Defining what Flame Junior Means (Survey)

Flame Between Renders
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In the Flame Junior’s thread I wrote that ‘junior’ is a relative term, and that Flame is more of a destination than a starting point. To underscore this a three part survey, to see how it spreads among this community. Votes are set not to show names.

Years of Flame Experience:

  • 1-5 years
  • 5-10 years
  • 10-20 years
  • 20+ years
0 voters

Career Stage:

  • Early Career (< 5 years in industry)
  • Mid Career (5-15 years in industry)
  • Old Hand (15+ years in industry)
0 voters

What software did you use pre-Flame (or still using but learned before Flame):

  • none
  • After Effects
  • Fusion
  • Nuke
  • 3D apps (Maya, Max, Blender, Houdini, C4D)
  • Quantel
  • Other color apps (Resolve, etc.)
  • Other cleanup apps (Silhouette, etc.)
0 voters
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In what software did you use for flame, there are no options for any quantel boxes.

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(@randy preps another “you’re old” meme)

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Not sure if I can change the options without killing existing votes.

You could use ‘Other cleanup apps’ as stand-in.

I think the most important aspect is ‘None’ or ‘Something’ - less critical what that something is, especially if it it is current software like Nuke, etc.

Sorry fro not making this more thorough.

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Take Off Jacket GIF by One Chicago

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@allklier

How about a self-assessment questionnaire?

This is part of a document that I used to give to novices.
I asked people to fill it in over a month, and write down any questions or problems that they encountered.
It helped me determine what areas of instruction and guidance that I needed to focus on.
Of note, there is no reference to other tools or other workflows.
I found that this was useful in deprogramming candidates in order to reprogram them.
Once they felt confident with the flame workflow they could mix and match prior skillsets with new skillsets.
I deliberately did not leave the door open to revert to previous work practices and avoid the flame unknown.

- [ ] Do I know how to start flame?

- [ ] Do I know more than one way to start flame?

- [ ] Do I know how to start flame with a specific project?

- [ ] Do I know more than one way to start flame with a specific project?

- [ ] Do I need to modify my user preferences?

- [ ] Do I know how to modify my user preferences?

- [ ] Do I know where the MediaPanel is?

- [ ] Do I know what a workspace is?
- [ ] Do I know what a library is?
- [ ] Do I know what a folder is?
- [ ] Do I know what a desktop is?
- [ ] Do I know what a batch group is?
- [ ] Do I know what a schematic reel is?
- [ ] Do I know what a reel group is?
- [ ] Do i know what a reel is?
- [ ] Do I know what a sequences reel is?
- [ ] Do I know what a clip is?
- [ ] Do I know what a sequence is?

- [ ] Do I know how to rename a flame object?

- [ ] Do I know the difference between the MediaPanel and the MediaHub?

- [ ] Do I know how to navigate in the MediaHub?

- [ ] Do I know where to store and organize my assets?

- [ ] Do I know how to save the state of a flame project?

- [ ] Do I know how to archive a flame project?

- [ ] Do I know how to restore a flame project?

- [ ] Do I know how to import images/movies/audio/edit decision files?

- [ ] Do I know how to view the flame timeline?

- [ ] Do I know the difference between source and record timelines?

- [ ] Do I know how to conform an edit decision file?

- [ ] Do I know how to validate a conform against a reference file?

- [ ] Do I know how to export images/movies/audio/edit decision files?

- [ ] Do I know what a batch group is?

- [ ] Do I know how to create a batch group?

- [ ] Do I know how to add or delete nodes in a batch group?

- [ ] Do I know how to render my work from a batch group?

- [ ] Do I know how to track and stabilize?

- [ ] Do I know how to paint and rotoscope?

- [ ] Do I know how to animate?

- [ ] Do I know how to make mattes?

- [ ] Do I know how to composite layers?

- [ ] Do I know how to create 2d text?

- [ ] Do I know how to create 3d text?

- [ ] Do I know how to create 3d geometry?

- [ ] Do I know how to import 3d geometry?

- [ ] Do I know how to use a 3d camera?

- [ ] Do I know how to create a 3d matchmove?

- [ ] Do I know how to import a 3d matchmove?

- [ ] Do I know how to use fx nodes?

- [ ] Do I know how to import fx nodes?

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But they were not clean up apps, pretty much state of the art compositors / non linear editors and not support packages, pretty much what Flame is today, so really should not be ignored. I suspect there’s a lot of Flame artists who started this way.
I would say that the choices given preclude any one of a certain age.

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Quite a large number of Flame Artists I know started on Henry/Editbox, including myself.

I also know quite a few Nuke Artists who moved to that platform from Flame as well

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@paul_round @AdamArcher Fair enough. It won’t let me amend it. We’ll have to do the next poll by committee then so it’s all-inclusive and DEI compliant.

Screenshot 2024-06-02 at 6.45.58 AM

But the primary questions this was meant to answer was not an exhaustive list of what apps you may have broken your teeth on, but:

  1. How many people learned on Flame as their first app, vs. how many people arrived at Flame after a journey of other apps.
  2. How many people might have short tenure on Flame, but have been in the industry for a long time.

Both of which was aimed to distinguish between are Flame Juniors really just young lads that don’t have money to spare for a Flame license and that creates a problem where they just ignore Flame and do something else. Or do people learn Flame anywhere in their career when the time is right and the choice is logical.

I probably should have left the 3rd section just - was Flame your first love, or did you get there after divorce? Instead of listing some specific apps.

Next time…

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@allklier I jiggled some cables and amended the poll. I’ll keep the edit duration at its max for this poll so if there’s anything else you want to tweak go for it.

Thanks so much for the lovely poll and the spirited conversation. Love ya bro.

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Nice one Randy, and thank you.

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I’m amazed at the percentage who came to Flame from After Effects.

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i went from After Effects to Shake then back to After Effects when apple went EOL on Shake, then when FCP7 was dropped I switched to Smoke (then Flame) mainly because i wanted to get back to a Node workflow. It just makes sense.

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Of course the most glaring omission is Smoke no?

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I think we skip that 3rd section for now.

Clearly there’s too many possible paths to get there. Depends on when you started and what your path / bend was.

Should have made a simple ‘Did you start with Flame or elsewhere’ question.

There is curiosity about the other apps, but it turns it into a rabbit hold extra-ordinaire. Also with the rewiring of the questions, we lost the earlier votes, so now it’s a garbled data set.

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Fair. Didn’t mean to blow things up further…

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Editing apps?

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Quantel Paintbox
Amazing

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Not meaning to hijack the thread, but . . .
In 1988 I was working with Zbigniew Rybczyński building an HD studio with the NHK 60i 1125 system. At this point in time Zbig was one of the premier music video directors and a leader in the emerging HD industry. We took a trip to Stamford to see the Printbox. We asked them to develop a frame buffer so that we could integrate it into the HD workflow the same way we used the Paintbox in SD. They said no, they woudn’t do that. We were the only ones to ask (there were 3 HD systems in the US at the time and we were one of them) so it wasn’t worth their attention. We tried to convince them that there would be a future in it. “Why would we want to do that?” was their mantra. Fucking Quantel. I was happy the day I never had to deal with them again.

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