Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign, apparently. I've been told this is outside. Really strange stuff. Thanks for coming to the.
This part of our. Our little roadshow. We are talking about post productions at a crossroads and how we can reinvent creative teams. So let's get started with some introductions.
Michael, why don't we start with you?
[00:00:27] Speaker B: Hi, my name is Michael Cione. I'm the CEO of a company called Strada and been in post production for 24 years.
[00:00:36] Speaker C: My name is Michael Kamis. I'm senior Director of innovation at Key Code Media for my second go around and like these other two gentlemen, I'm from Chicago.
[00:00:45] Speaker D: Hello, my name is Dustin Young. I'm the senior post production engineer for Buda Jones. We're a movie trailer company based in West Hollywood and happy to be here. Thank you.
[00:00:54] Speaker A: Awesome, thanks. Gentlemen, I'm Jeff Segville, CTO for Key Code Media, and I've been in post production since the turn of the century, little sir.
[00:01:05] Speaker C: What century, Jeff?
[00:01:06] Speaker A: Not that long ago. Yeah, what century? All right, let's get started. The state of the industry. So the big thing in this question is what went wrong? What factors have brought us as an industry, especially here in la, to this breaking point?
Dustin, why don't we start with you?
[00:01:25] Speaker D: Thank you.
Yeah, what went wrong? But that's certainly a loaded question. I definitely, while we're all here and most of us, all of us pretty much work in post for the most part, I am always looking at what's going on with production and, you know, I just recently, as an example, I think it's a great one. Rob Lowe on his podcast mentioned that he works on a game show called the Floor, which is a Fox show, which they were shooting on the Fox lot right over here on Pico. And because of the tax credits and costs and everything, I'm not going to get into the union stuff or any of that. It was less expensive to film it in Ireland and fly 100Americans on the show over to Ireland than it was to simply walk across the lot. That's a huge problem. So leave it at that.
[00:02:17] Speaker A: We'll go with commas because we got two Michaels on the stage.
[00:02:19] Speaker C: So that's how we're doing this micro. And I'm commas.
[00:02:21] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:02:22] Speaker C: If we focus just on post, I don't think something went wrong. I think, and this has been said quite a bit, the pendulum swing back and forth, right? And we had the glut of VOD providers who needed content, older content repurposed, new content shot for it, and we were all gainfully employed there. Isn't another platform unless we look at things like YouTube and that is a completely different story. But I don't think we did anything wrong. There just isn't another platform for us to hire more people to work on.
[00:02:55] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good point. Diving off of that. I actually think if you think about a product like Slack, if we're familiar with Slack, what's interesting about Slack is when Slack came out before Slack, we had email and we had text message and there was nothing in the middle. And Slack came in and kind of found this independent space in the center and widened it and now we have email and Slack and text message and they all fit. I think when we look at our industry, what went wrong? One thing that might have gone wrong is that we look at things, we have user generated content and then we have Hollywood and that's sort of like email and text message. They're pretty disparate, they're pretty far apart. And I think there's an opportunity to put something in the middle that is high caliber, high quality, like a Netflix, but in a user generated portal like a YouTube. And so I think there's an opportunity that people can create better content with better resources with all this technology that we have that's available, but we don't actually have a place to put it unless it's in a Hollywood space. And then all the factors that are talking about do we have to go to Ireland to make it done? Those wouldn't happen in the UGC world, but the UGC world suffers from quality because they don't have the right platform to put it on. And so I think that's an opportunity for us to develop.
[00:04:20] Speaker A: I think we also have a consumption thing. Who here has watched something on YouTube in the last 24 hours, huh? Hollywood pros. That's us.
So we complain about our distribution channels going away. And you know, if you were here earlier, Tony showed that the number one consumption platform is YouTube. Across most age demographics, including folks who normally would be watching cbs, we've changed our viewing habits.
All right, let's adapt to the new normal.
For businesses that are trying to stay relevant, what changes must happen now? What are the biggest misconceptions keeping post houses or creatives stuck in the past? Michael, I think you've got something to unpack here.
[00:05:04] Speaker B: Yeah. So how'd you call that beginning adapting, Adapting to the new normal? Well, I think the first thing we need to do is understand that we are really bad at giving up old habits. That's not just us, it's Everybody, let's be honest, everybody's bad at giving up old habits, but I think most of the time we only give up old habits when they are forced on us. So the last big time this happened was when the Fukushima earthquake tsunami took out videotape. And it forced a lot of people who were reticent to switch to data over videotape. They had no choice. And so we all went there somewhat reluctantly, but we were better for it. This is an opportunity where user generated content, the YouTube anecdote you just shared, this is an outside force acting in on us. I think the opportunity for us to get used to the new normal is that YouTube has already beaten us at being able to generate more interest in clicks and likes and views than we get. There are YouTube channels that get far more likes and views than major primetime shows and that shouldn't surprise anyone if it does, that's how fast it happened. And so I think the opportunity for us to get into the new normal is to understand how do we cooperate with YouTube, not compete directly with it, but cooperate because I actually think they're the bigger fish right now. And it's a. If you can't beat them, join them might be the best strategy for us moving forward.
[00:06:36] Speaker A: Yep. Nobody's really getting the storytelling on radio these days, are they?
[00:06:42] Speaker C: I agree with you and what you said at HPA about relaxing some of these standards and being technical gatekeepers. I think there's actually a reverse to that and that's. There's an immense amount, like every generation that is born and comes to this industry. There's almost an aversion to working how the previous industry did. There's almost a proactive. I don't want to do it like that. And there's also, I don't want to say lack of respect, but there is a Film and television are no longer the only ways for you to get your message out or to be a technical person with media. So why do I need to adopt the ways that they're doing it? Even if we've suffered the slings and arrows and we can bestow that there's still a. I don't care. I want to purposely not do it the way you're doing. So it's almost like we need to come to a negotiation table and say, why don't we relax these standards? If you're willing to look at offline online workflows. Right. For example, and be able to create a compromise there.
