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The Digital Director Experience: Video Editing Fundamentals

The poor persecuted filmmakers

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by
Marc Peters
, 05-09-2013 at 09:48 PM (17097 Views)
Filmmakers and enthusiasts are a persecuted bunch of people. If the stories are true, we're frequently harassed for innocent and entirely reasonable filming. These stories always feature a misinformed officer to raise interest. And always accompanied by a raft of outraged comments. In my experience, this is far from the truth. In fact I seem to have the opposite problem. People are just too nice. My shots are normally ruined by polite people stopping or apologising. Clearly I'm just not the videographer I thought I was.

Another, and more current, focus of videographers rants is the apparent greed of adobe and Google. Yes, in move that's shocked the world, both companies seem to want to make money. Adobe has embraced a subscription based model, which means you'll only be able to access new software upgrades by paying a monthly subscription. YouTube plans to launch pay per view subscriptions. Both of these have one key feature: change. And it appears the Internet video communities don't like change. Or perhaps just like complaining.

Personally, I took out a creative cloud subscription last month. As a Premiere user only, I'm loving all the new toys. And although the novelty may well wear off, I've always wanted after effects, but could never justify the one off price to my wife.

At least the creative cloud outrage has stopped my twitter feed from being filled with reviews of the yet to be released Blackmagic pocket cinema camera. I do sometimes wonder whether us videographers are more susceptible to mob mentality. Everyone seems to be wetting their pants over this camera, which has yet to be released. And as my fellow pessimist said, we'AKEll soon be faced with a raft of flat, dull, washed out test shots on Vimeo. I'll probably buy one.

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  1. Midnight Blue's Avatar
    While I've never personally been stopped by a police officer for filming there does seem to be a misconception by the constabulary that it is illegal to film in public, which it most definitely is not. We have a right to film in public under the same rules that the authorities can film us with CCTV cameras in most city centres. Just because they wear a costume doesn't give them any more rights than we have.

    Here is an example of what I mean. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQT-SZ3U4h8 and here is an explanation by a chief constable that "it's not what we want our officers to do" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKCUnxeJZs4.

    Taking photos or video has become much more sinister these days because of the so called "war on terror" and powers give to police under section 44 of the terrorism act.

    Another attack on photographers is the item Tim posted about people (corporations) being able to use any photo posted on the internet for free if the user "can't find" the person who took it.

    For me the civil liberties aspect is a worrying part of modern life. As for YouTube wanting to charge subscriptions for some channels, well that was nailed on as soon as Google bought it. I'm surprised that Adobe have taken this bold step and it will be interesting to see how this works for Adobe users and the company. I wonder if this might trigger an increase in pirate software for Adobe products.
  2. Marc Peters's Avatar
    Some say anti-piracy was one of the drivers for the move to the cloud
  3. Stripe's Avatar
    There's another dimension to this now. I recently entered a film comp where I had to have a signed form for every recognisable person in the film. So despite the fact it is legal to film in public, the people running the comp did not want Joe Public coming to them for royalties if they ever used my film for promotional purposes. Can you imagine the admin nightmare of a stadium crowd scene?

    Yep, they want their ass covered, and they know that the film maker is going to oblige, otherwise they will just go find another film maker.

    We are 10 a penny low life now, the days of being revered are nearly over.
  4. Poolboy's Avatar
    Youtube paid subscriptions is an experiment, and it is more about helping content creators make money more than making Google money. It was like their PPV experiment that they pushed heavily a couple of years ago but it was a failure so they quit talking about it. The paid subscriptions is optional and most content will still be free, same as always.
  5. Charles Feroz's Avatar
    Couldn't agree more with the most, well written, good work. I recently started doing freelancing video and have a post on several similar issue on video production and marketing