Short and Verrone Clash

Posted November 15, 2007 by Steve
Categories: Editors Guild, Media and Society

With the IA striking theaters in New York and the WGA striking the studios, IA president Tom Short wrote to WGAw president Patric Verrone Tuesday, saying, “I have warned you and predicted the devastation that would come from your action. Those predictions have now come true. … It’s time to put egos aside and recognize how crucial it is to get everyone back to work before there is irreversible damage from which this industry can never recover.” (NY Times. Variety.)

Verrone responded, saying, “for every four cents writers receive in theaterical residuals, directors receive four cents, actors receive 12 cents and the members of your union receive 20 cents in contributions to their health fund. … To put it simply, our fight should be your fight.”

Meanwhile, Variety reported on a pair of polls showing wide public support for the writers: a Pepperdine poll showed support at 69% vs 4% for the producers and a SurveyUSA poll came up with 63% vs 8%.

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No Avid Booth at NAB

Posted November 14, 2007 by Steve
Categories: Avid, Avid vs. Final Cut

Avid announced today that they won’t have a booth at NAB 2008. Instead they’re planning private meetings in Vegas and “a series of customer-focused initiatives in 2008 – all of which will be designed to make it easier for customers, prospects and the media to interact with the company.” They’ll reveal the details in February.

For long-time Avid watchers like myself, that’s a huge change. The company has lived and died for NAB every year for nearly two decades now. But, no question, Avid needs to interact with editors much more effectively than it has in recent years and NAB hasn’t necessarily been the best place to do that.

There was a lot of talk on the net yesterday about this announcement, most of it positive. Lots of people, me included, want to see Avid strike out in a new direction, and any sense that they’re doing that is a good sign. But the press release tells us mostly what Avid isn’t going to do. It seems like we’ll have to wait until February to learn more about what positive steps the company plans to take.

Ultimately Avid lives or dies based on the quality of its products. It spent a great deal of effort in 2007 fixing bugs. The result is that Adrenaline is a much better application, and for me, choosing it now is a no-brainer. But there’s still plenty to do.

Long term, it’s hard to see how Avid can compete effectively for the hearts and minds of newbies if they don’t stand up and do battle with Apple in the public arena, staking out a vision for the future of post production. In the past, that’s always started with NAB. For many Avid watchers, it’s going to be hard to avoid the interpretation that the company is avoiding NAB in order to avoid going head-to-head with Apple. But only time will tell.

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Putting Residuals in Perspective

Posted November 12, 2007 by Steve
Categories: Editors Guild, Quality of Life

In an article in today’s NY Times, Michael Cieply covers a recent study that looks at the overall profitability of the major studios. The report estimates that the majors distributed about three billion dollars last year in gross participation deals to stars and big above-the-line talent — deals that typically pay out regardless of whether a picture makes or loses money.

Meanwhile, the WGA estimates that total residual payments last year were just $121 million. So, as usual, the little guys fight over a tiny slice of the pie, while the big guys take home a huge hall.

The report also says that, over all, the majors lost about $2 billion last year, so $3 billion looks very significant to the town’s bottom line.

The networks aren’t going to present this strike objectively — they’re hardly disinterested observers. But many liberal voices have come down firmly on the side of the writers. The New York Times ran an interesting and supportive op-ed piece yesterday, by Damon Lindelof, co-creator and head writer of “Lost,” covering many of the key issues in the context of a newly Tivo-ed and digitized TV environment.

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HD Notes on Iron Man

Posted November 9, 2007 by Steve
Categories: Avid, Workflow

The ACE tech blog has posted some useful information about the use of DNxHD-36 on the show “Iron Man,” edited by Dan Lebental. I’m eager to shift to this workflow, but it sounds like there have been some pretty significant growing pains.

Iron Man Update

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AMPAS and Intellectual Property

Posted November 9, 2007 by Steve
Categories: Editors Guild, Media and Society, Quality of Life

Warren Olney’s “Which Way, LA?” offered some interesting coverage of the WGA strike Wednesday (listen here). In particular, it included some enlightening remarks from show runner Shawn Ryan (“The Shield” and “The Unit”). Shawn is leading the push by show runners to support the strike, and he’s on the WGA negotiating committee.

The big bugaboo, of course, is residuals for shows that are distributed via the internet. The WGA made a lousy deal for VHS and DVD distribution in the ’80s and never was able to change it. They don’t want to make that same mistake again with the net, where more and more of us are going to be watching TV in the future. (Variety went over some of the deal points in yesterday’s edition, here.)

The whole thing strikes me as mighty strange. Remember that these are the same studios that are obsessed with protecting their intellectual property and preventing piracy — also on the internet. It seems awfully inconsistent that they’re now falling on a sword to keep writers from benefiting in the same way.

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New Site for Assistants

Posted November 9, 2007 by Steve
Categories: Workflow

Justin Bourret, Scott Janush, Carrie Puchkoff and Dan Ward have started a new site dedicated to issues of interest to professional digital assistants, with an emphasis on turnover between different editorial departments. It’s only been up for about a week and already has several useful and well written tips.

Check it out here: Editing Standards

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