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Adobe steps it up. Adobe Premiere Pro becoming more accepted by industry pros
Adobe steps it up. Adobe Premiere Pro becoming more accepted by industry pros.
Film fans know that, in spite of being an early year release, Marvel’s Deadpool’s managed to break a laundry list of box office records. To date, it has pulled in around 800 million Dollars worldwide, and will surely shatter even more fiscal records upon home release. Superhero movies are big business. Yet whilst film fans were marvelling at the comedic fourth-wall-breaking antics of Ryan Reynolds as the titular hero, most were unaware of a less apparent, but equally ground-breaking feature of Deadpool; it was edited in Adobe Premiere Pro.
The industry-savvy will doubtless be aware that digitally splicing the vast majority Hollywood output has been achieved almost exclusively with Apple’s Final Cut Pro 7 in recent years, Premiere barely getting a look in. Adobe added the suffix ‘Pro’ to Premiere back in 2009, but it would take more than a mere name change for it to be regarded as such, ultimately, the features of software determine ifs worth. Adobe, keenly aware of this, quietly beavered away to make Premiere as pro in nature as it is in name, by adding support for huge array of native camera formats amongst other things, and they are currently enhancing other features too, their cloud-based subscription model allowing such features to be made available almost instantly.
Adobe has always had its fans in Hollywood, and as a company they have never been shy in letting people know that. Much was made of the fact that Adobe After Effects, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop were used extensively in the creation of effects for the technological tour-de-force that was James Cameron’s Avatar. Nevertheless, Adobe were a little less forthcoming about the fact that Avatar was cut together in Final Cut Pro 7, indicative that, in 2009 at least, Premiere was not quite regarded as the ideal editing choice by even Adobe’s strongest advocates. To be fair, it’s well known that even if a rival product steps up its game, people tend to stick to what they are familiar with and there can be little doubt this will have been behind at least some of the decisions post-production houses made when staying with what they knew.
But this works both ways: Fast forward a few years, and we see the efforts Adobe put into polishing their NLE starting to have an effect. Again, this wider acceptance has not been without outside influences; Apple’s release of Final Cut Pro X could certainly have gone a bit smoother than it did for one thing; fundamental changes to how FCPX works shook things up a bit, and as noted, given that people are often happiest with what they know, it has been a challenge for Apple to convince editors of FCPX’s different, but undeniable charms. In spite of such growing pains, FCPX has matured into a very usable NLE, which editors do end up liking when they give it a chance, but before that started to occur it was a situation which played into Adobe’s hands, prompting many to give Premiere another look. Most people would rather be lucky than good, but Adobe appeared to be briefly holding both of those cards for a while. Thus in 2014, another Hollywood big gun, also a fan of Adobe’s software - David Fincher - choose Premiere Pro to edit Gone Girl. It’s worth pointing out here, again, such a decision was likely influenced by familiarity and preference; it is no surprise to learn that both James Cameron and David Fincher - having come up through the ranks of film-making via visual and special effects - are both intimately familiar with Adobe’s Illustrator and Photoshop, so it is hardly surprising they’re open to advocating other Adobe programs.
Partisan choices aside, Fincher’s decision to go with Premiere Pro is significant in that he, like yet another director who came up through the art direction route - Ridley Scott - is well known as a perfectionist, Fincher apparently shooting as many as fifty takes for a lot of scenes in Gone Girl, which is something Scott is also known for; when directors are that picky about stuff, they’re never going to choose an editing packaging for superficial reasons. And this does appear to have been a choice which has had influence; Gone Girl might not have had the same record breaking box office success which Deadpool enjoyed, but it has been successful enough to pull in seven times its budget at the box office, enough for any studio to greenlight a sequel, as indeed is the case with Gone Girl. More critically, from artistic and production standpoints, when it comes to major award nominations, Gone Girl garnered a total of 95, going on to convert 29 of those nominations into wins, in the process ending up on the vast majority of film critics top ten lists for films of 2014. These kind of plaudits are exactly what Adobe had been hoping for, because when Deadpool director Tim Miller was asking around for opinions on what NLE might best serve him for cutting his movie, it was David Fincher who advised him that he had just completed editing Gone Girl in Premiere Pro, in particular, pointing out that Premiere Pro’s Dynamic Link with After Effects had made for a very smooth and fast production process. Of course After Effects has never had much trouble in being regarded as an industry standard for CGI, particularly since it now also ties in seamlessly with Maxon’s Cinema 4D, even including a light version of it as a plug-in. But like Fincher, Miller went further than this, to the extent that the suite of applications for the production of Deadpool was almost exclusively Adobe software. And like Fincher, Miller has been selected to direct a sequel, so the trend for using Adobe’s suite of programs is not only likely to continue, but gather momentum if films which make a ton of money and pick up a bucketful of accolades are seen to be using that production process.
But whether one is in the Adobe camp, or elsewhere, what makes all this good for us - the people who actually use all that software - is simple; we've got options, and not just from Apple and Adobe, let’s not forget AVID’s Media Composer is in the mix too.
As far as being a trainer at Soho Editors is concerned, I end up crossing paths with people who might favour, or use, one, two or even all three of those big name NLEs, yet because we train people on all three - and more besides - I can see merit in all of them; each having features to recommend them above the other, depending on one’s needs or preferences. But the desire of the software developers to have their product be the one we select, is driving us toward ever-better and more feature-laden solutions. Undeniably, there are some things which could be improved in all three of those big name NLEs, but competition will drive that, so it is nice for those who are in the Adobe camp, or who might be considering it, to see that Premiere Pro has become an NLE which even a pro can marvel at.
