So that became a shorthand, apparently, in Silicon Valley in those decades. All anyone had to do when there was discussion around the table: what should we do? And somebody... All somebody need... had to say was: 'rebar', and everyone knew what they meant. Meaning, we have to disrupt our own technology, because if we don't, somebody else is going to do it. So, in a sense, I think, Final Cut X is the 'rebarisation' of professional editing, and that... What we are left with in the other systems is this high-end, very specialised, very necessary... You have to have this stuff, just like you have to have somebody who's making high-end steel products. But in terms of the economics of it, the hope is, which is being realised, I think, is that the switch to a simpler model that doesn't require such hand-holding, and so many precise details to it, and you offshore those precise details to third-party people and let them take the risk, that's a wise decision for a corporation. The problem for us filmmakers, of course, is that we are now totally dependent upon these pieces of software to do what we do.
In the old days of the Moviola, you, at a certain level, you didn't even need the Moviola. You could edit the film on film the way they used to do it, just cutting it, making inspired guesses, looking at the still images on your cut here, and then taking it to a projection room, looking at it, taking notes, going back and trimming and refining it that way. So you didn't need any more complicated technology than a bench, a synchroniser thing to hold things in synch, and then a projector. But we're not in that world anymore. The film doesn't exist to even begin to put a film together. You need to have digital machines that can deal with it because you can't hold that in your hand. There's no way to deal with it other than with these machines.
And so we find ourselves in a bit of a dilemma at the moment, because we are dependent upon, certainly, Avid. We want Avid to stay in business, because if they don't, what are we going to do?
