The Alan Smithee Round Table: (“Post in Transition: Automation, AI, and Mixing Light”)

Speaker A: Foreign. Welcome to another Alan Smithy roundtable here on Pro Video Coalition. As always, brought to us by our good friends at Film Tools. And we are here. Um, it is the end of October. Halloween is just a couple of days away. I'm here with, uh, my good friends Katie Hinson and Michael Kyle Thomas. And I'm going to tease that we have a very good and very important interview coming up here in a few minutes with Patrick Inhofer of Mixing Light. If you don't know Mixing Light and many of you listening and watching do, Mixing Light was one of the premier color grading, uh, training entities for years and years and years and years and years. Um, Patrick has recently made the decision to suspend operations and that came as a little bit of a shock to all of us that knew Patrick and knew the site and knew the training entity. And, you know, we asked Patrick, hey, come on and talk about the state of training and say as much or as little as you want about, you know, Mixing Light in general in the state and, you know, how things went down. And he goes pretty deep about it. And we, um, offer up some opinions on training in general. So stay tuned for that in the meantime. Michael, Katie, you guys just came back from NAB New York. Michael, everything you saw at NAB New York, go,

Speaker B: I, I saw myself getting sick. I, uh, like

Speaker A: most

Speaker B: trade shows, uh, there's a plague that goes around. You either it was a bad

Speaker C: one,

Speaker B: either get it on the plane there, or you get it from, you know, shaking babies and kissing hands, uh, at the show floor. So I'm, I'm just hanging on right now, and I'm

Speaker A: shaking, Shaking baby syndrome. Isn't that the thing you can be.

Speaker C: All right, all right.

Speaker B: But Katie, Katie, I gotta say, um, I, uh, was hoping to hear more raspiness with your accent.

Speaker C: Oh, please. Yeah, no, I, I've got a little bit of radio voice going on, which I thought might increase ratings on this episode. Um, we. No, uh, yeah, I lost my voice completely. I think I actually spent not too much time on the show floor. But, um, I was around or I went to all the parties and it was loud and fabulous and talk to everybody and yelled a lot. And, uh, as I was checking out of my hotel without a voice, the, uh, the, the guy checking me out said, harry Styles concert. I was like, there was a Harry Styles concert? No, no, it was a trade show. Um, so, yeah, I suspect I wasn't the only one who lost my voice that, uh, that week. But, um, when

Speaker A: you lead with getting sick, it must have Been a banger of a show.

Speaker C: It was NAB New York. It's a much smaller version of nab. It is quite small. It's gotten bigger over the years. Last time I was there was actually 10 years ago, um, at NAB New York, uh, 2016. And, uh, it's certainly grown since then. It was always the ugly stepchild of nab. Nab. Um, now it's actually pretty cool. Like, it's a lot more of the same, uh, vendors. It's. It's much smaller. It takes up one hall instead of three. It's smaller. It's lower key. It's a really great way to catch up with people. Nab is always about the family reunion of it. All. Right? So it's a much smaller version. You get to see people from the east coast, certainly, uh, uh, it's nice to see everybody. And you get to actually chat with some of the vendors a little more. The booths are much smaller, way less flashy. Um, but it's sort of an opportunity. I think what I always found when I lived in New York was that it was nice that they brought. Brought a version of NAB to us for those of us who couldn't make it out to Vegas. And it was smaller, and there was less stuff on the booths and all of that. But you actually got to kind of chat about things that you already kind of knew about, because you'd read about them from vegas or seen them in Vegas or then you'd read about them from ibc. And it's after ibc. So those announcements, you actually get to go into the booth and chat with people. I mean, for example, one of the cool things, sohonet's booth. I was really impressed that the CEO of sohonet was the guy giving the demos. Um, you know, Chuck was there. He's always been like that. Chuck's really cool like that. But it really does kind of show, like. It's definitely a lot more. You know, you actually get a lot more bang for your buck, I suppose, um, at something smaller like NAB New York. So it was kind of cool in that way.