[00:07:39] Speaker A: Dustin, what do you think?
[00:07:40] Speaker D: Yeah, no, I definitely think there's a place where we definitely have no choice but to embrace YouTube. To me, it's like you can stay neutral on a moving train. I also think that even just in our space, when we release a lot of the products, the finished trailers we make, they're intended for theater. But the, the first thing our, our owner checks is, oh, how is this? Once it hits YouTube, like where he's on that, we're all on that. How is this tracking? Just a baby flex. We did the trailer for 28 Years later, the new Danny Boyle movie. Like when that like blew up, that was huge. They, they didn't say, oh wow, look how much like how this is in the marketing. What's the, called? The. When they, they test, mark test, view the Nielsen or the. They do the market testing and bring people in to watch it. They looked at YouTube and said, oh wow, this is like going. Matching up to be the number two most viewed trailer on there. So there's a place for that for sure.
[00:08:40] Speaker A: But the interesting thing there is trailers are commercials for movies, right?
[00:08:44] Speaker D: Correct.
[00:08:44] Speaker A: So we show them before the movie. They used to be after the movie. That's why they're called trailers.
But at the same time, if you watch that trailer, what do you see before your trailer?
Commercials. So the thing is, this is still all ad supported content. It will always be ad supported content in one way, shape or form, whether or not I'm paying to not watch the ads or I get to watch the ads. So do you think that changes the market for trailers when you're putting them out there and they are becoming mini movies in and of themselves?
[00:09:17] Speaker D: That's 100% correct. They definitely are. And I think that yeah, in a way it's become a thing where the, that the trailer itself is its own form of content versus it just being, oh, to hype the movie. It's like, hey, look at this, you know, shiny new thing on that, on that ad. On that note too, in regards to advertising, because that's a whole other topic. But I did want to touch on that. I think that one of the, one of the struggles too, even with the, the, the different streaming networks out there too, is that I think that one of the big shifts. Problems I see is that we were so dependent on cable networks and all these other places for their ad revenue and then, then everything switched to streaming. We, we do tons of stuff for streaming for Netflix and Hulu and what have you. Peacock. But the thing is, is that I think the streamers have realized that they, they ha. I don't think the streamers and all the big legacy studios realize how good they had it with the traditional ad revenue model versus switching to streaming. I think that's a huge shift and a big reason why not as much content's getting generated. Not to deviate, but I think.
[00:10:23] Speaker C: No, I got it. Another angle to that is when you're editing something for or even shooting something, editing something for film and television, there's a beat, there's a cadence, right. Whether it be total running time or what you want to hit before the first commercial break. And our whole industry is based off that part of post production. And when you start getting into the creator economy, which is a shitty term, I hate it. Don't use it. The fact that the editing sensibilities and the post sensibilities are different because now we're talking about retention based. And can we get stretch this edit out to over 10 minutes to get another ad break in there? So there's a whole different way of editing which kind of goes directly opposite of how all of us who do edit came up and how our sensibilities, what they mean to the thumbnail. Yes.
[00:11:06] Speaker A: Well, it's also a different way of storytelling because we've had this act based concept for years. You know, we have, you know, the prologue and the act one commercial break. And then, you know, our narrative beats are structured that way as well.
[00:11:19] Speaker B: They are. The hardest thing about YouTube because of the point Michael just made is, is if the Sixth Sense were to come out on YouTube today, it would start with I see dead people. That's the only way to get people to watch it. And that kills storytellers. Cause we're like, no, we wanna build this character arc. We wanna build suspense. And they're like, no, no, no. In the first 30 seconds, you gotta tell them why they gotta stay the whole time. And I see dead people would be the beginning. And that's something that is also very hard for us to kind of wrap our heads around. That structural change.
[00:11:51] Speaker A: Is that really a misconception for us now that we're so used to our old method of storytelling that were mired in the past, and people who are cutting something on their phone for, you know, immediate distribution, they're doing it differently.
[00:12:05] Speaker B: 100%. Yeah. The. The ability for people to do instant shooting and editing. I know it sounds obvious today, but the fact that everybody here can shoot and edit and distribute in their pocket is absolutely unbelievable. It really is. Because none of us would have expected that to be even remotely possible to the tune of billions of people even 10 years ago. That would be like a kind of a science fiction stretch. And I'm always trying to look on the future and the fringes. I never would have bet that we would all do that. In fact, it wasn't that long ago that when I was asked about editing tools on phones versus desktops, where do you think we should innovate? I wasn't convinced the phone was the place to go. But it turns out the phone, that the actual application cap cut is the most popular nonlinear editor on Earth because They have over 300 million monthly active users. 300 million. There's only 100,000 media composers.
[00:13:07] Speaker C: Right.
[00:13:08] Speaker B: It's so different. And these people are learning to edit. So not only is it stylistically different, but there's an entire generation of people that are becoming editors. And we need to think as storytellers. What would happen if every person on Earth can shoot, edit, and distribute? What's that going to change about us? And it certainly will have an impact in 2030, certainly by 2040.
[00:13:31] Speaker A: And also, what are those people paying attention to as they're coming up? So I've got a niece who's in Illinois. She's wanted to become an editor. And when I heard that, I said, you know, I'm involved with the industry. Oh, that's nice, Uncle Jeff. So I've been doing this for a while. I would think that people would at least know that. But it's a completely different paradigm these days. Coming up. So let's get to what actually is working now. There are types of content that are succeeding both in broadcast and film and the normal distribution channels, as well as the content creator. Content creator space. I just have to get Michael on that one.
How will that influence where teams today should invest their energy? Thomas, let's start with you.
[00:14:26] Speaker C: Especially in the economy now, it's doing more with less. It's embracing new technology. So the same amount of creatives and the same amount of time to accomplish a task, we have to embrace that there's newer tools to do it faster. But it's not going to take your job, and here's why. Who out here is a business owner?
