"There are multiple millions of people around the world with with "NLE operation" skills today. Yes, fewer at the top end, but everyone who is currently NOT at the "top end" are likely getting better every day with practice - and that means "operational excellence in NLE driving" is going to be less and less a competitive advantage in the future. What I believe is left in the wake of that are the intangible skills of judgement, taste, and business skills. Not editing prowess."
I am not in competition with those millions. My editorial skills are partially made up of two of the three intangibles you mentioned, judgement and taste, along with story sense and imagination. The editorial tools I need have to let me express those skills quickly and easily.
"Those same "features" that pro editors hate - the magnetic timeline, clip collision avoidance, looking at video in a vertical arrangement of connected elements rather than exclusively as discrete chunks over a rigid time base - those things might be mothers milk to new business editors who don't have to overcome too much baggage about how editing is SUPPOSED to be done - but rather can remain focuses on how it IS done in the new software."
All of this ease for newbies comes at the cost of making the software difficult to use to accomplish what so many of us here need. Nothing I do is in any way similar to a print journalist putting his Iphone interview on his newspapers website.
And guess what, in the future there will still be growing audiences for the kind of work I do.
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/americans-watching-more-t...
Traditional TV viewership is still growing, not shrinking. Given the enormous difference in size of audience, how many decades will it take for internet viewership to catch up? And by internet viewership I really mean the viewership for videos with no production value, the kind of work where the editorial skills of the millions is supposed to satisfy the entertainment demands of the billions?
For a news story anything goes, including a telephone call-in with a still photo. For a viral cat video, I'm sure iMovie will suffice. For Thursday nite at 9 O'clock, post skills still matter, and will do so for the foreseeable future. And those skills pay better.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
---------------------------
nothin' attached to nothin'
"Deciding the spine is the process of editing" F. Bieberkopf