Speaker A: And you're in New York, which is a plus, because New York

Speaker C: is a

Speaker A: wonderful city to be. Greatest city in the world. Not that Vegas isn't, but Vegas. You know, Katie, you were also, while you were in New York, um, you was able to accept a little award for the, uh, diversified. I don't know much about the company diversified itself, but they have a women without boundaries award they give out every year, and you are the recipient of one of other six folks that um, won that award for your leadership in the industry. And I think some boundaries have been broken. So congratulations on that.

Speaker C: Thank you. It was really cool actually. Uh, yeah, Diversified is a major integrator in terms of a company in our industry. International, very big integrator. Most people don't know them because integrators are supposed to be invisible and silent. Um, but they uh, they're fairly large company, uh, and they recognize a group of women each year with these awards, um, for women who've made an enormous impact in their corner of the, of not just the, our industry, but a wide, quite a wide range of industries actually. And they have a number of awards and I was awarded the Leadership Excellence award. So it was a real, real honor. And, and um, I some pretty awesome and really inspiring other women who I had never met before, which is a nice thing about that award. Um, most of the awards, uh, candidly, uh, within our industry go to a lot of people I already know. And so it was actually really cool to meet a bunch of new people who are doing really cool stuff that I didn't even know about in slightly more peripheral corners of the world, of my world.

Speaker A: And you got a gigantic cash prize

Speaker C: and I also got a lovely trophy, so that was nice.

Speaker A: Oh, sorry, I thought it was a gigantic cash price.

Speaker C: It was not a gigantic catch price. But yes.

Speaker A: Let's talk about other news that's been, that's been going down. I don't think. I mean there was one. I don't know if this was any be New York related, but. And the, the sale is almost over. But this almost never happens as blackmagic, um, was offering a discount on Resolve Studio and Resolve products such as the Speed Editor, the editor's keyboard. I believe that goes until November 20th, which, which is not very far away after we hear this podcast. But yeah, like resolve went from 295 to 236. So that's 60 bucks you're kind of saving, which is, you know,

Speaker C: not bad.

Speaker A: It's already a good deal. But like if there's an editor out there listening to this on the free version of Resolve, pony up to 236 because you're not going to get Resolve any cheaper than that. Um, that was a good deal. Um,

Speaker B: the thing I would point out, um, and this is by no means trying to shoot down the uh, discounts is that, you know, we've seen price increases across the board for just about any technology, especially if it's made outside the U.S. uh, which a lot of, if not all of Blackmagic gear is. So to kind of temper these price discounts, Blackmagic, uh, posted about, I don't know, 20 or 30 different items that now have gone up in price that are hardware oriented. So, um, you may want to hold off until Black Friday and see if there's any inventory they have to move. Or maybe they'll be announcing something new, which I'm not trying to allude to, but, you know, drop on things that usually mean something new, uh, may be coming. But, um, it's the balance. And um, unfortunately blackmagic isn't immune to the price hikes that our whole industry is saying.

Speaker A: Well, um, Grant Petty, the CEO of blackmagic, put out a really long statement discussing those, uh, those price increases. And I think it's cool to see like, you know, some, some very specific details on why. And you know, we all know that memory is expensive. I mean everything's expensive, let's be honest. But like, we're, that's hitting our industry particularly hard. So it was cool to see him, um, really discuss why they had to raise those prices. I feel like the resolve discount stuff isn't like a news counterpoint or whatever. Um, I just, you know, sometimes I feel like since Black Magic's a privately held company, they just, they do stuff. Sometimes you're like, oh, that's kind of cool. Someone decided to do something and they do it. And I think that's kind of refreshing in our industry sometimes.

Speaker B: I think there's also probably some strategy there given some of the things that, um, Avid has announced over the past couple quarters how there's kind of some public sentiment regarding AI and blowback and how that is affecting kind of the, uh, Adobe stock price. So I think there's also some. Well, let's capitalize on the momentum where some of our competitors may not be doing as stellar as they could be and maybe how could we chip away at some of that market share? So I think there's, it's, it's 3D chess. But I, I think if anyone is not seriously considering, uh, getting a upgrade to Studio, uh, which at this point lasts forever, you're missing the boat.

Speaker A: Yeah, now's the time

Speaker C: for sure. So, Michael, you spent a lot more time on the show floor than I did. What else did you see? Anything else?