Yeah. Okay. Do you want to get less business or more business?
Right. No one says, I want to use less people to make same amount of money. No, you want to grow your business, which means you're bidding on two or three.
Two or three times the amount of jobs because you're using tools to get it done quicker. And so we have to realize that these tasks aren't going to eliminate people. It's Going to make people to be more productive so you can bid on more projects to stay afloat.
[00:15:09] Speaker A: Well, and quicker and faster are two different things. There is no quicker in the feature documentary space. Is there any feature doc editors out there?
Yeah, they're all in the dark.
[00:15:22] Speaker C: They're editing.
[00:15:23] Speaker A: They're editing. Michael, what do you think?
[00:15:26] Speaker B: I think echoing what Michael said about tools, it's understanding how versatile the tools have become. I actually was telling my team yesterday when you just browse through the amount of video podcasts and video podcasting is the fastest new form of entertainment on, on the planet, right? Ten years ago, nobody heard the word. You know, combining the idea of an ipod and a broadcast was a completely new idea. Now you probably listened to one on the way here most likely, right? Video podcasting looks and sounds fantastic. And I remember when it was hard to get a good quality mic, good quality lighting. And I remember I did a movie. It was probably a decade ago, maybe even longer. It was called Think Like a Man. And this was the first movie that Sony produced this film and they said, we are going to do an experiment on this film. The cinematographer that agreed to take the job had to shoot the entire movie with LED lights. And it was the first movie that required only LED lights. So Sony could experiment. What happens? Is it viable? Is it versatile enough? What does skin tones look like? And there was a lot of different skin tones in that film. And by pushing the boundaries, Sony was able to say, okay, there is a way for these lights to not be tungsten and it didn't break the film. Right? Everything seemed to work out, but now those lights have come down to being bought on Amazon. And now you have high quality wide spectrum lights that look really good for under $200. And you can get them with high output and they run on 110. You can get thousand watt lights that run on 110 power. And when the fridge kicks on, the power stays on. It's amazing. Like, that's incredible to not even need a generator to even think about the math behind that. And the quality of the skin tone looks good in that. These are the types of things we need to be thinking about and the companies and the creatives that figure out how to get these shortcuts even down to something that might seem germane, like the proper LED lighting. That stuff was really abstract 10 years ago, very, very rare and very looked down upon. One more quick example would be glass lenses that come from Asia 10 years ago, 15 years ago, to get an AC DP to shoot on Lenses from Asia was very unlikely. And now everybody's running there. They make the right, they got the great kind of looks and the feels. And it's not about precision anymore, it's about character. The tastes changed and now Asian glass can contribute to the market in a way they never did before. They were only broadcast and cinema was always German glass. And now it's kind of flipped, which is bonkers. Right. So we have to be thinking outside of the, the, the boundaries of the norm so we can understand these trends before they become standards. And that's one of the tricks to get ahead.
[00:18:18] Speaker A: Definitely. Dustin, where do you feel that you should, your team should be investing their, their energy right now?
[00:18:25] Speaker D: Well, I would say overall the big thing, the big push for us on a very general note is we're just with everyone's shrinking budgets is we're basically pushing the forced to do more work with the basically, sorry, excuse me, we're forced to create the same amount of output of work for less money. So in turn we have to do more work. But it's not like we can just with labor and the cost of everything. We're basically in a position where we have to think, okay, how can we, how can we keep the level of creative strong? We have competitors just like everybody else, but do it with less people. And I definitely think that there's a number of ways for us where I'm, I'm looking and exploring different options to allow us to take some of the mundane task tasks out of the way and make things more automated. Although I will say, just as I was mentioning to Michael earlier, it's a lot trickier because we work with very sensitive IP for a lot of big studios. So we're forced to use work with air gapped computers. So that means the editors can access our nexus or our storage, but they can't access the Internet. And it's very problematic because prevents us from say fully embracing maybe a strada or other solutions that utilize that.
[00:19:42] Speaker A: Let's dive in on that. We were going to get to that with standards, but we're here now.
[00:19:45] Speaker D: Sure.
[00:19:46] Speaker A: Just kind of like the tornado. It's arrived.
Where do you feel that today's concept of security that we have in Hollywood makes sense and how should that adapt to how the, the economy actually needs to work?
[00:20:05] Speaker D: I'll just say that I think that the security standards and measures we've put through by studios that shall remain nameless is.
It varies from studio to studio. But I think that the level of security that we have to invest in and Roll out for our engineers and security team is a very daunting task. And also with each year, it seems like the security standards become more and more unscrupulous and more and more limiting. And each time they add those levels of security, while on paper it makes it seem like, oh, it's ironclad, nothing will get through, it also becomes a big wrench in us doing the actual creative work. So it's kind of a, a conundrum where you're like, we obviously want to keep X Studio happy to keep and work on their movie trailer, but at the same time, with all these security limitations, we can actually create trailers in the content they so desperately want to look at right away without with it just gets all those, all that security stuff just gets in the way and it prevents us from being as streamlined as we can be and ultimately slows us down from giving them what they're paying us to do so.
[00:21:18] Speaker A: Exactly. And you know, I think most of us have been through audits. Michael, I know you've got some thoughts on that subject.
