gimme a gluepot.

The following sentences could quite possibly be one of the biggest things I’d wished I had known when I first started editing:

 

All editing systems are tools, nothing more. Tools in and of themselves are meaningless. Only when a person engages his or her mind in conjunction with the tools can anything meaningful take place.

 

A few years ago I went to lunch in Hollywood with my friend Sam (not his real name). Sam is about the same age as I, also grew up in the Midwest, and loves working on the Avid. We were talking about this at-the-time new program called Final Cut Pro, and he was vehement.

“It’s not the Avid. It can never be as good. There’s no way.”

By that time I had actually forced myself to start learning Final Cut, and like most people who use both Avid and Final Cut, I had things I liked and disliked about both. I tried to tell him that it doesn’t matter what system you use, it matters what you do with it. These days, most people hire editors for their editing skills, not their knowledge of a certain fancy editing rig… the knowledge of the editing rig is a given.

Sam was unconvinced. “The Avid is the only system for me,” he declared. I shrugged and changed the subject.