What Kind of Question? What Kind of Sampling?

I'd like to do a qualitative study of film editors. My gut tells me that this is a good idea. What I'd like to look at is how you learn how to be a film editor in a digital environment with the group of an editor, assistant editor and an apprentice. How does the apprentice learn? Look at a nice, small group of three.

Ugh. Give it up. No good. First generation change, from cutting film on film using razor blades and scotch tape is over. Done with. Last person still cutting film is Steven Spielberg. Everyone has been cutting on an Avid Media Composer or FCP for years now. Big deal.

But it was an interesting change. When Media Composer first came out only one person could work at a time instead of three or four at a time. Used to be that the editing room was a busy social space with lots going on with alot of people all together. Then you put the computer in and boom, suddenly the editor was working alone, the assistant came in at night to log and never saw the editor. And the apprentice, instead of spending hours rewinding film, going on visits to film vaults and the sound editor and all those nice things that included getting coffee just ended up getting coffee. The editing room became a very lonely place. It stunk!

So what? It's over! How do you study something that is over?

Well, now we have people editing on networked systems. That is new! They can work together again now. The assistant is back on the day shift and the apprentice maybe now gets to do some interesting stuff again.

OK, now you are on to something. But what? You could do an historical study...

Well, what about understanding of workflow? How does the novice (the apprentice)grasp the whole process from exposing the negative to the print in the theater?

Understanding workflow?

Deliberate Negligence

I'm really enraged that when I deal with certain faculty they claim that the reason why the program is so disorganized and that there is no thematic or affinitive scholarship is because things in the field are changing so fast and that the field is too new. Instructional technology has a record of literature going back to Comenius. It has deep methodological roots in psychology going back to before the Second World War. Not for nothing it is a mature intellectual pursuit. It predates the Internet. It has a huge body of scholarship behind it.

And even if it didn't what is the excuse for a lack of rigor?

What is the excuse for not being serious?

So what gives?

Boat Crew

I've been fascinated by the work of Edwin Hutchins on Distributed Cognition. He places much of our thinking in a social and cultural perspective. He isn't too interested in what is happening in the head of an individual. When you look at what we care about in education that actually makes sense. You care about how people share understandings and performances when you educate them more than anything else.

Hutchins spent a great deal of time on helicopter carriers working with quartermasters watching how you became a skilled navigator and discovered that much of what you learned was becoming part of a group. Interesting!

I'm finishing up boat crew quals for the Coast Guard and it is much the same thing. You become a part of a crew and you work together. You share responsibility. TCT (Team Coordination Training) and the GAR exercise (Green Amber Red) are all about sharing understandings and communication. Probably learned more in crew training than I would if I went for an MBA.

Another Year

I'm a bit burned out right now. Taking my vacation days so as not to lose them and trying to get centered and right with myself. It's tough. I'm down to only three credits for grad school, have only a few more tasks for the boat crew quals to do more work for the Coast Guard and it is all too much for me right now. I need a guide. Probably will not get one.

Clarity...

Media Manager and Interplay

One of the "missing links" in non-linear video that impedes student understanding is the idea of asset management and a shared environment for media. Understandings for students (and faculty) end with the desktop application. Proficiency in that is considered the goal. That is like thinking that proficient writing can be done in the abscence of an understanding or research. (Writing starts as reading, after all)To be a proficient editor is to be someone who can use a database of images, graphics and sounds. Like good writing, it also entails collaboration. In academic writing collaboration often starts with understanding citations; that is, being able to use the great pool of data out there without plagirism. In film and television it means being able to operate as part of a team of creative people. Media management is a part of this, and should be part of student understandings. So, networked production and media management tools are essential.

Madison, Day 3

It's absolutely grueling to sit in a room all day over this system and learn it. This is tough, not physically, but mentally.

You couldn't do this online. The Avid ALEX product is interesting, but for some stuff you just need to be in a cloister...

Madison, WI

I'm here in Madison, Wisconsin learning how to administer an Avid ISIS system. It's somewhat refreshing to be trained in an environment where the glitz and hype normally associated with the film and television industry just isn't there. When we go to lunch we go to eat; just that. Wisconsin is so not New York.

ISIS is a pretty phenomenal system that violates the known laws of physics. You get HD bandwidth (well, potentially HD bandwidth, but that's another story) not by building a big full duplex pipe between the drives and the workstations like Fibre Channel but by spreading the media across a large collaborative and intelligent array of microprocessors.The more microprocessors the more bandwidth. It's a social solution to a physical problem where brute force is just a waste of resources. The system we are training on has two embedded Windows system controllers and 64 Linux microprocessors. Each of the Linux microprocessors has 250 Gigs of storage and everything talks to each other over Ethernet. It is a thriving, humming behive of activity. Intelligence gives you what brute force cannot accomplish, and the more microprocessors you add the stronger, more reliable and more capable is the whole.

I'm also working on another problem related to this one, which is my poor dissertation. Children, do not grow up to go to my College unless you have infinite patience and deep pockets. Go instead to a nice state university where at least you will avoid bankruptcy and learn at least as much. The Ivies are hospitals that do not admit sick people; your success is not due to them but to the simple fact that you were weeded out of the dogpatch. Go instead to a place where they feel that they are obligated to teach you rather than anoint you as a chosen one. But with that being said, I digress.

Of great interest to me now is the work of Julian Orr regarding photocopier repairers. His book, Talking About Machines: an Ethnography of a Modern Job, is something that I want to build on regarding my own field. More to follow.