[00:21:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I might be alone on this, maybe not. But I think security in Hollywood is completely overrated. And I think that it is leading us down a really poor path. One of the reasons a gallon of gas costs more in California than anywhere else is because we overregulate ourselves. And the same people that regulate us at the government level regulate the government of the studio system as well. And while it is for good reason, and there's a good reason behind that, the motives are good. I don't think anybody's trying to put security at a certain level for bad reasons. They're good reasons. But when the creator economy and user generated content has no regard, meaning no guardrails mean no friction to generate their content, everything that's happening at Buda Jones that they have to, every hoop they have to jump through adds a cent. And it's a tax. And there's a tax on the upload and attacks on the download and attacks on the transcode and a tax on the deliverables and a tax on every single revision output. All those taxes add another person, they add another file. So they add a cost associated with that and that's why it keeps driving things up. If you remove some of those, then you actually have less friction. And I personally believe, and I know people disagree with me on this and that's fine, but I personally believe the overwhelming majority of security breaches happen through people who had access to the media in the first place. They were negligent and made an accident or made a mistake or perhaps were nefarious in some way, or they were just sloppy. But so many times things that leak were given leaks by people who were supposed to have it. And so you can't prevent them from leaking, from not having access because they're the actual person who's supposed to have access. So we are actually securing ourselves, I think in the majority from ourselves. And that really can be solved by just having a better hire and avoiding that so that the creative process isn't actually inhibited the way yours is inhibited.
[00:23:31] Speaker D: In long story short, it's like a death by a thousand security paper cuts. It's truly brutal. And yeah, I agree with you completely. I think there needs to be a balance between the TPN who manages the security and us as the actual content, as the creative teams working and supporting all these studios that are paying us to do so, to find that balance to where we can be secure, but at the same time give allow us the creative freedom and also not have us eat all this extra overhead in cost.
[00:24:02] Speaker C: I think the only caveat to that is during the pandemic we start to see security restrictions relax a little bit because everyone is editing remote, right. We know post houses that said, here's an avid drive, go home and edit. Don't tell anybody. But what happened at the tail end of that is there looked like to be a light at the end of the security tunnel.
Content has been stolen and then trained for AI. Right. And so the security I think is still especially for the big studios are remaining intact because of that thing. And just as you pointed out, there aren't a lot of bad actors hacking in and stealing things. It's people who work there. But AI has been the other way around, right. It's been done by large companies in the background hoping they don't get caught. So that's something that we can't really nip in the bud by paying someone a living wage whose entry level at the post facility. And I think we'll see over the next year or so when the litigation over AI and who has rights and ip, once that gets settled a little bit, I think things may start to relax downwind of that. But until we have some laws on the books, yeah, I think it's this security level is going to stay and.
[00:25:05] Speaker A: I think it's going to take us a while for that to get legislated out. I think that'll happen at the state level. And like you said, you know, that can be a little arcane.
[00:25:13] Speaker B: And the thing we should be worried about if we overregulate AI, then we're going to also be penalized by it because people who do not regulate themselves that use AI will accelerate and Hollywood will install another self imposed tax that decelerates us so that we can feel that we have some sort of, we pass some sort of ethics check. But we are out of business. So like what's the point if we own 100% of something that has no value? Right? So we have to understand that there is going to have to be a give and take. And I don't say I have the answer to this, but we have to ask the questions. And it can't just be about locking everything down. Anyone that believes that we're going to have air gaps in the 2000s is either nuts or they shouldn't be in charge of that decision. Because that's the wrong decision to lock Hollywood down. And in, in add taxes and friction to creative people just because they don't have a good enough security system. That's, that shouldn't be penalizing the creative people. That's the, the, the, the CFOs, I'm sorry, the, the CTO's job to get right. And when I see CTOs that say well, we just do air gaps, I'm like off with their head. Like let's move on. We need a better CTO that has a better plan.
[00:26:23] Speaker A: Air gaps are easy.
[00:26:24] Speaker B: Air gaps are easy.
[00:26:25] Speaker A: Yep. So the other thing is, and how to phrase this, who here has had someone in their family or their circle of friends view pirated content in the last 48 hours off of, you know, some platform 2, 3, 3 out of who's here?
We're not consuming this for people aren't consuming this stuff. This isn't the limewire days of old.
I'm dating myself, aren't I? Sorry.
All right, let's get to technology as a lifeline because apparently I need one remote post AI automation. What Current tech is helping teams move faster, reduce costs or stay competitive. Thomas, we'll start with you.
[00:27:13] Speaker C: I think at this point we're all experts on remote editing, right? Whether it's someone remoting into your systems back of the facility, or you're spinning up a cloud workstation and cloud storage, or you're sneaker netting drives which air gapped. I kind of get that.
So I think we're all experts in that. I think what has to happen is the big three cloud providers, there's kind of an honor among thieves in terms of how much things cost Whether it be storage or compute, I think once that comes down a little bit, we'll be able to adopt, utilize. Utilizing cloud workstations, cloud storage, and not paying $1,000 a user per month to have that. I think that's probably the most salient point there.
[00:27:53] Speaker A: Dustin, what do you think is your.
[00:27:54] Speaker D: Lifeline there to echo what Michael was saying? I definitely think that if there's a way we can drive the cost of using cloud resources, like even just for an example, the Amazon S3IA instant access buckets, we've leveraged those for certain projects and we love using it, but because of cost, we have to be really conservative with how we use it. Again, back to the smaller budgets, having to do less with more. But if we could somehow utilize that more and, and because it's for security compliance for a number of vendors, they approve that. Sorry. For a number of clients, they. That is something we've been allowed. I would love to be able to utilize that more. But again, it's one of those things. I don't know how we can, whatever the gods may shine down and give us a lower cost in the cloud. That'd be really great. And then on a more kind of a granular note, I would. One thing that we utilize all the time, that's been incredibly powerful for us for just temp vo, which may seem like a. Oh, tempio whatever, but we use 11 labs for doing temp VO and it's been incredibly helpful in, in creating again, temp vo. We're not trying to steal any actors jobs, but in a situation where we need to get a certain line for a trailer that maybe didn't exist in the film or whatever, we can use that to then generate that and give a temp reference to an actor. Because I know a lot of people might say, oh, well, the actors love hearing the sound of their own voice. They. They generally don't. When they're filming in Australia and we're in LA and we're like, oh, hey, you remember that movie you finished six months ago? Do you want to give us some more lines? I know you're in Australia filming a movie in the, whatever the desert or something. This just allows us to give them a tighter reference. It just makes it that much easier for them. So 11 labs for the win.
