Speaker 0 00:01 Welcome to the workflow show. This is episode three Oh five. I am Nick gold. I'm joined by my cohort slash cohost Jason Whetstone, everyone also of Chesapeake. And today we've got a great guest with us, someone we've known for for many years. He's been very influential in both media production postproduction but also as a technologist, a teacher, a trainer, an evangelist, um, who's always had very deep level knowledge of the platforms that we're constantly deploying with our customers. We have with us rich Harrington from red pixel and again, rich has been very much on our radar for, for many years now and we're really looking forward having a conversation with him today about both his activities. You know, what's led him to the point he's at now. Uh, the trends both on the business side and technology side of all of this fun media production stuff we're all up to regularly. And so, uh, we're thrilled to have you here, rich.
Speaker 1 01:06 Thanks guys. It's great to be here. It's a certainly been an exciting time, how much everything keeps changing. And um, I'm also happy to see all the things that you guys continue to do. I've, you know, I've, uh, bought from you guys in the past. I've been always happy with you and it's great that you're providing this service for folks to know all about what's going on in the media industry.
Speaker 0 01:25 Yeah, thank you. We, we try to keep up on it. It's, you know, I, it moves fast. I tell people it's like, you know, on one hand we're in the media industry and on the other hand we're in the tech industry. So both between all of the shifts happening in media and distribution and the technology side and just the inevitable nature of tech development itself, it's, we, we can't even train employees. They're just going to say, you know, we, we frequently find ourselves saying, we, we are, we're extremely busy, which is a great thing, but how can we get some new people to join us? And it's like, uh, and it's not just about going onto monster.com and saying, Oh, let's hire some it guys. No, because the state of knowledge of these, of these tech, of the technologies, the workflows, you know, it's just a constant state of change. So let's do this. Rich, let's start off by you just giving maybe a little bit of a background on you and red pixel and kind of, you know, what's kind of put you in this world that you're in. And then of course we'll really make the meat of the conversation, sort of your, your take on what's going on today.
Speaker 1 02:30 Sure. Well, I'll, I'll do the high level version. A lot of people know me from training and education. Uh, you know, I come from a family of teachers. My mom's a teacher, my wife's a teacher all up and down the family tree. There are teachers. And so I, I had that gift. Um, you know, I used to be a professor at university as an adjunct while I was also a working professional and I've always enjoyed helping folks. So a lot of people mistakenly think that I'm an a teacher or a trainer and that's what I do. And that's actually only about a third of what I do. But I enjoy it. You know, it's a great job to be able to go in, hear about people's workflow problems, get dropped in and exciting places like TV networks and you know, movie sets and help them out with problems.
Speaker 1 03:14 And then at the same time, I try to make that stuff easily available. When I started my production career, I was a journalism major and I really believe in the power of journalism and communication. And this is right at the Dawn of the web. I published a music magazine online about music and uh, you know, we were putting audio and video clips up and back in 1995. So we were early adopters and, uh, you know, I, I've always had good mentors in my life and so, you know, my professional career started out in Des Moines, Iowa, which is a great place and I loved it, but, you know, not very high on the media map for folks. And the only reason I succeeded is that a lot of the silly barriers were broken down. You know, there was the barrier of read the entire avid manual before you're allowed to use it.
Speaker 1 03:59 But then I was getting time in on these nonlinear editing tools 20 years ago, uh, when they were extremely difficult to come by, you know, $150,000 systems, uh, as long as I was willing to pay my dues and go in from the hours of 2:00 AM to 5:00 AM and not get paid. But I did it. And, uh, I've been fortunate, you know, daddy was an engineer. He, uh, he worked on Skylab and worked for NASA. So for some reason I managed to get both parts of the brain. Uh, I speak engineer, I'm technical, I work on some software. I have a company that does some consulting, we produce a lot of video content and I've always understood the technical, but I also come from an education background and a communications background so I can often translate it. And this has led to doing that for a lot of high profile things.
Speaker 1 04:43 So I did about five official Apple books and three official Adobe books. I've produced Adobe's premiere pro classroom curriculum. I've worked with Apple and some of theirs and I routinely drop into big TV networks. Like right now I'm working with major league baseball on their transition to premier pro and I've helped folks like NASCAR and Turner networks and CNN and ABC and I go in and it's my job to sort of work with management to figure out some of their technology goals and then help implement the actual end user experience by working with hands-on editors and graphic artists and help them be faster and efficient and enjoy their job. When I'm not doing that, I work with nonprofits and a lot of other clients and we produce everything from TV commercials and public service announcements to online education. And I enjoy that. So I took my love of journalism, which was getting good information out there and my love of education and I get to work with some great clients that changed the world.
Speaker 1 05:44 We do a lot of work with really awesome nonprofits and also some for profit companies that are doing really cool things and we help them behind the scenes produce great communication pieces. Do you sleep? Um, I'm a good at it. Uh, no, I, you know, people always ask, you know, there's, there's two things. One, I got a great staff, you know, I got a staff of, uh, 13 folks here at red pixel and I publish a photography magazine called photo focus, which has got a team of 15 folks. So I've always been good at finding and identifying good teammates. You know, I did college sports and I, I understood the concept of teammates and leadership and so I have fantastic people on my teams and I can spend some time with them teaching them what I think is important and the right way to do it.
Speaker 1 06:31 And then spot checking. And I learned a long time ago that if you hire good people and you empower them, that the job gets done 90% the way it would get done yourself. So I'm incredibly efficient that way. But, uh, you know, uh, I could sleep more, but no, I sleep, I exercise and I'm a girl scout troop leader and a boy scout troop leader. So believe it or not, I'm just really good at managing my time. That's great. I'm sure I could learn some things from you as how does writing fit into your schedule? You know, you're, I, I've seen you at a number of events over the years. Your, you know, the very commanding in person presence, you're very personable and that's not always the same skill set that leads to a powerful writer and communicator in that medium. And what's your process for working on a new book and how you work that into your schedule?
Speaker 1 07:20 Well, I've cut down on books in many ways because as an industry, the book publishing industry has a hard time. I did just commit and sign the contract today to update my professional web video book because I think it's important that that material is out there for me. It comes down to a team process in many ways. You know, for example, when I am speaking live or when I am just thinking, you know, I could be on my walking desk treadmill and I might just talk and dictate some of my thoughts. Or if I am giving a presentation, I will record my presentations and then get them transcribed. And that serves as fodder for my writing, meaning that, you know, part of writer's block is getting the ideas flowing. And I find that for me, exercise as well as speaking in front of a group of great people, have great questions, gets the ideas flowing and then it's just a matter of organizing them and making them sound intuitive.
Speaker 1 08:12 And I always just, I learned a long time ago through broadcast writing to focus on writing. That was pretty much how I would be speaking to you. Shorter sentences, clear to the point. Those are the people who correspond with me on email often think I'm mad cause I'm so brief. But that's part of it. You know, I try to be frugal with my words and only use as many as I need, but it works out okay. And, um, that was just part of the skill. And then, you know, a good editor will look over my stuff. But yeah, I had people before say, you know, you can't have written that much. You know, you've written 38 books. How in the world and as well don't know, just ideas they come out. So, uh, if your brain goes at a very fast pace, it's just a matter of capturing the ideas. And so for me, I capture them when they happen. And then the editing in the organization can happen at a different point in time.
Speaker 0 08:59 So you talk about kind of changes in training and how people learn the skills of being a media technology expert, obviously with things like lynda.com and other online video oriented training resources, it's just seems a, a radical change in how people take on the skill set in this industry these days. You've obviously had a lot of involvement with these types of mediums as well as, you know, the books and publishing industry. I'd be curious to kind of get your thoughts on, is this a good thing? Does it seem like a more effective way for people to be learning these skills? We don't, you know, we used to do a decent number of training classes ourselves or, you know, people would at least ask us and sometimes we would push them to other parties. Uh, you know, we don't even really get those requests anymore. So I'm curious to get your thoughts on this transition that how people learn these skills and technologies is shifting and where we even may see this going further.
Speaker 1 09:59 Well, I, I've got some deep opinions and um, I'll, I'll give the high level thing first. There's, there's two problems with training. One is, is that not everybody learns the same way. And so some people learn better from classroom experiences. Some people learn better from online forums where they can interact and some people learn better from a book and some learn better from video. I believe in multi-platform education that you should have a healthy mix of things. And that's why I continue to be out there doing different stuff. With all of that said, a lot of people think to themselves, I'm done with school. I don't like training. So then they take the path to least resistance and I'm just going to be honest, you know, um, at the end of the day, audio podcasting is fantastic for passive information because you could put it on the background or while you're driving.
