An Open Letter to Tim Cook about Final Cut Pro

An Open Letter to Tim Cook about Final Cut Pro signed by editors and post production pros around the world 

www.provideocoalition.com/an-open-letter...os-around-the-world/

And you can sign this petition too 
www.gopetition.com/petitions/support-ope...t-final-cut-pro.html


Dear Tim Cook,

We are professionals working in Hollywood and other high-profile movie and TV markets all over the world. We are excited by Final Cut Pro. We think that it is the biggest leap forward in editing technology since the move to digital. We think it’s incredible.

We also think it’s incredible that some of us still can’t choose it to do our work. Work that could easily include productions for your very own Apple TV+ service.

Final Cut Pro is a wonderful application used by many YouTubers, education and small business content creators worldwide. We know why it is successful. It is liberating, efficient and fun to work with. Sadly, in professional film and TV, editors who use Final Cut are a tiny minority.

We want Apple to promote Final Cut Pro publicly and add the few remaining features that our industry has consistently stated are needed.

We’d love to see Apple publicly support and certify the suppliers of the third-party products and services we use to integrate Final Cut into industry-standard workflows.

We welcome your forthcoming brand new FCP Certification exams. We need more experienced film and TV production crew who also know how to use Final Cut Pro.

We also hope to see Apple ensuring that improved ProApps support is widely available and that Final Cut can also be bought through current industry suppliers. This is essential for big productions to accept Final Cut Pro.
If Apple renewed its public commitment to the professional filmmaking industry and its visionary product, we believe an increasing number of editors would discover the joys of using it.

We hope you will start showing that Apple aims to make Final Cut Pro the best application to edit TV and movies. We believe that this could lead to a Pro Apps renaissance as pioneering as your amazing M1 Max MacBook Pros and the M1 Ultra Mac Studio.

It’s wonderful that Apple+ has become the first streaming platform to have a best picture Oscar winner with CODA, but it’s disappointing to know that Final Cut Pro is so unlikely to have been a possible choice as the film’s editing app.

We hope you will encourage our industry to see Final Cut Pro as a professional choice for editors of future award-winning TV shows and movies, and for millions more editors all over the world.

Thank you.

FCP being used in such high-end productions pretty much went the way of the dodo when Apple decided to make FCPX. The transition was handled so poorly, you couldn't import/update old projects into the new app (huge mistake) and it launched without many needed features (another giant mistake). It's no surprise that the industry left the app.

But I don't think Apple cares. They're happy with "prosumers" being the primary users of the app. How much more money would they make if they catered to the big guys? Probably not a significant amount. It's a prestige thing. I personally would love for more professional types to use the app and it would certainly make getting jobs at post houses easier (not that I need to, but still). Everyone who uses FCP should also know Premiere at the very least if they want to remain employable.

Also I doubt Tim Cook will read that.

Redifer wrote:

But I don't think Apple cares. They're happy with "prosumers" being the primary users of the app. How much more money would they make if they catered to the big guys? Probably not a significant amount. It's a prestige thing. I personally would love for more professional types to use the app and it would certainly make getting jobs at post houses easier (not that I need to, but still). 

The issue is that Apple is mostly a hardware company (And an attempted entertainment service company. They don't lead in those markets either). The Mac Studio (and MBP and the coming Mac Pro) all run Premiere Pro, Resolve, and Avid MC (finally) so they sell Macs regardless of which NLE one uses. Apple seems happy to include Resolve in promoting their hardware for example and Blackmagic, with a push into cloud collaboration is being far more aggressive in that market. I'm not sure Apple gains much by trying to compete with FCP in that market.

Apple is in the business to sell hardware and any software that showcases the power of the hardware benefits them. Plus there are political motivations to showcase BMD or Adobe or other software, because it encourages those companies to work with Apple and optimize their software for the Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

Be careful about tossing around the "prosumer" label, because some of the work being doing by YouTubers and other types of content producers is superior and may use more advanced production techniques than traditional broadcast TV and film productions.

Remember that markets have shifted significantly in the past decade+. Look at photography. Aperture was strong when the world of photography was dominated by SLRs. But now the dominant camera is the smart phone. That's pushed the world into cloud workflows and other types of software. So Photos (coupled with extensions such as Pixelmator Pro) or Lightroom (the new cloud version, not LR Classic) are better fits for many people than was Aperture. This time of change has also coincided with the need to move fully to 64-bit, so tools like Aperture and FCP needed to be rewritten anyway from the ground up. Instead of taking the cobbled-together approach used by Adobe, Avid, and BMD, Apple decided to start from a clean slate. Hence, FCPX.

Given that it's FCPX (now FCP again), how many of the legacy workflows do you need to reconstruct? And if you do, how much of the market will it touch? Does doing that sell more seats of the software? If the answers to the last two questions are small and not many, then I think you know the answer to the first question.

To be fair, I signed the letter and I would love to see some of these features added into FCP. I think that today in most "professional" workflows, Adobe has done the best job of hitting the sweet spot. If you think adding things like an Avid-style collaboration to FCP (something that really doesn't do much for me) would convince veteran Hollywood editors to drop Media Composer and come running to FCP, you are mistaken. There's simply no incentive to do that. I think better marketing to pros, better education, more participation in pro organizations would help. But recognize that it will always be a niche and only helps Apple slightly from a reputation rather than sales standpoint.

As I've seen a couple in the industry express. It's not so much about domination or market share of the "Hollywood" market, it's simply about being able to use FCP, if they are part of the small number who prefer it, without being told "no." Basically that the tools and marketing be there so they can use it without rejection.

A lot of that depends on the director. Fincher can push Adobe and his workflows because he's Fincher. Coens can also call their own shots. If the editor has a studio and/or director that gives them space. Then you have a choice. Go back and read my interview with Knut about "Blood Red Sky."

fcp.co/final-cut-pro/articles/2524-blood...fcp-editor-knut-hake

OTOH, when Murch was on "Tomorrowland" he was back on Avid, because that's what the studio dictated regardless of his reputation.

There's probably another reason you can write off "Hollywood." That is pay and unions. I have been told by working LA editors that they get paid more on Avid jobs than other NLEs.

I support this letter and its sentiments, in spirit. I get why industry types - Hollywood and TV pros - want legitimacy and acceptance for FCP. It’s good for their bottom line and and continuing development of FCP as their preferred NLE. Innovation and competition benefit us all. But for someone like me with no interest in the traditional Hollywood and TV model, I care more about the integration, convenience, and optimization between hardware, software, and how it all will serve the changing reality of media distribution and consumption. My crystal ball says Apple, being Apple, has the pulse of the landscape and a future for FCP that we can only surmise at. Hollywood isn’t the be-all and end-all. Hollywood will follow, as it often does. And that is exciting for FCP and its future variant. IMO, FCP is already the most innovative and forward looking NLE and will continue to lead. If Apple one day decide to discontinue FCP (highly unlikely considering their investments in creative content, pros, and the virtual/augmented reality space), I would have no qualms migrating to Resolve or FCP's heir…by Apple or another company.

Looks like the Open Letter story has been picked up by Cult of Mac.
www.cultofmac.com/773998/film-and-tv-pro...-as-much-as-they-do/

Some more random thoughts of mine.

digitalfilms.wordpress.com/2022/04/29/ge...-versus-specialists/