[00:29:38] Speaker B: So I would say what's. What's really interesting is I look at video. The. The cloud is really great at watching video. So YouTube to Netflix. The cloud is great at watching it, but the cloud was never built to work with video. And when you think about these 500:1 shooting ratios, you can't put it in the cloud. And while there is momentum that's trying to build to just put everything in the cloud, the longer I look at this problem, the more I realize it's impossible. We cannot put files in the cloud and expect to work with it efficiently because nobody can put all of it in a cloud. It is cost prohibitive. And there's actually three problems. One, your camera files only get bigger. Nobody makes a new camera that's smaller or a sensor that's lower res that doesn't even sound like you could sell it. Right?
[00:30:27] Speaker A: 17K.
[00:30:28] Speaker B: 17K, right. So your camera files keep getting bigger, your Internet service provider can't provide enough bandwidth to you, and the cloud has no incentive to lower the price. And remember, those three groups I just mentioned are different companies. How are you going to get the camera companies to care about ISPs to care about cloud storage? They're all independent problems and they break down our ability to use video in the cloud in workflow. So for me, it is not about pushing more to the cloud, it's about inventing alternatives to cloud that allow us to work and collaborate without having to pay the cloud tax or having to expect us to all get 10 gig networks, which many of us would pay for that if we could. And we can't even get it because it's not available. So this isn't even an option. So ISPs, camera files and cloud storage are three different problems running away from each other. And there's no one group that's going to bring them together to solve that problem. So we need to think outside of the box instead of lean on the cloud to store our files.
[00:31:33] Speaker A: And based upon the amount of data that is created on the daily, there is not sufficient bandwidth in the on the planet to get that into cloud. You cannot upload everything, despite what people think. There's just too much stuff not even talking about cloud capacity. We just can't physically get it through that part of the hourglass to get up there.
Dustin, one thing I wanted to touch on. You guys just went through a technology transition, right?
[00:32:02] Speaker D: We did. We are, we are going to be transitioning. We've been an avid shop since our inception in 2004 and we are going to be switching over to Adobe Premiere. And Michael Kamis and Carl Soleil Shout out have been really instrumental in getting us transitioned. And luckily we didn't torture Michael too much with all our questions. Hopefully he'll come back and help us Some more.
[00:32:24] Speaker A: What was the thinking behind that? Was it, was it, was it money.
[00:32:27] Speaker D: Based or you know, based? It's purely talent based. The big thing. The reason the decision came down, I'm going to have to be careful because some of it's inside baseball. But the reason ultimately the decision came down, it came down to a simple fact of certain key talent and also future young talent were all very premier focused and I believe it was even a situation where certain people that they maybe wanted to consider hiring or interview that said they simply would not work at an avid shop, they would only work for Premiere. And also younger Adobe's I think been really intelligent about how they've laid claim over the academic realm and been really smart about that. So I'm an avid fanboy, I've been an expert using it and have made my living using it for many years and I still love their media management in my Nexus. But that's just something we have to adapt to. But I'm looking forward to the new future with that and being an expert in both.
[00:33:22] Speaker A: Awesome. So the back half of this discussion supposed to be called the reinvention of creative teams. So let's talk about the reinvention of creative teams. Let's look ahead.
Where will creative teams and post businesses, what are they going to look like in it says five years, I mean really three years because dev cycles are so much shorter now. What roles or departments are not going to exist, what skills will become essential, what skills won't be essential are just going to fade out. Michael, we'll start with you.
[00:33:50] Speaker B: You know that was a really great point you made, which also is another example of where an outside force acted in on the business. It wasn't that Adobe essentially made a product that one the company preferred, it was that the company wanted to hire people. So it was an outside force that made the change, which is another example of that. But I actually think one of the things that will change in reinventing our teams and making them more efficient. One thing that I've seen happen that I would consider a decay over the last 10 years is the role of the assistant editor. The traditional high end assistant editor has decayed over the last 10 years. Assistant editors when I started were actually cutting scenes and they were regularly working directly on the final product with the lead editor or editors. What's happened over the last 10 years is they became mini post houses and all they do is these outputs and versions and deliverables for lawyers and legal and logos and they did a whole bunch of this non. It's busy work. They do a lot of busy work and a lot less creative work. The reason that's going to come to penalize us is as the incumbent generation of editors ages out, many of their assistants don't have as much storytelling as CIT except experience like of a farm team as they did. And I've noticed that. And I used to own a couple of post houses and I watched this trend happen. And I realized the assistant editor was doing post house work, which I would have preferred to have done, and doing less cutting work. And so I think what we're seeing now and what we have to brace ourselves for is making sure that if you're in the cutting room, if we are doing this right, then all that busy work should be done by a post supervisor, which would be a person. All post supervisors going in the future will have had ample editing experience. That might not have been the case in the past, but today if you're a post soup, you cut a lot. So you know your way around almost every tool. You certainly understand how to add time and. And figure out what it means to do a flash to flash poll. You understand a little bit about color science and debayering and things like that. And now that is something that can eliminate some of the busy work on an assistant editor. And presumably if cutting rooms are going to shrink, we need to get the most work out of those assistants to be doing creative work. And I think that's just one area we can really focus in on. Hire a good post soup that can actually do a lot of that busy work. So your assistant can actually do creative work.
[00:36:25] Speaker A: It used to be that the creative assistant editors went into story offline and the technical assistant editors went into online. They became online folks. It's just the split, Thomas.
