Avid, Apple, Adobe (Again)

Today's essay comes with a caveat:  We are always having this conversation.  Production folk don't ever stop talking about it.  I do not expect it to be helpful a year from now as the marketplace changes.  But because a colleague at another school asked (she's on the cusp of a major institutional purchase), I'll submit some observations that feel true to me in the moment.

Our school (70 production majors at a liberal arts college of 3500) was firmly committed to Avid. The company had market share. They had ProTools. They had the edge in server-based file sharing. They had great student pricing. Then, in February, Avid stock was delisted by NASDAQ following some financial shenanigans. Even though they’ve been reinstated, I think institutions are (rightly) a bit wary of financial dealings with them.

If you buy an Avid system, turn-key, you’ll have the planet’s most powerful editor. If, however, you buy only Avid software, expecting it to run on machines purchased through your school’s IT department, prepare your engineer to devote regular attention to compatibility issues. We hold our breath at every operating system update.

Apple, it seems, has the prosumer market in its cross hairs. Understandably, students love (indeed, too often rely upon) its many presets. The shortcuts it takes in service of a friendly learning curve will likely result in a sameness of product among entry-level editors (famously and deservedly lampooned by Conan O’Brien). For my money, color grading functions feel more accessible in Final Cut than Avid. 

Of late, Adobe is the real marketplace winner. For $20 a month, students can access the entire Creative Suite. Project files travel seamlessly between Premiere, Photoshop, Illustrator, AfterEffects, Audition, SpeedGrade, MediaEncoder… But Adobe hasn’t done such a great job making its software affordable for colleges. Despite a solid lobbying effort from University Film and Video Association (are you a member?) president Norm Hollyn, Adobe is completely uninterested in the old site-licensing structure. Be prepared to pay a subscription fee for each of you school’s computers. 

If you keep your eye on the Occupational Outlook Handbook (and for the sake of your graduates, please do), you’ll see that the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts most media producers will be employed by firms of fewer than 30 persons. Because the likelihood of freelancing is so high, our graduates will be buying their own computers, their own software — they won’t buy Avid to shoot weddings. They might buy Final Cut (it’s cheap enough with a new Mac). But they will also buy Photoshop. And once they’ve stuck a toe in the Creative Suite water, they will buy everything else Adobe sells. Putting myself in the shoes of those entrepreneurs of the future, I’m more and more inclined to outfit a college with Adobe products.

One final thing: No matter which platform you adopt (a timeline is a timeline — ultimately, who cares?) I’d strongly consider some kind of certification program. You can find authorized training by certified instructors in Apple, Avid, and Adobe. Every one of the graduates who attended a weekend certifying seminar says it has absolutely made the difference in getting hired. We tried like crazy to maintain certifying credentials among the faculty, but the semester calendar works against academics — easier and more cost effective in the long haul just to bring in someone.

False Chastity

During a talk last week, I asked Christian college students which was more morally troublesome: a movie, a car, a light bulb, or an apple. True to their upbringing they said with one voice "a movie." They said the things you'd perhaps expect them to say about language, nudity, violence, the erosion of social values, the absence of religion, the treatment of women. They told stories about the ways their parents had protected them from film's negative influence. "For a moment, let's set aside the film," I said. "Let's instead, consider the apple.

"We go to the grocery store and -- believing our bodies to be temples -- we stand in the produce section choosing which fresh fruits to buy. We see apples in broad variety; we buy half a dozen Honey Crisps. Because Honey Crisp apples are not in season in our part of the world in March, carbon monoxide has been pumped into the air on our behalf to ship them from elsewhere on the planet. We have thus weighed the benefits of personal health against creation care and chosen the former.

"We may also have made a decision between stewardship and shalom. We don't just want things that taste good; we also want them for a good price. And cheap apples are cheap because migrant workers seldom get health insurance. Indeed, the cinder block buildings in which they live sometimes don't have heat... or even floors for that matter. Given the Bible's preoccupation with the fate of widows, orphans, and aliens, our apple-purchasing habits are pretty disturbing.

"We're not ignorant. In the back of our minds, we are probably aware of the path our apples take from orchard to table. But we repress this knowledge.

"Now back to the hyper-violent film. Neo, Ahh-nold, or John Wayne (take your pick) spectacularly mows down an army of bad guys. And the director yells 'cut.' And all the extras dust themselves off and stand up. And they collect their paychecks and go home to spouses and children and sweethearts.

"We do understand, don't we, that the film's violence is fantasy? Not even animals were harmed in the making of this film. But our actions in the produce aisle result in real violence, done on our behalf to the planet and to our fellow humans. And yet, we say film is the more morally troublesome consumption."

"And consumption is precisely the problem. Jesus said it's not what goes into a person that makes her nasty; it is rather, what comes out of her. It is what she says, more than what she hears. It is the canvases she paints, more than the galleries she visits. It is what she cooks, more than what she eats. It is the movies she makes, more than the movies she pays to see.

"But because we have accepted that our relationship with the world is largely that of consumer, the church -- especially the Protestant church -- has virtually ignored its mandate to create. Instead, we practice suspicious ingestion (sometimes called "discernment") masquerading as the virtue of Chastity."

We are not chaste. We are fearful.