Discussion about state of the art and education

Musicvid wrote on 12/22/2022, 7:49 PM

It's all relevant -- and will remain so until there are no more film transfers, tape captures, interlaced or analog footage, Limited Range delivery and broadcast standards, or Y'cBcR. And knowing the history is as important as knowing how to recognize or work with the legacy formats. Give any millennial a basic quiz and see how they fare.

And that's just the last half-century. Any real understanding of the art comes from knowing the relationships of f-stops, shutter speeds, depth of field, Zone System (dynamic range), metering, light / energy formulas, basic logarithms, gamma curves, and yes, Y=mX+b, distance formula, ratio math, FOIL, Trig and Exponential functions, which are glossed over in public education because most teachers can't explain them and online education does no better. https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/math-review-for-editors-10-questions--111980/

So we've got a bunch of bright, inexperienced under-30s who boast they know it all because they can search Google and mash it all together in provocative-sounding articles that mean absolutely nothing. They still have no grasp of the basics that came before 21st Century technology.

Post-pandemic STEM scores are down -- way down. Last time high school graduates were at such a disadvantage was when my generation dropped out and hit the highways. Fortunately, we already had good "junior high" academic skills and work ethics, so we were at least employable -- I just worry about the graduates of 2025-2030 😧

Thanks for the opportunity to rant -- as someone who read everything from Adams to Heinlein as a preteen, and was hired straight out of college by Technicolor Film Labs (yes that one), we're probably among the few remaining resources the current generation has. If only they would tune in...

DMT3 wrote on 12/22/2022, 8:28 PM

After I retired and moved back to my hometown, I worked for a while in audio/video support at one of our sports/entertainment venues. Most of the other people were right out of college with majors in broadcasting, but I was surprised at how little some of them seem to know about framerates, encoding formats, and such. They seemed to know just enough to direct a news show or create graphics, but nothing technical. Obviously, a few of them had the more technical interest and expertise as well, but if Final Cut didn't do it, they didn't know it. I also came from the world of SLRs so I have an understanding of f-stops, DOF, etc, but even some of what you mentioned was beyond me. I was a video editor and knew what I felt I needed to know to be a good one. NLEs were a bit of a challenge for me at first. I couldn't grasp the concept of random editing, I worked linearly and still think that way when I do my productions. Also, we specialized. We had an audio engineer, a film colorist, a graphic designer, and an editor. Even people whose expertise was duplication. Not all wrapped up in one like corporations seem to want now.

So I wonder, what do they teach? Do they teach just what an NLE can do, or do they actually teach the basic technicalities of video? Anyone here a recent student or teacher?

Musicvid wrote on 12/22/2022, 9:45 PM

Most of the other people were right out of college with majors in broadcasting,

Sadly, most of their teachers don't understand IRE voltages and Kelvin temperatures either, or even VU meters.

set wrote on 12/23/2022, 3:58 PM

Could be more to less-technical and more to Storytelling side