[00:36:35] Speaker C: I don't think we're. I'd love to go back to that. I don't think we are. Because when you did have assistants in the bay, whether it was cutting film or cutting digitally, you had to know the technology. You had to troubleshoot an Avid with a card that wasn't working in the right slot or a software version or storage version. And you only learned because you were sitting with an editor. Now, while there's a lot of garbage online, there's also a lot of good tutorials on how to install this piece of software that requires no other hardware but a computer to run. And you can learn about luts. You can learn about color science. You can learn about pacing in the way stories used to be told. As we've talked about here we're now doing storytelling. That's different. So I think the role of the folks you're going to see in modern post houses are just like when editors had to move from just being an editor, no offense, to learning graphics. Maybe a little after effects and a little bit of titles, a little bit of audio work. It's going to be knowing how to not only edit for the platform you're going to, but also can you do some thumbnails. Right. So there's, I think there's be more work in that realm, but I don't see the role of an, of an assistant editor returning back to what it was.
[00:37:41] Speaker A: Makes sense. Dustin, what do you think's going to be there? What won't be there a couple years?
[00:37:46] Speaker D: Oh, that's a, that's a really tough one. I'll just say that I definitely think that I'm even for us, we used to have a full on finishing visual finishing team for online and then we also had a mixer and those, not that those are going away, but I think the idea of a, an agency like ours having all the bells and whistles and a creative offline and a finisher and the mixer, it's all getting streamlined down to just the creative. And I would say. I don't know if I can comment on that exactly. But one thing I think that is, has served us well as far as nurturing assistant editor talents which I think is really vital is we have a really strong mentorship program where we take the assistant editors who are doing a lot of the kind of the mundane or the picture preps and all that stuff or having to add in new graphics. We're taking them and after they worked with us for a certain period then they are then assigned to an editor that helps guide them. So that way they, they can then get involved in the creative process. But it's definitely a fight because it's a busy day for an insistent editor and we're always looking at new ways to, to streamline and make it easier for them. But it's, it's definitely tough. Like for each cut that goes out or a version that goes out, you have to prep X amount of files. We have dailies coming in, we have new graphics coming in. There's just. It's a day's work for an assistant editor is like part therapist, part IT professional, part creative editor and they have to fight for it. But yeah, that's it.
[00:39:10] Speaker A: Yeah, the assistant editor will be on the couch telling people how do you really feel about this? The other thing I think will go away is data management.
Media management is still a huge thing because that part of it is exploding. Metadata is everywhere and it's got to get into different databases. But data management is something that is very easily automated. It's a job folder. It does this, creates all these things and puts them where they need to be. I think those sorts of roles will be automated out or a very, very small part of people's jobs.
Let's see here.
What about colorists?
That's a very good question.
Go ahead. We both know some.
[00:39:55] Speaker B: I would say what I think about the. What's really remarkable. We're actually seeing the first leg of the colorist reinvention actually starting to happen right now because Resolve has now been out and free for 10 years. And so what's been happening in the background is it's been cultivating talent in the sort of secret in the shadows. And now all those Resolve colorists that got 10 years to get good at it, watching all those YouTube videos and emulating all these looks, taking advantage of better quality cameras, they can actually color really well on their own. And I'm seeing an absolute explosion of the freelance colorist which 10 and 20 years ago was really abstract. There were a couple, you know, they would say I4 walled at some facility or something like that. Now they're literally everywhere and they're good everywhere. And they've had 10 years to get good at it because Resolve flooded the market with it. So I think in a main facility you're going to see a reduction in people that need to go to traditional facility color correction. Certainly it will be there for a few that can afford and like that experience. But if it comes down to quality for a good price, it's not really much of a compromise to now go to a freelance colorist.
[00:41:11] Speaker C: I think color is probably one of the last bastions of there was a cost barrier for the gear, right. Because you always had the high end monitors that. Well, you can't do that with a computer monitor and the software. But to your point, you can get it resolved for free. And now you're seeing what, one and 2,000 nit monitors for sub $5,000, roughly, which still may be expensive for some folks. But it's not the 50, 60, $100,000 that you were seeing for Hollywood color bays. So it's going to continually get lower and lower and lower until the software and hardware are commodity and then it's the talent. Unfortunately, we've over the last several decades conflated talent with gear. Right. So you get paid because of how much your gear costs. If the gear doesn't cost a lot, we don't have to pay you a lot when you should be paying for talent, not the gear.
[00:42:02] Speaker A: I wonder if I can color in cap cut a little. A little.
[00:42:06] Speaker C: So they could do black and white really well.
[00:42:08] Speaker A: Exactly. Well, the other thing Also, you know, iPad Pro, fully calibrated, does full PQ for LG panel. Yeah, the LG panels that are out there, they're not that expensive. So that gets us into a discussion about something that everyone has.
Standards.
What standards or industry rules are becoming completely nearly irrelevant. What should we let go of to really move forward? Dustin, we'll start with you work back certainly.
[00:42:38] Speaker D: And I'm sure Michael. Sorry, I'm so used to calling Mike the other Michael.
[00:42:44] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:42:45] Speaker D: Can comment on this, but I definitely think that stripping down these incredibly restrictive air gap, no Internet bays, and allowing us to embrace some more advanced solutions that can help save us labor costs and allow us to be more free. The other thing too is I think that it's. For me, it's a simple matter of you can add all that labor and we can, we can pay for that. And let's just say that we. We embrace it. You're still spending all this extra energy that you could be spending into making a trailer great or adding that extra layer of sound design or adding that extra little graphic tweak instead. Again, I know the editors aren't dealing with this, but like, if we just had it more liberated, we could, we could spend more time on the creative and making the content as best we can versus having to put all this extra money and waste and time into making it secure.
[00:43:35] Speaker C: So, Thomas, I think the move has been quantity over quality. Right. Especially when we're talking about the creator economy. There's often less time spent on things to put more things out there to have more eyeballs and being able to use, not have the snobbery. Well, this has to be prores 4x4 or this has to be 8k raw. No, you can do an H265 and you can tell a great story with H265. So having to have the utmost of codecs I don't think is going to be needed as more as much. And I for one am happy with that. It'll make some colorists very upset because you have to try and color grade macro blocking, but it allows content to get out quicker and rendered quicker.