Speaker 1 10:48 And so as folks that are listening to this show, they're going to learn something but they're probably doing something else while they're listening to us. You know, they're driving, they're prepping dinner, they're at the gym, working out. Video training is much the same way. Sometimes people put it on in the background and they watch it like it's just geek TV or you know, they kind of just follow along but they don't actually get hands on. The problem with that is you feel good, you feel like you've learned something, but you actually haven't. If you're not doing the hands on exercises and struggling with it and making the mistakes and doing the muscle memory, you're just seeing the possibilities. And you're lucky if five or 10% of that stuff sticks. And that's the problem is people think just like when they used to buy books, Oh, if I just put this under my pillow through osmosis, the information is going to come in. And so I routinely go into big TV networks and force people to basically pay attention for two or three days at a time and watch them. And you know, we're giving them feedback. So we're doing these small group classes and at the broadcaster level they can afford to pay the rates that I need to charge. As somebody who's got two as special needs
Speaker 2 11:54 And a business and a family and everything else to take care of, you know, it's not a cheap rate. And so they could afford to usually pay that so that I can help these people make sure they're learning it and you know, recognize when they're not learning it and force them to be honest with themselves. And much like how a personal trainer can really get you to pay more attention to your exercise, but not everybody can afford that.
Speaker 3 12:17 I would say in our experience, we find that the most successful installations and projects that we have out there are the ones where a group of people or someone you know really on the staff really wants to strive to understand how everything works and really wants to gain a really good understanding of the, you know, the way things work. Um, if it's just looking for a, you know, a fixed to a break or something like that, usually it's, there's, there's really no learning taking place and if the problem comes up again, it's how did we, well, I don't know. Yeah.
Speaker 2 12:48 And I tell people to get a good balance. Like you should be going to events like NAB or conferences, government, video expo, Adobe max. These are things where when you go to a conference, you get an opportunity to learn things you didn't know you didn't know. Meaning you didn't have to pick stuff. You know, you can walk into a room or go to a presentation on a general topic that you're interested in and a guru or an expert is going to share with you their workflow. Well, that's hugely beneficial. Accidental knowledge opens doors. But then I say, look, you should be reading, you should be watching video. If you haven't given up at least 30 minutes of television time of day and switch that to geek TV, then you're missing out. But as long as you take small doses and you're making it a daily thing, you can learn so much.
Speaker 2 13:33 You know, and the great thing about places like lynda.com where I put out a lot of classes is it makes it highly democratic. You know, I'm hopping on a plane, uh, in a couple of days to fly to the Philippines and I'm speaking there and later this year I'm going to Dubai and I'm got a trip back to Japan and I'm amazed at how internationally this knowledge in my head, people come to these events and they've already seen me online, they've already enjoyed my stuff and they're coming to learn more. And it's fascinating that global knowledge could truly be global knowledge. We've got a great premier pro forum on Facebook of all things and there's people in there who are from around the world in the best of the best are in one online community and you can interact with each other and it's amazing.
Speaker 2 14:16 You know the things where it used to be when you had a question there was that smart guy you worked with or maybe somebody that you cross paths with at a local networking group. Now you can have colleagues who are global and we can be having a cup of coffee together virtually and ribbing each other, but still learning from each other whenever there's time or whenever the need hits. So it's fascinating how technology has changed how accessible information is, but you still can't change the fact that most people don't like to actually put the work in.
Speaker 3 14:46 You know? And that's, this brings up kind of the next question I had for you, which is given this
Speaker 0 14:52 Plethora of resources that people now have more than at any point in human history to further their knowledge, I'm curious what your opinions are about, you know, we have a lot of transitions going on right now in this industry. Not only of course you know, file-based workflows, but you know, all sorts of new mediums popping up left and right for distribution, whole new skill sets in networking and other, you know, technologies that are important there. What's your take on both skill sets of the working editors and even engineers who are out there now given all of these disruptions and also your take on the, the readiness level for new professionals who are hitting this market both on the creative side and on the engineering side to kind of be adequately prepared to deal with the challenges of today. Cause I mean my take is there's definitely some progress that still needs to be made about making sure that people are really up to the tasks that these challenges demand.
Speaker 2 15:58 Well it's kind of funny, two things have happened that I think a lot of people have missed. One is, is that in many ways your ability to learn and problem solve is more important than others. Note I didn't say your knowledge is more important. Your ability to learn. You know back in the day when I was a journalism student, we were using you MADEC tape and the cutting edge piece of technology was a video toaster with three tape decks running into it. And that was cutting edge and it was an Amiga and you know, and I was good at it. That was lightweight version one I rock that, you know, I was good at it. That stuff is a joke today and my son has more power on his iPad mini and what he can do with a built in HD video camera and his fingertips.
Speaker 2 16:47 But my ability to tell a story and to interview a subject and to get to the heart of the problem and figure out how to organize the information in a way that connected and delivered a message that was what was important. It wasn't what buttons to push all the time. I have to learn new things. You know, one of the things that I get as being an advisor for things like creative cloud and other stuff is I get advanced knowledge. I get to see things when they're at the idea stage. Not everything, but you know, I've got more NDAs than a normal person should have for non-disclosures. And I get to see stuff early and I get my opinion asked early, but I still have to put in the work and learn. And so what I'm seeing happen a lot is that we're getting a lot of technical experts and we're, I'm seeing more and more technically excellent video that's absolutely worthless video that doesn't contain a message. Stories that aren't stories, pretty shots with wonderful color grading and shallow depth of field and absolutely no reason to watch. And so I'm hoping that people will
Speaker 1 17:50 Remember that the technology is part of the medium, but you know, medium without a message is meaningless. And so I think people need to focus a lot on those core skills. I do a lot of work with photographers too, and they've been going through the same thing. And in many ways photographers started their migration almost a decade before. Exactly. And so it's about storytelling. And it's about saying, I am your storyteller. It's my job to help you craft your message and to get that out there. Because the photographers were disintermediated by technology a decade before the video industry was. We used to be able to say, Oh well, you know, it's still really exclusive and the price tag to entry is so high that all the riff Raff will stay out. Well now I'm competing against people that I shouldn't have to compete against. And if it was just about price or just about technology, I would lose.
Speaker 1 18:39 But it's about the fact that I understand my clients and I can help them and I understand all sorts of things that have little to do with technology and much more to do with art and business and storytelling and writing. So there's that. The other side that I think a lot of people miss is that you don't have to be a specialist anymore. It's okay to be good at different things and there's still a need for specialist, but there's more of a need for people who are good at five or six or 10 things, who then know how to switch their skills or beef up. I work with a company that's been developing a new way of showing images on the internet. And I'm not an engineer. We've got a couple of people on our staff who are engineers. And then as we need people for specific skills, it's amazing with a global economy and a marketplace.
Speaker 1 19:30 We've got developers on our team doing special pieces of it from all around the world. And it's just fascinating that it really has become a global economy. So it sounds like there's a, it sounds, it sounds like those people you're talking about that have the several different skills, things that they're, you know, maybe not specialists at, but kind of good at. It sounds like really what their special that specialty is, is learning. Yes. And they can adapt because as soon as you think, Oh, I've mastered iOS Apple, Apple's going to change it on you. As soon as you say, Oh, you know what, I've nailed this. Like if you put all of your effort into mastering 3d workflows, you know, everyone's like, Oh yeah, 3d is going to catch on. I'm like, no, it's not. It just like I'm, you know, and I don't want to be pessimistic.
Speaker 1 20:10 I love 4k and I use it, but as I talked to most of my broadcast clients, they can't afford to implement it anytime soon. And so what I always say to folks is, is like you'd be shocked. Like right now, one of the hottest things I'm working on is helping people with their podcasting efforts. I wrote my first book on podcasting a decade ago. Another thing that I regularly get brought in to read that we should read, that you have a couple of podcasts yourself. I do. Yeah. And another thing that I get asked about all the time is video and video and photography. And it's like my first book was Photoshop for video and that was 14 years ago. So if I focused on being that expert, I would always be 10 to 15 years ahead of my time. Instead, I just focus on what interests me and figuring out how that helps me and my clients.