Author - Alan Bradbury - Senior Adobe Instructor
Adobe steps it up. Adobe Premiere Pro becoming more accepted by industry pros.
Film fans know that, in spite of being an early year release, Marvel’s Deadpool’s managed to break a laundry list of box office records. To date, it has pulled in around 800 million Dollars worldwide, and will surely shatter even more fiscal records upon home release. Superhero movies are big business. Yet whilst film fans were marvelling at the comedic fourth-wall-breaking antics of Ryan Reynolds as the titular hero, most were unaware of a less apparent, but equally ground-breaking feature of Deadpool; it was edited in Adobe Premiere Pro.
The industry-savvy will doubtless be aware that digitally splicing the vast majority Hollywood output has been achieved almost exclusively with Apple’s Final Cut Pro 7 in recent years, Premiere barely getting a look in. Adobe added the suffix ‘Pro’ to Premiere back in 2009, but it would take more than a mere name change for it to be regarded as such, ultimately, the features of software determine ifs worth. Adobe, keenly aware of this, quietly beavered away to make Premiere as pro in nature as it is in name, by adding support for huge array of native camera formats amongst other things, and they are currently enhancing other features too, their cloud-based subscription model allowing such features to be made available almost instantly.
Adobe has always had its fans in Hollywood, and as a company they have never been shy in letting people know that. Much was made of the fact that Adobe After Effects, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop were used extensively in the creation of effects for the technological tour-de-force that was James Cameron’s Avatar. Nevertheless, Adobe were a little less forthcoming about the fact that Avatar was cut together in Final Cut Pro 7, indicative that, in 2009 at least, Premiere was not quite regarded as the ideal editing choice by even Adobe’s strongest advocates. To be fair, it’s well known that even if a rival product steps up its game, people tend to stick to what they are familiar with and there can be little doubt this will have been behind at least some of the decisions post-production houses made when staying with what they knew.
But this works both ways: Fast forward a few years, and we see the efforts Adobe put into polishing their NLE starting to have an effect. Again, this wider acceptance has not been without outside influences; Apple’s release of Final Cut Pro X could certainly have gone a bit smoother than it did for one thing; fundamental changes to how FCPX works shook things up a bit, and as noted, given that people are often happiest with what they know, it has been a challenge for Apple to convince editors of FCPX’s different, but undeniable charms. In spite of such growing pains, FCPX has matured into a very usable NLE, which editors do end up liking when they give it a chance, but before that started to occur it was a situation which played into Adobe’s hands, prompting many to give Premiere another look. Most people would rather be lucky than good, but Adobe appeared to be briefly holding both of those cards for a while. Thus in 2014, another Hollywood big gun, also a fan of Adobe’s software - David Fincher - choose Premiere Pro to edit Gone Girl. It’s worth pointing out here, again, such a decision was likely influenced by familiarity and preference; it is no surprise to learn that both James Cameron and David Fincher - having come up through the ranks of film-making via visual and special effects - are both intimately familiar with Adobe’s Illustrator and Photoshop, so it is hardly surprising they’re open to advocating other Adobe programs.
Partisan choices aside, Fincher’s decision to go with Premiere Pro is significant in that he, like yet another director who came up through the art direction route - Ridley Scott - is well known as a perfectionist, Fincher apparently shooting as many as fifty takes for a lot of scenes in Gone Girl, which is something Scott is also known for; when directors are that picky about stuff, they’re never going to choose an editing packaging for superficial reasons. And this does appear to have been a choice which has had influence; Gone Girl might not have had the same record breaking box office success which Deadpool enjoyed, but it has been successful enough to pull in seven times its budget at the box office, enough for any studio to greenlight a sequel, as indeed is the case with Gone Girl. More critically, from artistic and production standpoints, when it comes to major award nominations, Gone Girl garnered a total of 95, going on to convert 29 of those nominations into wins, in the process ending up on the vast majority of film critics top ten lists for films of 2014. These kind of plaudits are exactly what Adobe had been hoping for, because when Deadpool director Tim Miller was asking around for opinions on what NLE might best serve him for cutting his movie, it was David Fincher who advised him that he had just completed editing Gone Girl in Premiere Pro, in particular, pointing out that Premiere Pro’s Dynamic Link with After Effects had made for a very smooth and fast production process. Of course After Effects has never had much trouble in being regarded as an industry standard for CGI, particularly since it now also ties in seamlessly with Maxon’s Cinema 4D, even including a light version of it as a plug-in. But like Fincher, Miller went further than this, to the extent that the suite of applications for the production of Deadpool was almost exclusively Adobe software. And like Fincher, Miller has been selected to direct a sequel, so the trend for using Adobe’s suite of programs is not only likely to continue, but gather momentum if films which make a ton of money and pick up a bucketful of accolades are seen to be using that production process.
But whether one is in the Adobe camp, or elsewhere, what makes all this good for us - the people who actually use all that software - is simple; we've got options, and not just from Apple and Adobe, let’s not forget AVID’s Media Composer is in the mix too.
As far as being a trainer at Soho Editors is concerned, I end up crossing paths with people who might favour, or use, one, two or even all three of those big name NLEs, yet because we train people on all three - and more besides - I can see merit in all of them; each having features to recommend them above the other, depending on one’s needs or preferences. But the desire of the software developers to have their product be the one we select, is driving us toward ever-better and more feature-laden solutions. Undeniably, there are some things which could be improved in all three of those big name NLEs, but competition will drive that, so it is nice for those who are in the Adobe camp, or who might be considering it, to see that Premiere Pro has become an NLE which even a pro can marvel at.
Author - Alan Bradbury - Senior Adobe Instructor