[00:44:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I'll say something that like half the people here will either say duh and the other half will be like, huh. And that is the Internet has no frame rate. The Internet has no resolution, it has no color space. It doesn't really care. An aspect ratio has no aspect ratio. All these things that we created for good reason to make sure things were right side up. Squares were squares, circles were circles, red was red, blue was blue. Like we had all these rules, all those rules are gone in on the Internet. And yet things now, think about it, it's not like people's skin tone looks like Kermit the Frog. It's not like the aspect ratios don't work or the frames are constantly blurry, or there's all this stepping. It works like the Internet is like a garbage disposal. You could just put anything in it and it just plays. It's remarkable. If you did one thing wrong on an HDCAM SR tape, you had a total quagmire. Right. One setting wrong, 23.98 versus 23.976. You type that into after effects 7.6 versus 9.8, you get a completely different render. It can break things. Right. So what we have to realize is that if the Internet has no standards effectively for these things, and people are getting into that, then we need to really explore reducing some of our expectations. Sometimes people say, well, you have to shoot 4K, it has to be 10 bit, it needs to be 12 bit, the audio needs to be 64 bit. And it's like, what if you're wrong? What if, what if it doesn't matter? Because I actually think there are, I'm actually certain there are people that are pushing for this high end quality has to be shot on 65 millimeter film. Some people say, right. And the truth is there is no relationship between people that are being super high policing of standards and the monetary value of the product. If the objective that we create something is for people to view it and engage with it and enjoy it and hopefully pay something to consume it.
I don't think the standards that we're upholding right now actually contribute to more money made on the product.
[00:46:28] Speaker C: They don't. Because don't VOD streamers like at Netflix say, well, if you want 4k, you have to pay more for 4k. Right. So there's an additional revenue stream for these streamers to say, yes, we want that higher quality.
[00:46:39] Speaker B: Yeah. In the case of Netflix specifically, they were one of the only people to actually staple that early on when 4k was not a thing. So paying a premium for 4k in 2010 was a mechanical advantage for them. Plus they got a button on the remote and the remote button had to mean something, right? Nobody else had did that, negotiated that, that button on a remote, which was a clever move. But I think now, going forward in the next decade, I don't think 4K as a premium is actually something that people consider a major advantage like they might have a decade ago.
Now I do believe though, when it comes to quality and you're making any content, if it looks better and sounds better, it often does better. But that doesn't mean that's subjective. So that can be a subjective rule versus these pages and pages of deliverables with these QC reports that tell you, oh, you got a dead pixel over here. You can't air that. What happens if we did. Nothing. Nothing happens. Right? Yeah. Here we go. And we send it back and we spend another $800 redelivering everything. I used to profit off that, by the way, and now I feel a little guilty. I realize everything would be the same if we didn't fix any of those mistakes because they're not even real mistakes and they really didn't really bring more quality to the product, in my opinion.
[00:47:58] Speaker A: Who's dealt with variable frame rate?
[00:48:00] Speaker C: Oh, bite your tongue.
[00:48:02] Speaker A: So it's a huge problem, isn't it?
Is it a huge problem for YouTube?
No.
So that, that, that, that's just one of those things there. If we're able to adapt our processes to deal with all of those little problems like variable frame rate upfront, it's going to make delivering to the, the high end market a lot simpler.
[00:48:27] Speaker D: If I may chime in real quick, I do, I would love to hear both your, both of Michael's opinions. You guys should really start a podcast about. One thing I would love to see is more advancements in color depth. I, I do think you make a valid point about the abandonment, very progressive argument about the abandonment of resolutions and frame rates. But one thing that I think that to me really hits at me emotionally when I'm watching Stumping Compelling is, is, is when I've seen advancements in color depth where things look more real and more realistic. So I would love to hear your thoughts on advancements in color depth and, and the in. If they have value to either of you.
[00:49:03] Speaker C: I think they do. But we're always downwind of how the exhibition is going to be. Right. If it's not adopted on the Sony side or the LG side where you can view it on a panel, then great. You're capturing something at this fantastic fidelity and then you're Putting it in a garbage disposal and dumbing it down to eight bits or something else that's not as good. And so we're always going to be beholden to what the exhibition is. I'm also curious, and maybe this is a podcast episode, but if we look at audio 20, 20 of years ago, we hit 96, then 192, and as an industry we kind of realized, yeah, I think we've gone high enough. I don't think we really need to go any higher. So at what point is it diminishing returns in terms of, well, here's a new wide color gamut or here's another color standard. At what point does it become, Nah, this is negligible. It might sell a few more cameras, but is it really going to make a difference in the visual aesthetic?
[00:49:58] Speaker B: You know, it's, it's a good point. And I honestly think.
I wouldn't say that we need more of a wider color gamut. And there are people trying to widen that even more because I don't think we do that because I actually used to own color correction houses, so I'm pretty experienced in the DI space.
I've worked on over 150 feature color corrections. And normally what we do is desaturate. That is normal. We actually project on television a world that is less saturated than it traditionally is to our eyes. If you, if you even the Alexa, when you shoot the K1S1LUT on the Alexa, most people are like, turn it down. Right? It's a little much. And we tend to desaturate. However, I would say the biggest advancement that I have seen, and I actually just. It came up on my Hulu, is to rewatch the series from the 90s, the X files, and I'm like, oh, I haven't seen this in forever. And so as soon as I turned it on, Hulu is using, I believe they're using HLG and they're just doing probably a universal conversion into a PQ space for high dynamic range. It's not true high dynamic range, it's just stretching. But here is this thing shot on 16 and 35, 30 years ago. And what's different about it is the speculars, and specifically those DPs were so good, they knew how to do eye lights. And the eye lights in that show, it's weird, but the highlights in the X files from 30 years ago are perfect. And when you see the eye light in HDR on today's LG TVs, that's the one I have. That's the one you should have. An LG C3 would be great for all of you, C4.