Speaker 1 20:57 And it's fascinating. So, you know, we're seeing technology bubble up from the consumer side. I was just at digital book world, uh, two weeks ago speaking there and the publishing industry is doing things that are fascinating coming from the book world. The photography is doing things and so that I guess that third trend that it goes back to my first trend, which is it's all about the story and so it's not just video anymore or photography technology is technology. When my kids take out an iPad that's a video game platform, it's a book reader, it's a television platform, it's websites, it's all in one. It's the magic window to the world and that's where we've gone the lines between types of content have been obliterated and it's just more important that you pick the right technologies that serve your project than it is just saying I'm in this type of technology business.
Speaker 0 21:47 So I want to talk more about some of the shifts in technology that you've been observing, maybe some of your prognostications about stuff moving forward. But you brought up an interesting point, rich, which is that you're finding yourself competing with folks that kind of, you feel like you shouldn't be going, have to, don't really have a a right to necessarily be presenting themselves in the way they are. And we've certainly noticed this trend ourselves over the last decade amongst our clientele where, you know, the business side of being in video and media production and postproduction services in general is really shifted. I mean, you, you, you may remember these, you know, thriving bustling entities called post houses that at best are a shadow of their former selves. And I had to radically kind of reimagine themselves to even stay relevant in any way, shape or form.
Speaker 0 22:40 And we hear again and again the refrain from our clients, many of which have been doing this for decades. They're highly professional, they have huge amount of successes under their belts, that they're kind of being squeezed very much from this, this kind of massive people who can run around with an iPhone and think that they're, you know, a professional videographer. And so it's really forcing a lot of shifts. And you know, quite a lot of discomfort among people who have made this their career. You, you, you, I think I've understood that you even consult with people who have production businesses on just the changing state of the business side of this world. I'd be curious to really hear your thoughts a little more deeply on the subject and what do people really need. We've talked about obviously being kind of the Renaissance man perspective and keeping multiple skills on your pallet and making sure that you're always learning, but you know, just from the raw, you know, business side, you know, where are your thoughts about where that's at? Is it going to bottom out? Is it just going to accelerate further? You know, is it, are people going to get smart and realize it is about the story and the content and that's really what they need to be hiring around. You know, what's the story there?
Speaker 1 23:53 Well, let me pick on both ends of the spectrum for just a minute. And, um, because the problem lies at both ends on the high end, I see people who still incorrectly assume that there are barriers to entry or that the end client can appreciate things. You know, I've actually used GoPros on some great professional projects where it was the right camera and then they were paired up with other cameras that were higher end. You know, I'm not like, Oh, it has to be a GoPro. Uh, I've got a production kit with three black magic pocket cinema cameras and everything fits into an airline carry on bag. And I've had to use that for some projects and it does an amazing picture at a very reasonable price. There's lots of things I hate about the camera, but I can't argue that's not fantastic. And then, you know, I'll talk to some of my DP friends who are taking out loans and buying $90,000 camera packages when they don't need $90,000 camera packages.
Speaker 1 24:48 There's a lot of focus right now on the high end of the video market and a lot of that's manufacturer driven pushing you to buy these great cameras or to invest in this great technology. You know, the truth of the matter is is I can look at something like a Panasonic GH four and go, wow, that four K video signal is awesome because we did a video for a very high profile client for the web where we were able to shoot the entire two actors on one master shot and pull out every single closeup, medium closeup, two-shot shot and single shot out of the one frame. Meaning that our production took a third as much time because we didn't have to do multiple takes. We just did two tanks for performance punched in and delivered everything we needed. I'm seeing people insist on shooting everything for web video on 4k and they're editing in 4k.
Speaker 1 25:39 If you look at it, wow. Less than a percent of a percent watched it in 4k. Why are you wasting your time? I can still use 4k as a tool. Now, the flip side is, is that I've had clients that we've lost that we've won back because we'll lose something on price and then we'll win them back for quality and customer service. We always, you know, my prices from year to year tend to go down and a lot of people are like, well that shouldn't be happening, but it should because the systems and the material costs are going down. I can't charge what I used to charge per hour for editing at our post houses because well we're not paying for a system that had a hundred thousand dollar lease. You know, I could set up a great HP workstation and premiere pro and you know, Kona or black magic card and you know, with a $10,000 investment, I've got a system that four years ago would have cost me 60 well I have to pass that savings onto my clients if I want to be competitive.
Speaker 1 26:36 And so we're seeing sort of two trends and this is actually, we just bought a brand new office. We're in the process of building it out now moving in. And I've actually decided to segment my business, meaning I'm keeping red pixel as the higher end consulting type stuff and not just consulting workflow consulting but communications consulting. This is where, you know, when we sit down with you we can help you with strategy and vision and we can help you come up with the message and the scripting and full service agency type approach. And that's what we've actually always done. We still sometimes work with PR and ad firms and helping them with projects, but you know we often, we're known for having opinions, not just pushing buttons. You want to be that strategic partner. The flip side is the new building is called media factory and I chose that name very carefully, meaning that we have studio space two studios and you know there are tools that we need to do our job but we don't use those tools a hundred percent of the time.
Speaker 1 27:35 I only need my studio a third of the time to keep my edit suites full a hundred percent of the time. So we rent that studio out and we're moving that model to flat rate pricing. You know, for example, you want to come in and shoot four K green screen, no problem. There's a psych wall, you turn on the lights, it's $200 an hour. You bring your own hard drive and you walk out with your footage ready to go. And I decided to stop fighting that meaning let's just embrace that the rest of the world has simplified its pricing and that competition is at an all time high. So people who want to work with me with red pixel are working with us because they want the whole deal and the whole package. But that doesn't mean that I can't just also offer simple services based businesses for people who need that part of the workflow. And I don't have to choose, but so adaptability. Yeah.
Speaker 0 28:28 Let me ask you this, rich, this is maybe a pointed question and probably highly controversial, especially given the industry that we all find ourselves in. But you know, is this a healthy and good industry for people to take a high school kid, a college kid, they're like, I'd love to learn how to edit video. Is that a great decision for them to make now given all of this, you know, you know, the, the, all of the pressures, all of the competition, the downward price. Yeah.
Speaker 1 29:00 Yeah. I mean, the thing is, is that our industry, the video industry, what people have to embrace and what they haven't yet figured out is that the number of people who can say, Oh, I work in professional video is only going to get smaller. But the number of people who know how to use video is only going to get higher. Video has become a dominant communications platform and the number of inhouse video groups, the number of people that work as multimedia professionals, and not in the bad word of multimedia, but like one day, maybe it's PowerPoint, next day it's video. Now it's motion graphics. It's after effects. Those types of jobs are. And you know, I started in the Midwest market where I was uh, you know, editor, producer meaning, you know, 60% of the time I edited and the other 40% of the time I was out there directing or putting together my projects and taking them through from start to finish.
Speaker 1 29:55 Those jobs are going crazy and booming and we're seeing, you know, like social media has created a need for even more content. So sometimes I go in and help people think about gathering photo and video and graphic assets that they're using in their social media and web channels. And that type of stuff is amazing. And the job opportunities are right out there. But if you go in with this chip on your shoulder of well, this can't be done unless it's a three person crew and we need this. Well the problem is, is that because demand has gone up, video has become a disposable medium about 90% of the time, you know, 90% of the time what's produced is watched once and never watched again by the audience. Well, you have to change your attitude about producing that and I'm sorry, but photography went through this.
Speaker 1 30:45 Desktop publishing went through this and if the video industry cannot pay attention to the fact that demand is at an all time high and opportunity is at an all time high, but the workflows have to dramatically change, then that's their own fault. I think there's tremendous opportunity for people in school as long as they come out with those storytelling skills to go along with it and they have the well-rounded skills that will let them fit in in a business environment, not a starch tie, you know, start shirt tie wearing environment necessarily, but they're going to be working at agencies and at companies that are going to be making their own stuff. Companies are bringing this in house, Apple fired its ad agency and build its own inhouse group. That is the trend that you're going to see more of. You know, this idea that this is so hard and so exclusive that we have to outsource everything to vendors is going to keep going down more and more and more.
