Is it really just about software..? Opinions on what makes a good Flame op

[randy]

@duncanmalcolm

about a plan to encourage the many Education establishments

I’m not at all convinced that the current educational facilities are how to solve this. At least in the U.S. I kinda sorta feel that we are going to experience a massive drop in higher education attendance. I have 3 kids, 12, 12 and 9. And when they were born I did some rough math and used those online calculator thingies to save for college and I had to save $750 per kid per month to save approx $250,000 per kid to pay for 100% of their schooling for medium priced public university tuition and board. Currently there is more students loan debt, $1.6 trillion, then credit card debt, at just under $1 billion.

How the heck is this sustainable? And why would I want my children and children’s children to be saddled with such nonsense? The United States educational system has already failed in my opinion. And I don’t see how it at all can pivot quickly enough and with a pricing structure fair enough to solve anything.

[allklier]

Couldn’t agree more. It’s an epic failure and a complex situation that deserves more discussion (not sure how much is appropriate in this forum).

We recently came out the other end of this journey. We have four in their mid-20s. One went to a prestigious school and dropped out and still finding her way, one went to a state university and went on to do a Masters and PhD, one finished a standard bachelors at a private mid-tier university, and one attended a trade school. Three are doing well, one is still struggling.

The biggest issue is that in the last two decades the notion has developed that unless you have a college degree you’re a failure in society, which is utter non-sense, especially considering the price tag and other circumstances. That is followed by school rankings that anchor on college admission. Each High School has one and only one goal - that everyone graduates with a college acceptance in hand, because it helps their ranking. Whether that’s good or bad for the kid. They want their brownie point and have nothing to do with the clean-up on aisle 3 if it goes wrong.

I went to college in Berlin for Computer Science, but worked 15 years as a software engineer. My degree was science degree. Software engineering is a trade. Totally disconnected. And there are many things, like working with Flame that absolutely do not require a college degree. It’s a trade. If you want to get a head start at a trade-school, nothing wrong with that. Or learn on the job. It’s easier than ever. I’m completely self-taught in this field. Changing careers was an interesting problem (for another discussion).

As a hiring manager in corporate roles I was required to make sure every one we considered had a college degree. It’s a simple filter mechanism. It actually didn’t matter much where and in what your degree was. All it showed is that you had the maturity to complete a 4 year long journey, which requires organization and commitment. Those are valuable traits. But assessing that shouldn’t cost $150K+.

I’ll leave it at these observations.

[allklier]

Just saw this chart in my inbox today (seems relevant to this discussion):

(from Scott Galloway, NYU business school professor)

Of course this a a supply and demand issue at the same time. Most American companies have divested entirely of training and are leaving it to the individual. Back in the 90s I had plenty of paid for training opportunities through my employers. Today they are almost entirely gone, other than compliance related topics.

One part of the reason is shorter tenures and higher turn-over. Companies say they don’t want to invest into employee training, only for that person to then leave and work for a competitor. Fair enough. Though companies and their broken cultures have been one major reason for faster turn-over. It’s not uncommon now to get to your next job anywhere between 1-3 years. That used to be much more stable.

I was happy to hear during the recent Logik Live that the Flame team at Autodesk is a nice example of longer tenures. Writing complex software is very difficult if you lose all this context knowledge with high churn rates.

[mikeroy]

This is a great topic, one that i’ve been concerned about the solution to. Our discipline has always been somewhat “avant garde” (not to toot our own horns too much)… and as a result, the trickle of new blood into the “Fraternis Un Flamus” has always been thin.

Back when i started over 22 years ago, I quickly learned to do the job right I needed to develop a triangle of 3 things (@Sinan wisely alluded to this earlier)…

1. Social skills.
2. Creative skills.
3. Technical skills.

I’ve seen few jobs that require all three of these things to such a high degree as a Flame artist.

I’ve seen many Flame artists become very frustrated and their careers stall out because severe lack in one of these things held them back and they never did progress beyond that level.

Many of us learned the craft by starting in a studio as something else (PA, Tape Op, Editor, Motion Designer, etc) and sneaking time in after hours under the tutelage of a kind Flame artist willing to impart their wisdom. We came with a basic ability to problem-solve and a desire to learn. That has been a tried-and-true path. But with so many of us working from home now, I fear that path is in danger, unless we make dedicated efforts to take new and willing artists under our wing in a remote capacity. (What @randy and co. are doing with their Hivemind online mentoring program is definitely a great step in the right direction!)

