On Tuesday I had a great conversation with Dell Computer about potentially being part of a program for FCP editors who are contemplating making the switch to Adobe Premiere. I am excited to be participating in the project, which entails being set up with a Dell Precision workstation equipped with an NVIDIA graphics card and Adobe software. I already use After Effects for making titles and graphics for the pieces I edit and it will be interesting to use Premiere to edit. I started editing on 3/4″ tape in 1984 and eventually got hired at First Edition, a film editing company in Manhattan. We edited TV commercials on film and were one of the first companies to have an in-house On-Line finishing facility. I was lucky to get to learn both film and tape editing at the same company. In 1988, had the privilege of beta testing the original Avid 1 Media Composer ( I was the only guy who had a Mac….) and I loved it. Even though it was buggy and the picture quality was horrible, it was amazing to be able to move scenes around and quickly reorganize a cut, something that would have been time consuming on film or tape. IWe recieved the unit on a Friday – it was a Mac II with the top open to the extra wires that connected to the video cards inside, and it had 2 R-MAG 600 MB drives for storage, each costing about $2500! I had a training course over the weekend with Mike Milligan from Avid who did a great job of explaining how Avid worked. That Monday I arrived at work, and my boss Bobby Smalheiser, informed me he wanted me to actually cut something with one of our clients. It was a spot for Lusianne Ice Tea, and it was all testimonial bites. I was a bit nervous as I was still really just an assistant editor but I figured what the heck. Then I got REALLY nervous when he told me I would be working with the head of the agency! The Avid turned out to be a great tool (when it wasn’t crashing-it was still version .03b software) I could quickly reorder the testimonial bites and the client was pleased. IT actually took a while to convince people to use Avid back then-it was so ahead of it’s time, but it seemed at one point around 1990 everyone started requesting non-linear, and pretty quickly it became the norm in editing.
I hope to hear today about whether I have been chosen for the program and if so I will post about my experiences here.