Speaker 0 31:37 Well, the multidisciplinary skill set as you said earlier, is, is key to success. I, I, I often tell people when I, when I interact with some younger people or I'm talking to them about what I do, I say, you know, like much like you said, it's better to be pretty darn good at a handful of things then the expert at one because it not only allows you to have flexibility in what opportunity you pursue at a given moment, that might reveal itself, but it makes you a significantly more useful person in an organization. And so I think you're right that if you go into school saying, I am going to be an audio engineer or I am going to be a shooter, a video or or or a video editor, I mean you're really boxing yourself in and cutting off a huge number of prospects. And one of
Speaker 1 32:26 My producers can do basic editing. My editors if need to jump on set, can run a camera if they had to or go in the field and do live event production and they all have client skills across the board. I love
Speaker 2 32:40 Looking for service industry jobs. I waited tables when I first got out of school and I started in journalism. I'm a good bartender, I make good mixed drinks and that's a skill that's still comes in handy sometimes you know, knowing when to pour a glass of red wine and offer it to your client is not a bad skill to have at any point in time. But I actually seriously look for that experience because I need people who can interact with the clients and you know what I tell my folks all the time is it's really easy to lose a customer and it's really hard to gain one. The reason why we're still in business, the reason why we're still growing is that we have tremendous customer retention and we focus on the customer service and we're humble enough to work with our customers and be flexible on our price and flexible on our approach so that they see us as an extension of their team by us trying to understand what they need.
Speaker 2 33:29 They often see us as, you know, basically like part time employees for their business and they use us when they need us. That's been tremendously helpful. But technology just changes too fast, you know, you don't have to be great at everything, but my business partner is a perfectly capable videographer. I wouldn't call him a director of photography, but he could also direct and he can run a camera about 90% of the time that we need a camera and make great looking video. He also knows how to meet with the accountant, make sure that payroll goes out on time and knows way more about the affordable care act than I would like. That makes them a wonderful business partner to keep a business running because he's got those business skills. He did his undergrad in business and his grad degree in video and I was the opposite.
Speaker 2 34:11 You know, I have an undergraduate in journalism and I got a master's in project management because I knew I needed the business skills. Business skills are essential to surviving in the video industry these days. So that was the sort of, uh, that's, that's what pushed you in the sort of getting a master's in project management. You know, was I got tired of getting taken advantage of. I said I'm going to watch this game. I was going to ask you about that. I was, I knew you had a masters in something project organization or you know, something like that. Non-certified by the project management Institute, which normally certifies people who do software development or build bridges. But I gotta tell ya, it comes in handy all the time because you know, for some people who don't know me, you know I've got a buzz cut. You know, I'm a big guy that looks like a football player.
Speaker 2 34:51 I've got my ears pierced, I have tattoos that don't usually show up in a business meeting, but I don't look like a normal business person. But I can walk into just about any client or CEO level meeting and I can play the part, I can talk with them about strategy and different types of communication things. And I understand their business cause I'll, you know, put this way, I look good on LinkedIn, I get the business world and I didn't, I had to learn all of that. But that's what separates us is that I knew that if I wanted to be in business for myself because I am chronically unemployable, meaning that I did not make a great employee beyond about six months. What do you mean I have to ask for permission? What do you mean I can't sleep in? You know, I was destined to work for myself. I worked probably 60 to 70 hours a week, but I also am late to
Speaker 1 35:38 Work every single day.
Speaker 0 35:40 Why do you think there's such reluctance for people to be enthusiastic about taking on the skills of business development? Entrepreneurial-ism you know, one of the things I run into a lot and you know, I never thought frankly I was going to end up in, you know, a role having to do with business development, sales revenue generation and now I'm chief revenue officer. So look what happens, right? But I noticed amongst so many people, whether it's people of technical inclinations, creative inclinations, and frankly even a surprising number of salespeople and such out there that there's almost this squeamishness about developing the skills of doing business and interacting in the type of ways you're describing it. And, and as you've said, it's an almost inherent part of anyone's skill set that's going to move them ahead in the world is, is really, you know, knowing when to kind of be political in a situation and, and what's the best thing that's going to push me forward. And you know, interacting with people in a way that they want to be interacted with and picking up on nuance in various situations. Why, I mean maybe you've not found the same, but I find that, I know I have many people are just very resistant to even thinking they, they have to pay attention to these types of things where I'm like, shouldn't this be like a freshmen year of college class that everyone has to run through?
Speaker 1 37:03 Oh yeah. I mean I, I love taking classes on things like psychology and conflict negotiation and everything else. Here's my take. If you asked me am I a salesperson? No. You know, um, but I have to do sales all the time. I've got three businesses that I own essentially at this point and I have to do sales for all of them. You know, we've invented some new web technology. I have to explain it to people. I have to get the doors open and get meetings scheduled. I have a company with multiple employees and we're a media company and I need to make sure that our clients are happy and that we're getting repeat business and I speak at events and you know, give high level keynotes to open the doors to new customers and you know, and I publish a magazine cause I love photography and I still have to do sales and make sure that the other writers are compensated for what they're contributing to the site.
Speaker 1 37:49 What it came down to was I had to learn to segment my love of things. Meaning I still have photography and video that I make. That's purely for my own enjoyment. I'll take some trips, I'll do some shooting that I never show anybody. That's a hundred percent for me or that's just for family or personal projects. And I get fulfillment and I get fulfillment from scouting. And a couple of other things that are family oriented activities and I love it so many people make the mistake of thinking that their job is their fulfillment. You work so you can live not the other way around. Now I work a lot, but I live well and I'm happy about it. And so I had to learn to segment those things and go, you know what? When I'm in sales mode and I'm having to develop this relationship, I can't be about it.
Speaker 1 38:35 I have to know that what I'm selling these people has value. And I believe in, you know, if I'm trying to convince somebody to be a sponsor on photo focus, it's because I think, well this is the best photography education website out there and you're going to get exposed to tons of great potential customers and we can help you. And if I'm telling you that you want to be doing more web education, you really should be working with red pixel. You know, we've made more mistakes than most people have had successes. You know, it's like we know how to do this. We have nailed it. We've produced more web video on the East coast than anybody. So you know, have us in. Let's talk it through and I can share with you what are the big boys do, what do new companies do? How do you work on a tight budget?
Speaker 1 39:14 You tell me your budget and objectives and I'll give you three possible ways to get the job done. It was learning to sell solutions and to stop selling a product. And people don't always get that you guys sell solutions. You know, it's not about how many of this thing you sell or that thing you sell. You want to understand what does the customer need to do. And if we put together a solution for them that solves problems, well they'll come back when they have their next problem. If we just sell them what we want to sell, well then they're probably not coming back. And that's why you guys have succeeded as well. It's all about selling solutions. And if you believe in those solutions, then it's not hard to sell. It's really hard to sell when you don't believe in what you're doing. And entrepreneurship is part of that.
Speaker 1 39:58 But even within my own companies, you know, we do profit sharing with many of our employees. And on the photo focus side, we do revenue sharing based on the performance of the site with all the authors. And so I believe that entrepreneurship and the American business in general needs to get back to this from this craziness where all the wealth is held by 1% and the other 99% feel that they're not part of the process. It's a shame that we have lost so much of the American entrepreneurial spirit and that, you know, so much of the systems are designed not to get too political here, but we have just killed the spirit of entrepreneurship in America. And 99% of the people never experienced that feeling because they're too afraid to do something on their own, or they work for great companies that could foster it.
Speaker 1 40:44 And it's just squashed. It's a shame that that's really happening. They're not given an opportunity to have a stake in that overall piece of success that they are contributing towards. Yeah, I try. We don't, you know, not every employee has that stake, but the ones who've been with us for a little bit who take on responsibilities, participate in the success. And I think that's critical. You know, if we're doing well, they're doing well. If we're doing badly, it impacts them a little bit and they're a little more motivated to go that extra mile because they understand that our success is their success. So absolutely. I think that's important. And I, you know, I learned that cause I had a dad who owned his own business. I learned a lot. You know, I was fortunate that my father, after he worked for NASA, started his own business and I had to see that and experience it firsthand. So I grew up around that. And you know, I grew on government cheese.