Even within our specialized discipline, there are tiers of capability and competence. At the most basic level, you have the Flame Assist level person, who is able to do I/O, basic conforms, slates, and be able to read a spreadsheet accurately. (I’m not kidding, that’s a thing.) They can usually do basic comp work. They can communicate competently and have a basic technical acumen, enough to know how to ask for help.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have a fully developed Senior level artist who can make flame do backflips and run a room of clients, all while emailing in the background to answer VFX questions and get technical support while not looking like you’re having any trouble at all. They’re also able to attend VFX shoots and get plates, hobnob with clients after hours, craft pitches and make bidding decisions.

IMO, a school program, I don’t care if it’s Harvard or Coonhound County Community College, can at most be able to turn out someone who is the former. It takes real work experience and the help of willing professionals to build that person into the latter. Does that person NEED a degree to get there? I don’t think so, but I feel a degree that has the right mix of training CAN help them to get there more quickly and in a more methodical and natural (i.e. perhaps less stressful) way.

In order to achieve the “basic level of competence” stage with a good chance of progressing beyond that, a program would ideally need to involve some exposure in the following:

Advertising (basic industry knowledge and lingo)

Radio/TV/Film (same)

Video Production

Still Photography (to learn lensing / exposures / camera basics)

Editing

Compositing

Color Theory

Graphic Design

Painting (yes, painting… this skill has bailed me out many times)

Introduction to CG / 3D

Communication

Audio engineering

Any “soft skills” courses such as conflict resolution, negotiation, pitching would be helpful.

technical courses such as computer troubleshooting / system administration would be helpful (this is in a “I wish I had had this” category!)

business courses could be helpful too.

I think a customized list of courses like this would help prepare someone for not just a Flame career, but just about any creative post-production career, with an eye towards progressing in that career.

Notice I didn’t have application-specific things on there, because if you can learn one editorial app you kind of know what you need to know, and you can learn another without too much trouble. In a university setting, you’ll find broader courses, while in a 2-year trade type school, you’ll find more application specific courses. I would steer away from “here’s how to push the buttons” type training and more towards foundational “this is why this is done” type courses.

You’re not going to find a Flame-specific course anywhere probably in the college setting, and you probably won’t. (but if you do, then yeah i’d take it!)

There’s probably more that i’m not thinking of, so anybody please feel free to chime in.

The alternative to all this upper level school is of course go ahead and get hired as a PA/Tape Op/Coffee Maker right out of high school (as opposed to a PA/Tape Op/Coffee Maker with a degree). That works too. The degreed person just might have a broader foundation. On the other hand, the high school grad gets a head start (and no school loans!)

The true prerequisites in any case are: a basic competence in the “holy trinity” listed above (social/creative/technical), a desire to learn, and a desire to put in the hours.

Mike Roy

Alumnus,
Coonhound Community College

[eric_mason]

What a fantastic thread @duncanmalcolm, and such good questions posed and thoughtful responses provided by all.

I really like what you said @mikeroy, and agree. I would add Management, Animation, English/Creative Writing and Sound Design to that “exposure list” as well.

+1 to what @allklier said that “Flame seems more like the destination of a journey rather than a trail head”. I agree w/ @andy_dill that a young flame artist could certainly lead a job & replace media etc. However, they wouldn’t have nearly the experience and wisdom to Creative Direct the process or other mid-senior artists on a given project.

I fell into doing flame because I genuinely loved many things media-art/people/tech and was lucky enough to have the opportunity to learn when I did; after having pursued many of the aforementioned practices listed. I had quite a bit of an existential crisis in my younger days accepting how varied my interests were, as any one specialty made me feel boxed in. After which, I was introduced to Flame and found a home existed for many, if not all my interests.

This is why I have a hard time thinking universities could/should produce flame artists out of the gate. I think a healthy liberal arts education in art/media would cover many bases to get a good foundation started. Much of what makes an exceptional Flame Artist comes from on-the-job experience, learning from failure, and other hard-earned sources of wisdom; more akin to trade/apprenticeship than a “here’s what you do” college career prep. Also a good reason why the term “operator” feels to sell us short on the myriad skills we’ve honed over the years, but that’s a different conversation all together. Now, this isn’t to say that you can’t know how to use the software right out of school, which would be useful on many levels @ the start of your career. Part of your toolbox, like Photoshop, 3D software and whatever else you might use to complete your senior project.

I think @mikeroy hit it on the head that it’s more about learning the concepts and theory than any one piece of software, and if some are lucky to be exposed to the possibility of learning flame, then that’s great for our trade. I think @allklier also had a great point re: people working in other apps(and if I may suggest: adjacent trades) to be enticed to move toward Flame. Those with an aptitude/desire for what lies beyond what they specialize in… A creative editor for example, or a designer-animator-compositor… At the end of the day, it’s not a hard stretch to see why many Creative Directors and owners of VFX studios were once Flame Artists themselves.

Some colleges offer majors that sound close to what we’re talking about, but after 4 years and a few hundred thousand dollars in debt, it becomes difficult to imagine an adequate return on investment. Sadly I think that’s more a symptom of the broken secondary education system in the US than anything else.