But this, this highlight brings this blurry old image to life. And these people are so alive just because of one specular. And I keep being drawn to that because we connect with people's eyes. And when you can see HDR in an eye light, it brings everything to the modern age. And it doesn't feel 30 years old anymore. That was good cinematography back then, 35 was a great format to shoot on and a good cinematographer knows how to capture that highlight. I don't even think they could see it in 1993, but today we can see it better than we could then. And I actually think hdr, even up conversions, like what Hulu's doing is actually making the product even better. So that's where I would think we could think forward is making sure that we're filling the entire dynamic range of the projection displays we have.
And that's where I think YouTube actually lags a little bit. That's where YouTube's behind. It's one thing we've got on them, it's maybe the last thing we've got. But YouTube will catch up.
[00:52:40] Speaker A: The truth is out there. So the other thing also for me is we're talking about audio, we're talking about video. But I will not watch something that falls out of lip sync. I'm sorry, I will hang up. Done. Not happening. So there are some standards that we just simply won't deal with because it eliminates that what we all learned in communication school, the suspension of disbelief. You're like, I'm watching these things happen on my phone. Why am I doing this? This is not good. So let's get to the last part because I've heard that the show's open and the show happy hour is open. Don't all run.
What's your advice for not only facilities today to adapt and overcome, but to people who are coming up in this industry and the answer can't be run. No, no.
Michael, we'll start with you.
[00:53:34] Speaker B: Okay, so what I would say to my best advice is to think of the 2025 to the rest of this decade as independent film was 2005 to 2015, maybe 2005, 2010. Really the high point of independent film was the early aughts of the year 2000s. And it was awesome. It was fun. It was full of innovation and creativity. And many of the people that did well in independent cinema then are very well established names today. And they built out of that independent cinema space. I think what we are right now is a revitalization of a new form of indie cinema. And it's just at its very beginning, which is to create high quality long form content, but not to actually do it under a studio banner, but to take advantage of the resources and the talent that is in this space, this nice courtyard. And I think both from the vendor side, you have an opportunity to understand how to support independent films in this new version of independent films. And as creatives that are going to generate it, they there's no reason to not be doing it now. I had to get my whole family to come together to buy me a Sony PD150 so that I could afford to shoot on a decent quality camera. And my family was lovely enough to do that back in 1999. I think my iPhone pretty much is better than the PD150 in all attributes anything measurable. So there's absolutely no excuse that we can't start if you. And I won a lot of awards on the PD150. I actually lied and said I shot on 35 and I won Kodak Student Filmmaker of the Year and I never shot on 35 and I just used the PD150 and nobody checked. So you could just take advantage, exploit the technology and if your vendor support, the people that want to do that don't only look to the upper echelon because they're going to run out and they're not always as loyal as you think. And then if you're a creative, get, get, get making those films and long form content is here to stay. It's the hard. A narrative is the hardest type of content to create and so it's an opportunity that AI is not going to do narrative long form perhaps possibly ever. There's some debates on that, but it certainly is not going to do it next year.
[00:55:50] Speaker A: Dustin, what do you think about that? What, what's your.
This is gone. What is your recommendation for folks who are looking to get, get into this or, or up level their business?
[00:56:01] Speaker D: Great question. I realized as soon as you asked that I thought, oh my. I couldn't even. It didn't even dawn on me to think like, oh, there's like young people coming up back like when I started. So yeah, no, I definitely think they should. Anyone coming up should get their hands dirty with as many of the new tools available. Because even when I was coming up it was like a fight to like save money to get a Final Cut Pro license. Now you can get like a camera Cut and resolve or premiere or avid. All this for such a much more lower threshold. And I would say don't. My big thing is, and I've said this to a number of other young people I've spoken with, is don't wait for the perfect opportunity. Sometimes you just need to kind of create your own. And also if you have know someone's whose work you admire and you want to maybe potentially work for them or a company that you like, like go and try and be as useful as you can with whatever they may need. Sometimes I think there's a little bit with some of the younger generation I've talked to that feel like, oh, well, I just graduated from this school and I want to do X, Y and Z. I'm like, that's great, but you're still starting new. Like you gotta go and be of service. Like that idea to them, I think is still is. Is one that, I think is. Is one that they should really consider is be. Try to be as much of service and as much value as you can. I know that's very general, but it's, it's something that's always served me and even to this day it's like, how can you, how can I be of service? How can I serve this better? And not just about what you need.
[00:57:25] Speaker A: Still have to earn your way. Thomas, last word.
[00:57:28] Speaker C: I love that. And what I was going to add was for years I was focused on the zeros and ones and get zeros and ones faster. And it dawned on me that as software and hardware become less expensive, the only thing that differentiates people sitting here and the people doing this in their backyard is you've got experience. Experience. And I've have immense. It's immensely gratifying to be able to educate and teach folks younger than myself about technology and how to maybe do things a little bit better. And when you open yourself and do that and then they open themselves up to you and they tell you about the way they do things, that's how our industry is going to keep going. Because we have that synergy. Yes, I use that word, synergy between those generations. And if I could ask anything, it would be to. Don't let your knowledge go to waste.
[00:58:18] Speaker A: Exactly. So, you know, nobody ever started out with a DXL2 as their first camera.
So the bottom line here is people were shooting Super 8 back in the day. You've got the tools in your pocket. Just get out there and do it. Worry about telling that story and telling a cohesive story that people want to see the rest will come later. But also remember, your first user and password is going to be intern.
And as long as you keep that in mind and you learn to earn your way, you're going to do it.
Awesome. Thanks to our panel for joining us today. It was great to talk to everybody. And thanks for everybody for joining us out here in the sun.