Speaker 2 41:34 My mom was on welfare. I experienced that, you know, I don't come from money, but I come from people who work hard and I know that hard work pays off. I know that not being afraid to make mistakes pays off. I jokingly said before, we've made more mistakes than most other people have had successes and I believe in that. That's good. You know, we've had lots more successes than we've had mistakes, but mistakes are what teach you how to succeed
Speaker 0 41:56 And frankly, how you respond to them can be one of the surprisingly, one of the best ways of building relationships with longterm clients because that's your opportunity to really put your best foot forward in a sense, because things happen. It's, it's we, we often are faced with a situation where it's simply how we respond to these circumstances. And so not every project that we implement has ever gone 100% on track, on schedule. Again, it's the world of technology, things happen and yet often those are our wonderful clients in an ongoing basis because we stand behind what we do. Absolutely. I'd love to spend a little bit talking about your take on kind of the state of the tech in this world we work in. We've talked a little bit about, you know, 4k and some of the new cheaper cameras, how this affects business and you know, but there's so much, right? I mean, take it even a base level. I don't think five years ago I would have thought that final cut would not just be the same thing it was five years ago and that, you know, we'd be at this point where people
Speaker 2 43:03 Don't even get me on the sidebar of how much crud I took for attacking Apple over final cut or my public stance in support of Adobe. I, I was a big old target for a long time.
Speaker 0 43:13 Well, and now look where we are, right? And so down, you know, having to think that we were transitioning people from say avid to final cut, you know, six, seven, eight years ago and now we're even having to talk about changing your NLE again is kind of shockingly, you know, sorry, it's just, it's, I can't believe this is a huge part of conversation now and frankly, how many people are still limping along on final cut seven. And so between that on a kind of, let's call it the low end because it's kind of what's in front of your keyboard all day long when you're in this industry versus just the tremendous trends that are happening. You know, someone can read the the news blast eMoney daily or something like that and just it's like every day there is massive new news about a huge shift that's taking place in the video industry and distribution in how content gets to consumers on how it's productized, monetized. You know we have things like HBO will suddenly start selling direct and then everyone else wants to go over the top and deliver video direct to consumers and it's just a crazy, crazy time. I'd love to hear your take on just all of these trends and you know what you see the next few looking like for people.
Speaker 2 44:32 Well let me do something briefly on the high end and then we'll go down to the desktop end for a second on the high end. You know, I think a great example is major league baseball. How they own their own TV network and it's owned by the owners of the teams and they also own their own streaming network. And that streaming network for MLB at bat is used by lots of other people in the sports industry. And now even in the entertainment industry as a direct delivery platform to consumers, HBO, right? They gave up on a platform that they had been under active development with and at then it comes out, we're actually going to work with MLB to use their infrastructure and their technology. And I'm like, so now major league baseball is in the video tech industry, right? What's going on? Major league baseball is in the entertainment industry.
Speaker 2 45:20 And one of the things that they embraced that I've been saying for years and Kickstarter is perfect proof of this. Let the people who love you love you more. Let the people who want to give you money give you more money. So that's a simple foundation of business. Podcasting is built on this. My niche publishing with photo focus is built on this. Let the people who need your stuff use you more, get access to you more. Be able to have you solve all of their problems or entertain them more. Marvel is a great example of this on the entertainment side and you know what Disney is doing with it above them at that level from video games to park experiences, to TV shows, to web content and digital publications. It's about content and branding. And I don't mean this from like a shilling point of view, but it really ultimately goes back to the consumer.
Speaker 2 46:13 And what I'm saying there is think about how somebody likes what you produce. Well a good video producer or a good storyteller should do this. I've done some work with Turner and NASCAR and they get this too. NASCAR owns their own TV network and they produce web content and they have stuff. So in between the wreck, the race days, people can interact in an active social media community and that's that idea of embrace your audience and let them interact and work with you and enjoy your stuff as much as possible. That is the big master trend. So just that idea of making sure that you embrace your audience and love them and give them plenty of opportunities to stay with you. Make sure you're top of mind all the time. Yeah, absolutely. What's that mean though? It's the year 2025 years of past. What does it, does broadcast media even exist in the way we think of it today?
Speaker 2 47:11 You know, is there still a vestige of that? And I, I think the traditional of, you know, it's already changed. The only thing keeping it from fully changing is the advertising dollars and the big boy contracts, right? Amazon just committed to producing 12 movies a year, I believe. And they said, look, it's going to come out first in the theater and then two months later, one to two months later on Amazon, directly available. They agreed to do the theater because the <inaudible> is important to the prestige of the filmmaker. We still have this stigma of direct to video, you know, Ooh, I failed. But the truth of the matter is, is like when I publish a book digitally, I make six times more money than if I care about getting it printed and put into a bookstore. So there's these old marks of success. Oh I'm, you know, I got that prime time slot and I'm on Thursdays at eight 30 well you know what, at the end of the day, when you strip away all of the expenses and the bureaucracy of that, there's web content that's tremendously successful that makes more money at the end of the day.
Speaker 2 48:21 Then some of those shows do and there is stuff going on with, you know, the direct, the video on demand services that are awesome. My mom no longer has cable. I successfully got her to switch to having an Apple TV with the Hulu app and the Netflix app in between all that stuff. She's happy and I just picked up the Kindle fire stick for $25 and the amount of content that I get with my Amazon prime membership is fascinating. You know, I keep telling people, men telling people for years, Amazon is an incredible player in this market and every single week goes by and they do something else that proves me further and further in the right
Speaker 0 48:59 They win awards for, for transparent. And you know, you obviously have a lot of the original content that Netflix is only accelerating the creation of much like Amazon. So, so is the default in five years that the idea of a theatrical run a slot in the broadcast lineup, you know, five years from now or are we pretty much at the point where people barely remember those days? Kind of like, you know, what was it like before smartphones where it's like you kind of can't even remember how you functioned?
Speaker 2 49:31 I think we're 10 to 15 years away from that becoming completely irrelevant. My children will go to the movie theaters when I drag them and they'll have fun when they're there, but they, it's not like they go, Oh, we need to see the new Disney movie on a giant screen with three D glasses. They don't care. They enjoy that film just as much. My daughter watches frozen on her iPad so many times. It's fascinating. She enjoys it just as much watching it in her room when she wants to watch just that one scene than she does watching the full length movie. So it comes down to generational things. But the generation that's under 20 has no care or desire or thrill for. It's only on at this time I can only see it when it comes out here. I it's only available, it costs this much. I have to get in the car and drive and go there and show up at a specific
Speaker 1 50:28 Time. So those are silly concepts that are just leftover because of tradition. We'll still have theaters and there will still be movies that are fun in movie theaters, but I'm seeing theaters doing great things like out by here. There's a couple of years that we'll do older movies that come back. They're bringing old movies back and it's fun. Like I want to get my kids to go see Ghostbusters on the big screen. It's becoming less about the tent pole and when it's released and more about it is available when it's available. And I can have it on any device.
Speaker 0 51:00 Hey, it's good content. I mean, we talked about that earlier. Sure, yeah, you have to have good content, but does this open up? You know what, what to me seems like a tremendously emerging trend of people who want to create content and have a vision for something really now have no impediment to putting that in front of the global marketplace. Do you think that it's going to just inherently lead to the content creators more and more thinking, I might as well put this out there directly myself and cut out a lot of the middlemen involved in this process?
Speaker 1 51:33 It is and it isn't because one of the other trends that's happening that's incredibly depressing is Apple and the app market and the whole iTunes model has just destroyed the value of digital content while they've created new market and new opportunities for folks. The vast majority of people think that a dollar 99 or even 99 cents is too much to pay for something, and so you know, here's a perfect example. If I make a new book and I decide to sell that book at a print cover price of $40 I will be lucky to sell a hundred copies in a year on a digital store like Amazon or iTunes, even for a topic that's a hot topic that people would like. If I decide to sell that book for four 99 I will make the same amount of money and sell more copies. If I sell that book at 99 cents I will sell probably 10,000 copies in a year.
Speaker 1 52:31 If I give that book away for free, I can move a hundred thousand copies in a month and I can ask somebody for their name and email address and know that those are people who are into photography or into pro video and then I could take that email list and use that to promote workshops, other opportunities, or allow companies that want to reach these people to send out occasional blast to the audience that I've collected. And it's kind of interesting because the point is is that if you are relying upon the end consumer to pay for content, you're screwed. People think and the entitlement generation is at an all time highs and the value of content is at an all time low. You're screwed. You will not make money and you it's impossible to live. On the other hand, you know I do a lot of stuff through lynda.com and
Speaker 2 53:26 They sell that content at all. You can eat completely affordable price. They have such a rate, large audience that it's absolutely worth my time doing it. I help people and I get paid quite fairly awesome on photo focus. We produce a lot of free content and we integrate our sponsors and advertisers in the site. We've got, you know, about 15 people writing and contributing and it's a profit share model on their own. They all had trouble getting sponsors or making enough money off of their writing or their videos. But by pulling it all together into a network, our own photography network, we can get six to 10 sponsors willing to pay a few thousand dollars a month each in order to have access to our accumulated audience of working together. So in a way on your own, you're screwed. If you can pull together or join a co-op or a network or a channel that has advertising model in place and has enough collective clout so that people that are a year or three years or five years in front of you are helping you while you're keeping it fresh and adding new stuff, then you can succeed truly doing it a hundred percent on your own, virtually impossible.
