk, Anthro, ARRI, AJA, and just about anyone else who starts with the letter A...including, in the past, Apple. But we don't do stories for or against companies because of their advertising status. We do stories that are important to the people in our community, and have never suggested that a single story represents more than the experience of the author. But the point of the COW is that we use other people's experience to enrich our own. Mark's not arguing a case. He's sharing his own experience...at least partly because I hunted him down. :-) Nobody here with an axe to grind.
Not that Bessie hasn't ground an axe now and again. Not this time though.
Final note about something that somebody brought up in another part of this thread: the pictures of a box of Media Composer and ISIS are there because, after you run one picture of the Khardassian sisters in the article, that's probably enough. Maybe not, but probably. So once you turned the page in the magazine, the Avid product pictures seemed like good ones to include: nice and colorful, germane to the story. It was my call. I can see why somebody might be suspicious, but I think that over the past 6+ years of the magazine, we've made our case for integrity...largely because the authors who are part of the COW have established their own integrity, which is how they get in the magazine in the first place.
And on the subject of neutrality: we had the picture of ISIS handy because Bob Zelin awarded it the Creative COW Blue Ribbon of Excellence at NAB 2011. Bob is one of the most Apple/FCP-oriented guys in the business, and has been very outspoken about how clueless he thinks Avid is. VERY outspoken, because it's Bob. He was as surprised as anyone to give them the award...even more interesting to me because he consults so regularly with MAXX Digital, and is even listed on their website. We still trusted Bob to make the call about the best storage out there, because that's what kind of guy he is.
His public persona is as a bomb-thrower, and he talks EXACTLY the way he writes, but he's actually a very careful thinker who comes to his conclusions very slowly, after a great deal of testing, and continually re-evaluates based on the experiences of his clients. He thinks Avid ISIS 5000 is a game-changer, and a bargain. Once Mark and BMP settled on the same storage, I made the lazy...oops, I mean EFFICIENT...decision to use a picture that was already laying around...and which made sense for the story.
Anywayyyyyy, I think that's plenty from me about this. I hope I've clearly answered what I think are completely legit questions. You really can't integrity for granted, especially when you've seen such a dire lack of it in other magazines, and I'm happy to be held accountable by you. I count on it.
Yr pal,
Timmy
Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
