Editing After the Linear Medium

A Job Talk at YOUR UNIVERSITY Dan Faltesek

TODAY’S DATE

Why Study the Digital Transition?

Digital signal processing is central to a host of emerging media platforms

The Digital is one of several stand-ins for technological change in public discourse

Digitality means changes for labor practices, production, distribution, domestic design, legal regulation, and media and rhetorical theory.

The Storage-Transmission DialecticEditing at the intersection of paradigms

Strength: Transmission opens inter-subjective space for understanding communication as a ritual that builds affective bonds.

Weakness: Underplays the power of technological change

Strength: Media determines our situation.Weakness: Determinism can be perceived as anti-human. Brief Aside: In my dissertation research I address this break

through Benjamin, Habermas, and the idea of the Public. Unfortunately, my time is limited.

The Importance of Time-Axis Manipulation

Storage TransmissionSpace Linear Medium Linear

TransmissionTime Transmission Storage

Digital technology challenges the linear presumption – No More Film Strip

Digital Non-Linear Editing goes beyond inverting the categories: it plasticizes them

Difficult Historiography

Few academic histories of the technology, most are in film production textbooks, (Ohanian, 1993) is a fine example.

Hollywood Histories attribute industrial efforts to single geniuses, even if those geniuses credit others. Walter Murch and Steve Jobs are often the protagonists. See: (Koppelman, 2005).

The best academic works focus on DNLE in the context of labor practices, John Caldwell’s (2008) ethnographic study of below the line workers is a key book.

Trade journals have fascinating detail but are disjointed. (Optical Information Systems 1982-1986).

A Short History of Editing

A Short History of Editing

The Big Three

AVID Adobe Premier Final Cut Pro

Enterprise Level Software – Expensive

Makes Claims to the Professional Market

Rapid Vertical and Horizontal Integration

Inexpensive to start, regular updates at around $500

Part of Adobe Creative Suite

Stability is at a premium/Adobe has other priorities

Opening Price Point

Makes claim to be the most heavily used, opens the professional question

Ubiquity based strategy

The Bin

The bin allows an editor or a team of editors to manipulate footage.

In the past the bin was a canvas box on wheels that was used to move footage around the editing space.

The Time Line

This is the nexus for time-axis manipulation. Video can be slowed down, sped up, reversed, plied with artificial lens flare and many other effects.

Codecs/After sprocket holes

The H.264 codec has replaced the sprocket hole. H.264 is essential in the operation of iTunes, Amazon, DSLR cameras, and almost everything else.

The draw back to H.264 is limited color information depth. Professional cameras use professional codecs, which are integrated into the DNLE software.

What does this all mean?

DNLE is the key tool for democratizing production. Reality TV would be much more difficult to produce. This is the heart of YouTube.

Collapse of the enterprise video software market. Video software is either closed source or cheap. Concordantly, the end of the spatial fix in video editing.

The Plastic Aesthetic. Jump cut laced expressive videos, artificial lens flare, auto-tune artefacting.

Transmission and storage are not stable starting points.

Thank you for listening.

I would enjoy answering your questions.