Speaker 2 54:38 Relying upon the ad revenue that these places pay out on their own. Like, Oh, I'll just let YouTube sell ads. You will never make a living. So it's really about collaboration, cooperation, and finding likeminded individuals to form your own co-ops or smaller networks that are niche based. Are you a socialist, rich? I'm a social commun. I literally will tell people I am a socialist capitalist. I believe in making a good living and that people should be paid fairly. And I also believe that society does a lot better when they work together. So, Hey, I've been on welfare under both Republicans and Democrats and I live in Washington DC. I am pretty disenfranchised current political system. I think it's all about time for people to work together more and that people who work hard should make a fair living. But yeah, I think that sounds fantastic. Goes a long way.
Speaker 0 55:26 And, and I agree with you completely and I think, you know, new and innovative advertising models, ways of engaging people with advertising content that they actually get some benefit out of. We're at the, frankly the baby stages of this stuff. You know, really taking off if you look at the trends that have happened just in web advertising and intelligent content platforms for getting people engaged in websites and how you can go to one website and then suddenly the exact products you were just looking at are in a banner ad on another. You know, I think video advertising is going to largely go in this direction in a number of years, especially when the bulk of it is online or our set top boxes are even more intelligent. Do you think, and I say this knowing that the vast majority of our clients are creating content that will be funded largely by advertising revenue. But, um, with that said, do you think there's an eventual danger to all content being free, thoughtless. Every is simply
Speaker 2 56:24 The product and no longer the consumer. Really. I think that's pretty much happened to happen. Yeah, it's pretty much happened in that I, I'm always amused why, you know, when people, the, the technology company I'm working on is all about distributing images in a way that preserves the intellectual property of the creator, but frees up the enjoyment of the consumer. And I don't want to get too deep into it, but you know, it ties into my philosophical beliefs of creators rights. I'm a very strong advocate of creators rights and creators, moral rights to their works. I've had my copyrights trounced. I've dealt with big publishers who've screwed me over. I've seen piracy absolutely kill projects. I think where we're at right now is that there's really only room for three types of content that, you know, all types of content content that is ad supported.
Speaker 2 57:16 But ad supported is still hard because you're dealing with a lot of middlemen and there's a lot of people in the middle there that really screw up that process and really cut down on the effectiveness of the ads. You've got content that is premium that people will pay more for because they don't want advertising and they want some level of customization. We're seeing sites like Patrion and we're seeing subscription type content where people are putting money up Kickstarter projects where I believe in this film and I want to invest in it and you know, and that there's these other perks that I feel that let the people who love you love you more. We're absolutely seeing that. You know, I had no problem sending a Raizer a hundred dollars for their new album a year before they produced it because I also got to see them in concert and get my picture taken with them.
Speaker 2 58:03 And I love the music. I got to watch the whole process being built. No problem. I'll give them more money for that. Um, you know, it's that thing like if you like something, you'll invest in it. Uh, Prince did this a long time, you know, with different opportunities for people to subscribe and get music and stuff out of his archives. You know, absolutely. Find the man a genius and you know, it's interesting where that all goes. The other part of content though that's just emerging is this subscription type content. The all you can eat buffet. The reason why Amazon is in the content game is not because they want to be in the content game of being another Netflix where they serve up a, you know, a bunch of free content for a cheap price. Amazon, you get that with Amazon prime. I get access to music from Amazon prime, but what I really get is Amazon has my credit card on file and when I am in a retail store and I see something that I'm thinking about, I could take out my phone, swipe the barcode, see that it's cheaper, push a button and have it delivered two days later to my house or my office with free shipping and it's destroying traditional retail.
Speaker 2 59:10 Casey's does the same boat I was talking with some folks from Macy's, they make their shoe stores are really just showrooms for the online. They know that they're making a lot more off of online sales and it's tradition that keeps the physical stores open. That's just where it's going. It's the concept of shopping malls. The concept of premium content is going away across the board. We are moving to a type of society where if you never wanted to leave the house except when you wanted to leave the house, that is how you can live. That is, you could pull that off almost today with zero issues. Never having to leave the house except when you chose to. Anything could be delivered to you. Anything you want, you can get and that's where we're at. You can work from home. I'm not saying that necessarily is a good thing, but one of the reasons why Amazon makes this content is because it's going to be that inline things.
Speaker 2 00:03 Not, Oh, let's just pop up generic ads, but we noticed that you were browsing for these things. Now you're watching this type of content. Would you like to take a vacation there? Oh, you're watching this content about photography. Do you need this new lens that came out? It's the fact that the winners are going to be the ones that have your credit card. Apple probably has your credit card. Amazon probably has your credit card. Microsoft probably does not Google, maybe, maybe not. Google just got signed up as a phone company two days ago so they could start being a phone company. This is not disparate technology. It's all about companies becoming your connection to the internet, your connection to making purchases and your connection to entertainment. And as people who produce entertainment or art or education, we have to realize that commerce and data are inextricably linked to this and will not become separated. So either you embrace that fact that it's a connected audience that also likes to buy things and you figure out how to work that into your business model or you will fail and be right
Speaker 0 01:07 Out by somebody else within 10 years. Let's take it way back down. Cause I love, I love these types of conversations. I literally have them with most of my friends and colleagues on a daily basis. And it's, it's may you live in interesting times, right? We are seeing just an unprecedented shift. I'm a big believer that we live in a very unique time and technology is a big part of that. Shifts in culture are part of that. And so, you know, clearly we've got an interesting decade or so ahead of us on many, many fronts going back down to the lower level, going to this shift that did occur even with every editor that they're now struggling with perhaps this, this transition to, you know, maybe final cut, 10 maybe premiere, maybe media composer maybe as you said, realizing that just being the master of one NLE is no longer necessarily the path to success. I'm curious what your observations have been cause you've been as much as anyone, the guy in the middle of this sea change now on the NLE front, you know, where is it at, how far we through this transition
Speaker 2 02:20 And what's it look like on the other side? Okay. Um, well let me give people 30 seconds of perspective. So they know why I have such strong deep opinions. I was, I was an addict, be warned everybody that was an avid master editor, meaning that I had been through their master editor program as well as an avid certified instructor for many years. I was in the first group certified by Apple as an instructor and wrote several of the official Apple classroom and a book type training products. They're called Apple training series, our Apple training series. I've worked very closely with Adobe and I currently serve on the creative cloud advisory committee, which was about 15 people from around the world that interact with Adobe's management about some of their strategies of helping out creative professionals. So I am biased to Adobe, but I am biased and I'll explain why in a second.
Speaker 2 03:11 But, uh, at the highest level, I used avid for a long, long time and avid was incredibly slow on changing their business models and their pricing. And then it was knee jerk reactionary, you know, like, Oh, shocking. Now it's a subscription model and you have to subscribe or you lose your place or you have to buy insurance. You know, Abbott's been very slow in this. I've always respected avid as a technology company. I've, you know, I owe my nonlinear editing career to avid. I have never been happy with avid from a business point of view, for over a decade. They've been out of touch. They've been slow to adapt. The fact that they're now just finally getting around to supporting 4k resolutions. Like, okay, you're only about five to 10 years late on that game, that they're still just so slow to react. I think that avid is destined to be bought out by somebody.
Speaker 2 04:03 You know, you can only show a loss on wall street for so long and get kicked off of the stock exchange so many times before your company goes under a, that's harsh. But it's the truth, you know, they're just struggling that way and I wish them success. I appreciate all that they've done. And I think that there will be always jobs for people who know how to edit avid, but that's at the high end of the market. Or if it's not at the high end of the market, it's in markets like LA where you know, being an avid editor you can always find work but you get paid very poorly. So it's in markets that are deeply entrenched. Apple final cut pro was revolutionary. My company couldn't have started with without it. You know, I was there from the very first version. I bought hardware for it.
