In LA, It’s All About Traffic
I got out of a screening at Fotokem on Friday at 4:30. Time to get to the West Side: 90 minutes. Time without traffic — 30 minutes. Traffic on the 405 South was stopped halfway up the hill on the valley side. That’s the worst I’ve ever seen it. There was a ten minute backup on Sepulveda at Moraga because of a mistimed light.
It’s come down to this: the whole job revolves around traffic. How do I get to work? How do the dailies get to me?
I’d much rather work at home these days and have material delivered. It’s just too much trouble getting to the cutting room.
Verizon is supposed to be aggressively rolling out their “FIOS” broadband service — fiber to the home. For me, it can’t come fast enough. Get me my dailies over a wire. Where do I sign up?
Explore posts in the same categories: Quality of Life, Workflow
Splice Now 
June 18, 2007 at 6:36 pm
The wife has several portable firewire drives that she gives to the client and tells them to load em up while she meets with them. Then she brings em home, does all of her work at home, ouputs the end result to the drive and delivers it. She FTPs review clips in-between.
June 19, 2007 at 12:26 am
In London the only way to get around on time is by motor bike or a simple scooter. I have a feeling taking a scooter on an LA freeway is ill advised though!!
June 19, 2007 at 5:29 am
I’m fortunate enough to have FIOS here in the Boston area, and it certainly is ‘zippy’ and combined with their phone and TV service (the so-called Triple Play) offered me better value than Comcast (or a Verizon DSL service).
However I have to wonder how the studios will react to the prospect of ‘high’ (say DNxHD 36) dailies being shuttled around to ‘uncontrolled’ locations ? I understand that some studios are unhappy with the thought of any dailies outside of the studios controlled editing rooms ? Will some sort of DRM (whatever that means) need to be applied for Studios to tolerate more remote/at home work on the part of editors and their assistants ?
June 19, 2007 at 2:23 pm
As we chatted about face-to-face yesterday, a real distance editing tool that took into account all of the ways in which we talk with our creative partners, would be sorely welcomed. I want the ability to work with directors and other editors across the continent (and the oceans) as well as across the city.
What we’ll need, at the very least: Visual chat sessions, live manipulation of native footage (not the Quicktime files that something like SyncVue needs) across all participants, active updating of new and render files, etc. etc. Plus real version control.