That being said, creating a path toward internship/apprenticeship given the current WFH paradigm shift is the way forward. On top of that, more PR and awareness of what a Flame Artist is/does, and why this is a coveted position to hold is important. The agencies still provide top-billing for Flame, and as long as that still holds true, Flame will still be the go-to for many studios, margin-wise. Infusing aspirational value to our trade and all the enigma that goes with it makes the position desirable. Especially in our contemporary world where the superlative reigns supreme as far as social currency is concerned with the young’uns…

An analogy I was thinking of the other day was the conductor of an orchestra. You need to be a musician/performer yourself, know everyone’s instruments within reason, interpret their parts within the overarching piece of music that was originally composed, and coax the best performance out of everyone. You deal with the politics of production/administration and can see the larger picture. You’re part politician, part artist, part visionary, part pragmatist, part technician; all whilst being in service to others… Aspire to be the conductor, if you will…

[allklier]

A few thoughts on the question of enticing other artists to try Flame:

One common theme in comments here is that many current Flame artists got their appetite wetted by watching other Flame artists in action. In today’s market which has a lot more freelance positions, plus the work from home transition where you don’t walk by the other suite all the time, is that still a functional recruitment process, or does more outreach need to happen?

Taking my own experience, I’ve been around Flame type work for around 10 years but came to Flame proper only very recently. I had always known about Flame, but never watched a Flame artist at work to this day. And I certainly didn’t understand Flame’s benefits well in ways that would have enticed me to try it earlier. Almost the opposite, it was the app that had a lot of friction points making it harder to adopt.

If it weren’t known as the go-to beauty retouch app, A2Beauty, and ML masks, I may still not have tried it, living happily with Nuke, Silhouette and others.

It’s the only app I’ve used in years that is not available on Windows. And while my suite at times was Mac based, I’ve transitioned to Windows due to Apple’s insane hardware roadmap 3 years ago. All my production systems are PC based, and I had to acquire a dedicated Linux box to make the transition adding cost and friction. Add to this, that most ML algorithms require or work better with an NVidia GPU which Apple has been on a warpath with for a long time. If you are into ML (and I have used CopyCat for quite some time now), you’re on a PC, not a Mac for the most part, as you are with a lot of Nvenc encoding which can be critical for remote work scenarios. (Clarification on ML and NVidia - you need an NVidia GPU for training, not if you only apply pre-trained models from my understanding). Given my background a Linux box wasn’t a huge burden, but for your average younger freelancer, setting up and maintaining a Linux box may be a much bigger hurdle. Even for me it’s still a headache at times.

The pricing is more favorable than a Nuke Studio license, but still much more costly than most other apps folks use out there. Still a bargain for its value, but a friction point to get started with. It was in fact the introduction of the flex subscription that got me over the final hesitation, and I know it made several others who wouldn’t be full-time Flame artists consider learning the app and having it as part of their toolbox. There are a lot of freelancers today that probably don’t have enough Flame type work to bet the farm on it, but if it’s workable as a tool they use on a portion of the work they do, it becomes more feasible. And then they can shift that mix over time, as they experience Flame’s margin benefits. Flex makes that possible once you get past the learning curve. I had Flex at the start, but have since switched to the annual license.

I came to Flame looking for specific features. Only after learning Flame (and still very much learning) did I realize many of its other benefits, such as speed and profitability, one of very few apps that could be classified as ‘all-in-one’ and actually top of the pile as both ‘all-in-one’ and ‘best-in-class’. The only other contender in ‘all-in-one’ is Resolve, but BMD has cobbled together some grave yard finds on the cheap, into something that works but outside of color is not ‘best-in-class’. Though with 3M operators around the world, they have a hard to stop momentum at this point when you compete for talent.

From a business perspective being on Flame is a differentiator in the market and good business. But it is also swimming against the stream in several ways. Sometimes that’s where you can find good and profitable business.

If more artists should be enticed to switch, more needs to be done to articulate Flame’s benefits. It has already become more accessible, but there may still be things to be improved.

[johnag]

@duncanmalcolm

Thanks so far - all of this is really interesting - Just an extension on this thought… if there were no software like Flame - Would you still offer the package of skills you currently bring to the table - and if so what label would you put on your job description?

Well for me it’s editing, grading and finishing (old school online type sessions). So if Flame wasn’t around I would probably use premiere / aftereffects and resolve but I’d rather drive the Porsche than the Hyundai and I really like doing the whole job in one application.

[ace_elliott]

@duncanmalcolm

your not alone

I feel ya! I actually talk about imposter syndrome in my last Logik Live…Logik Live #92: Women in Flame hosted by Amanda Elliott — Logik.tv