Speaker 2 04:48 You know, we were a final cut shop for a decade and I, because of what I do, I knew what was up before, what was up, meaning that I, you know, I had plenty of insight as to what was coming and what to expect and had heard enough things from people I trusted and knew enough people who left the company to be concerned. But I didn't expect it to be as bad as it was when it came out. I didn't expect Apple to be selling products one day and pushing people to solutions like final cut server and then the next day kill it and to go so far with marketing run a muck that they like every single support article and download link for final cut seven drivers took you to the Mac app store to buy final cut 10 the way that they launched that product should go down in history as one of the worst product launches ever.
Speaker 2 05:36 It was just a disaster and you know, I was very vocal and complained about it and I got all sorts of hate mail and all sorts of fan mail from it, but you know, they screwed it up. When I look at the product now, it's a good product. There are things about it I don't like. There are things that I think Apple relies too heavily on third parties for and you know there are many places where it is not the right product, but for a lot of people who are single workstation storytellers, it's a compelling product. And if Apple could just get over its identity crisis of it's the easiest thing in the world that you don't need an instruction manual for and Oh, look at all these one-click effects that you can't change versus the incredible power that they have on other stuff. It's just an identity crisis thing.
Speaker 2 06:19 It's kind of funny, you know, it's a professional product that routinely gets ruined by the eye. The iOS type platform approach of it should be so easy that you never open up a book. Uh, the flip side is, is that all Adobe does is make tools for two markets. The creative market and the marketing market, the advertising market. Adobe has a whole business all about monetizing content online and ad strategies and metrics and distribution, the marketing cloud, the marketing cloud, which most creative people don't know about. But as the person who understands how marketing and advertising is tied to content, that's a good thing in my brain. But you know, their new business model is fantastic, meaning it lowers the price of entry. And while a lot of people are not happy about having monthly fees, they're getting so much more than they ever used to get.
Speaker 2 07:11 And the video apps are benefiting immensely because now we know, okay, every six months they're pushing out brand new features and bug updates even in between those times. And the video features are innovating in a pace that's incredibly fast. And the reason why is because now Adobe has detailed usage metrics and they see that so many customers who didn't say I'm a video professional, but who said, Oh, I'm in marketing or I'm a photographer or I'm an educator. Well they're all using the video apps. So the video team, I'm sure they'd like to have more cash, but they are flush with engineering and resources and they're innovating at a pace that is truly admirable. The amount of stuff coming out of Adobe on a video front is what makes me so happy. Now there are gaping things like the fact that Adobe can't have a built in transition worth a damn is laughable.
Speaker 2 08:02 Like, okay guys, can we please like make some halfway decent transitions. But the stuff they're doing on color science and color correction and post workflow and their audio stuff and their graphics workflow is amazing. You know, with aftereffects and Photoshop and the stuff that they got coming is even better. So I'm happy with them because their only business is to make tools that's about marketing content or creating content. They're not a hardware company, they don't have other goals. They're not a mobile phone company. So I think they're going to succeed. Um, and they've got enough diversity in their portfolio unlike avid that they serve a bunch of markets. So I think it's great that the video tools get better because a bunch of photographers and marketing people are using them as a video pro. I'm getting more engineering resources than I would like, you know, avid struggles with engineering resources cause they only get money from one audience. Adobe gets money from a lot of audiences and they keep investing in the product, which makes me happy.
Speaker 0 09:03 Well my understanding is, you know, maybe NAB timeframe or shortly thereafter. It should be an interesting year from for them and it should. And for their users to be sure.
Speaker 2 09:14 If you look at trends, Adobe has pushed out major versions at both NAB and at IVC and they've been pushing out, you know, at that schedule sound, it might ship a little bit later, but it's a good team. You know, I won't get myself in trouble, but I'll just say this much. They are not sitting back and on the broadcasting front, Adobe is just kicking butt. I mean I've been in more broadcast TV stations that have switched to premiere then it's just amazing the types of places that are doing it. And the reason really is twofold. They were already using Photoshop and after effects, so they already own premiere and a bunch of the hardware that they invested in for final cut seven automatically worked with this year. A lot of that stuff was fine, you know, and so that's not to say that the two programs are different.
Speaker 2 10:03 It does take learning. I worked on a great book with Robbie Carman who you guys know, and Jeff Greenberg called an editor's guide to Adobe premiere pro. It had two additions and it was all about teaching people from the avid or final cut mindset, how to work with Adobe. Like if you try to force it to be those apps, you're missing a bunch of cool opportunities and there are some weird things. Although the list keeps going down. I originally had a list of almost a hundred things that annoyed me about premier pro and they're down to about 10 on the Apple front. It was very funny, I took on the New York times when Apple came out. Like I had done a great podcast with Walter Biscardi on creative cow and discussed why we were not going to be able to implement final cut pro 10 in my office and remember that.
Speaker 2 10:45 Not that I didn't think it was a good product, but there's a lot of concerns I had that they were not addressing well. They addressed them by making fun of me and having people from their PR firms attack me in forums and we were able to see this because you know, the great thing about working on creative cows, I can call up the owner and say, Oh these people that are brand new people on the Kyle posting these comments saying that I'm a shill for Adobe and was bought with my opinions. Where are those coming from? Oh those are all coming from Sunnyvale or Cupertino. Yes, I know who's doing those. Um, you know, and fortunately it was funny though, like I had this very in depth article where I went through all of my concerns. Well, they've actually answered pretty much all of those, like the product that's out now for final cut 10 I would have used, I'm happier with Adobe now and their innovation, but I was just surprised that Apple didn't take the approach they took when they did with <inaudible>, which is saying here's our transition plan and you can have both installed and we've got the ability to hand off things between these and you will get their Apple approach final cut 10 with incredible arrogance and that's what pushed a bunch of people away.
Speaker 2 11:49 And while Adobe is not perfect, uh, the thing that I hear more and more from the TV stations is Adobe actually answers our phone calls and I can show you numerous things that they tweaked or updated or fixed based upon our request. Yup. Well that's amazing. That's what I like is that they're innovating based on customers not innovating for the sake of innovation.
Speaker 0 12:08 Well, what you've said very closely echoes the dialogue we've had with our clients over the last couple of years. I mean really these are the points we've made and you know we, we, we've given fair warning to some people who may be in our opinion of wanting to push final cut 10 a little bit out of its comfort zone. And at a certain point if someone wants to do something, you know there's not necessarily any convincing but at least we can say to people we've been honest about our feelings and it was only ever coming from a perspective of trying to make their lives easier.
Speaker 2 12:44 I think final cut 10 is the easiest NLE to learn on the planet. And I mean that sincerely. I think it is an innovative approach to editing and if you put it in the hands of people who don't have an editing background, it makes sense to them. It's got lots of great things in there to make sure that your media doesn't slip out of sync and to help you organize. And it takes a photography type approach to asset management that's based upon aperture, you know, which is similar to Lightroom. It is fantastic if you are working at a place and you've got a bunch of assets and you want to keep them organized. It's got innovative media management tools and tagging tools and it's very easy to edit. For a facility like mine where we've got lots of different clients and we need to keep everything separated.
Speaker 2 13:29 It makes it incredibly hard to keep your projects and your workflow segmented or to have different standards and it doesn't play that well with a lot of the other tools that we need to use to get things done. And the fact that it didn't even open up its own projects that Philip Hodgetts had to go out on its on his own and invent software so that final cut seven projects could come forward into final cut 10 that was just the epitome of ridiculousness. But yeah, Apple did a fantastic job of making an NLE that was revolutionary, not evolutionary, and it sells gangbusters on the Mac app store and it does great. I'm glad it's there and I'm glad that it is making video, editing innovative and bringing to more people. But if you've got a facility filled with editors who already know how to edit or you have a broadcast station or you have an investment in equipment, final cut 10 is like starting all over again on everything.
Speaker 2 14:25 And again, these things are tools. You know, you, you mentioned before, uh, it's really the, the ability to tell a story, the ability to organize content into a meaningful, uh, conversation. That's, that's really, that's really what the project is about. It's not about what tool you're using final cut 10 could be a, could be a great tool to come up with certain effects or certain results, but it may be a one of many tools in the arsenal of an editor. Oh yeah. I mean, I, I, as much as I love Adobe and trust me folks for the, you know, they get a lot of my criticism sometimes direct to the highest levels because you know, they know I love them, but they also know that I'm a harsh critic. Unfortunately. They listen. That's what impresses me. But my applications folder is filled with tools from at least 30 different manufacturers that I use every week.
Speaker 2 15:12 And I embrace everything. I've got tools from Google, I've got tons of plugins and other people's technology that I use all the time. Uh, you know, red giant and I've been dabbling with Sapphire. I use a lot of stuff from photo Maddix and HDR soft and you know, the photography side. I've gotten my tools and you know, I use crazy little things like LR time-lapse for my time-lapse workflow to create ramping and great exposure. Like to me it's just a platform and I switched between Mac and PC all the time. My office is totally integrated with both because I love the Mac laptop because of the office type productivity and stuff I need with my iOS ecosystem. But all of our high end workstations that we do the core of our video editing and graphics on our RPCs because I don't like the artificial limitations that Apple placed on the desktop machine by saying they needed to make it smaller than my curious coffee maker.
Speaker 2 16:05 Like I didn't ask for that. You know, I don't need a smaller machine. I need a faster machine with more ports, more slots, more bus speed, and the ability to choose a graphics card that every other software company in the world believes in as opposed to the one that Apple chose. Exactly. So, you know, don't get me wrong, you know, I love Apple, I love Adobe, I love HP. I use these tools all the time, but they are tools, you know, I love them. As much as I like a good set of tools and my dremmel and my Exacto knives, you know, I'll buy a good one when I'm doing that type of work. You know, I don't mind buying brand names that I believe in and companies that I respect. But at the end of the day, I'm not going to choose my technology over my family. I'm not going to choose that over my craft. It's the product that I make and I can make video on just about anything. You know, people do tend to kind of make it their religion and you know, true. Whose benefit does that really serve other than the vendors? At the end of the day, you're rich, you're, you're just such wealth of perspectives.
Speaker 0 17:10 It's, it's, it's fantastic. You've been extremely, and how do people learn more about your individual projects, your, your educational resources, you know, both the activities at red pixel and how to engage with, if it's, if it's a firm that seems to offer the services that can help them make decisions about communication strategy or adopting particular technologies. You know, there's so many things you offer through your various enterprises. You know, what's kind of the quick hit list here?
Speaker 2 17:39 Okay. Well red pixel is R, H E D P, I N, E L and you know, we're on the web like everything else and you can often find me under social media under that handle. We build it as a visual communications company. We help people communicate with others using visual based mediums. So that could be everything from screen graphics and motion graphics to video production. We're big adopters and we're building out our new studio right now around multi-camera workflow and live web video as well as affordable ways to deliver content to the web. And I believe that video is an incredibly effective medium that we do about 80% of our work in a, that includes motion graphics, but we do embrace other types of things too. And so that's red pixel and we work with a lot of nonprofits and a lot of corporate clients and a few government agencies and you can find us there.
Speaker 2 18:27 We're in the Washington DC area, but half of our clients are worldwide. So as much as I love DC, unfortunately I spend plenty of time on an airplane, but that's okay. Um, my personal website is just Richard harrington.com. R I C H a R D H a R R, I N G T, O. N. And that's where I blog and I post all of my resources. So if you go to the section, the resources, there are so many handouts from conferences, you know, my wife says I can give away as much as I as I want to, as long as my kid's college fund is paid for it. So I give a lot of stuff away. You know, people think that, Oh, you're a consultant. No, I, my consulting card fills up pretty quick and I'm happy with that. But I'm always looking for new clients. But you know, I give away a lot of stuff and I often sometimes laugh. I say to folks, you're hiring me to come in and teach stuff that's on my website for free. They're like, yeah, but you're so you're a good speaker and you'll make people learn it. Not just, you know, give them a link that they never click on this. All right, fine.
Speaker 0 19:22 Andy, you and a lot of people enthusiastic. There's a lot of value there. There really is. There's a lot of value
Speaker 2 19:27 There is, but I, but I am always amazed as somebody who can, as somebody who has self motivation. I know a lot of other self motivated learners. I've got a couple of people who write for me on photo focus who are 22 years old and the amount of technical knowledge they have because they're self motivated. It's amazing to me how far they're going to be. And when I see people who are ravenously consuming what I put out and other people put out and I see how far along they are at age 25 versus where I was at at 25. It makes me optimistic that we're going to keep seeing innovation. You know, I used the entitlement generation before and that doesn't apply to everybody and that was a bit crass on my part, but I am really glad to see that for people who are hungry and want to learn, the opportunities are never better.
Speaker 2 20:11 So as a personal project, um, I work with a website called <inaudible> dot com and if you're into photography, whether that's professional or amateur, you can learn stuff there. But, uh, I consider myself, I don't want to say a Renaissance person, but to me it's all visual communication. So it doesn't matter if it's a photo emotion graphic, a website, a piece of social media or high end video. Uh, to me it's just choosing the right medium for the message. And I use all of those and I find that if you embrace that and you stop being manufacturer specific and you start being, you know, and start embracing multiple mediums, there's a ton of opportunity. It just means you have to be willing to learn and you have to put a little more thought into what you're saying.
Speaker 0 20:53 And a lot of your video education curriculum is on lynda.com L Y N D a and again the latest books that have come out or just around the corner.
Speaker 1 21:02 Uh, I'm working on one for professional web video and I'm toying with doing another premier pro book. Uh, I have some books that are out through peach bit and others. I've been scaling back that I have done some photography books direct to iTunes, uh, that are just under my name that you can find. And that's what I'm interested in is the digital publishing platform. The idea that I'm toying with right now is I, I just got the rights back to my Photoshop book and I am going to be releasing a book for the next version of Photoshop. I can't say when that is, but it will be synced up with that. And I'm going to release the book for free. It's going to be a hundred percent free for whoever wants it. And this is a book that schools were paying $50 a copy for.
Speaker 1 21:43 And in that book there's going to be some ads and if you want the ad free version, you can buy it ad free and that'll be fine. And you can also buy a donation version. So if you're willing to pay anything for the book, you'll get the book without ads. But otherwise it's going to be free and it's good, useful information. And that's me embracing both sides. It's just as good as any print book. And if you want it like before for the price of half of what you would have bought it for, you'll get it. And I'm going to try my own subscription model, meaning that whenever there's something new in Photoshop, I'll update the book and uh, I'm dabbling with all these models, but it goes down to that end of the day of making sure you see value in your own content and trying out new tool sets. I distributed the other day, two hours of training video through the Apple iBooks platform for free. It was content I wanted people to have. I didn't have to pay a dime to distribute it. And now it's out to all of these iPods with the ability to stream to a television set. And Apple enabled that at no cost to me or the consumer. It's kind of fascinating when you keep an eye on different trends and you're going to see that these weird opportunities pop up in the least expected.
Speaker 0 22:53 Well, it's great to hear that you're taking such a progressive approach to getting the material out there. You're, you're clearly are a teacher at your core and it's very, you know, we take it, I think a similar, we love sharing information and empowering people to be in control of their lives and their destinies and enjoy what they do. It's been a tremendous pleasure and honor to have you on. We've been hoping to get you on for quite a while now. So we appreciate you taking time out of what is clearly a busy schedule.
Speaker 1 23:25 I appreciate that. And I, and I owed it to you guys for two levels. I, you know, sincerely, I have bought from you guys in the past and it's always been wonderful customer service, but you might not know that your show's producer was the second person whoever hired me when I went freelance and quit my safety of my staff job and, uh, had a wife in grad school and was unemployed with one person in grad school and no regular income. Your show's producer was the second person who ever hired me when I hung my own shingle out there. So a debt of gratitude to that. David did tell us that just creator of the entire career for Cherrington, it's not quite, but I appreciate him taking a chance and thank you guys for having me on here. I hope this rambling advice is helpful to folks, but it all just comes down to embracing that the world is changing and if you want to make it yours, it's possible.
Speaker 0 24:18 Great. Thank you so much rich, and we look forward to following up sometime in the future and we'll see where things are at then. Thanks. Alright, take care. Well, this has been another episode of the workflow show. We thank everyone for joining us and please stay tuned until next time when Jason and I will be back in our regular antiques. Thanks everyone. Take care.
Speaker 4 24:40 The workflow show is a production of Chesapeake systems. We welcome your comments and suggestions for upcoming episodes. You can email
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Media Guru, Workflow Evangelist, Multi-tasking Entrepreneur, Prolific Tech Author and Spokesperson -- these are just some of the desciptors associated with Richard Harrington. In this episdoe of The Workflow Show, Nick Gold and Jason Whetstone conduct an in-depth interview with Rich to get his insights on the state of the fast-changing media field today -- and what one needs to do to survive within it.