Speaker B: Uh, well, I mean, overall the. There was. The attendance is down. Seen that across all trade shows, even the biggies like nab, even ibc. But, um, we're still seeing the quality. So instead of a Company sending four people, they send one. So we're still getting representation from these uh, not just manufacturers but end users. So that's good. Um, one of the things that uh, we got more information on is both Sony and Panasonic have kind of announced that they're going to have uh, newer cameras, PTZ cameras that have global shutters, which for the professional market is massive, especially when you're shooting in front of video walls and, and things like that. And they're also leaning into the. Well, what if we have sensors that rotate so we can do landscape or portrait. Right. Meaning vertical or your traditional horizontal 16 by 9 video. Uh, and then putting new motors in there so they can adjust even quicker. So uh, it's good to see that. Yeah, exactly. So we're seeing that uh, folks are leaning harder into. PTZs are continually not going to be the second class citizens. They're going to get better sensors, they're going to get the ability to be able to be used for social media as well as kind of traditional media.

Speaker C: Okay. Though I have a question. I'm not going to call it a dumb question, but I'm going to call it a genuine question that may reveal some things I don't know about cameras. Um, because can't you just do that? Can't you just tilt your tripod 90 degrees or move your, make your TP lie down?

Speaker B: Sure. But if we look at things like uh, corporate boardrooms, we look at installs at facilities where you don't have someone who, who is, pardon the expression, manning the camera where there isn't room for sticks, where you can put this on a turret and then run an ethernet cable that does power control and video and then control remotely or the podcast studios that have the talent in one room or talent in one state and then the operators in another room, another state, another country. We talk of things like nightclubs. Right. Things that aren't really conducive to having uh, someone there. And of course there's the cost to the business case for we're doing a three way multicam. Do we need three users now? We have to invest in cameras and comms and all the things that go around that uh, and sometimes those aren't needed. Uh, a lot of times it's sports. Right. We took a, take a look at high school sports division two, division three, where um, you just want to get a camera that tracks the action so the parents at home can make sure their tuition is paying for something. Right. You may not have uh, operators at that point. So uh, The PTZ market has just exploded. Um, and being able to control and get video and audio down one line, uh, has just kind of revolutionized that.

Speaker C: That's cool. So the other thing in New York is, you know, I actually went and met with a lot of folks um, in the industry there. That was uh, one of the things I spent a good chunk of the week doing. Meeting with post houses and freelancers and really getting a sense of how the business is going, um, what it's like over on the East Coast. It was interesting. Uh, they're actually kind of busy for the most part. It's certainly not the case. Uh, in my observation here in la, um, it does seem like they're busier in New York right now. Um, New York is an indie town and commercials and those are two things that are actually doing okay right now. Uh, is indies and commercials. And of course, uh, tax, uh, breaks are being chased. And um, of course we did see the news that uh, New York, uh, from Hollywood Reporter, that um, New York is poised to overtake California as the top state for movie and TV production because they, and of course that they're getting really, um, you know, they're pretty aggressive on their tax incentives, um, their upstate tax incentives as well. And the New Jersey tax incentives also have a factor in that. So you know, it is certainly something that uh, I observed and that is also backed up um, you know, from, from the Hollywood reporters saying, you know, you know, with, with numbers actually, um, that you know, right now New York is actually um, doing really well, uh, and above uh, other states. And it kind of makes sense because a lot of the, you know, the big budget, so called big budget, you know, more higher profile stuff, uh, is not so high profile and big budget right now. It's, it's kind of taking a step back. The stuff that kind of has always been the bread and butter for Los Angeles, uh, while the stuff that has been the bread and butter for New, uh, York of course is where the money's at right now.

Speaker A: Did you guys see the uh, Instagram discussing testing 90 minute horizontal videos?

Speaker C: I mean, yeah, I mean it's been coming for a while. Uh, you know there's obviously uh, the creator space is big and, and they're trying to branch out and diversify a little bit. Uh,

Speaker A: hold on though. Instagram, like I get YouTube, YouTube was you know, 16 by 9 forever and then mobile came along and they brought out shorts. I feel like Instagram and 16 by 9 is based on traditional cinema. Your TV. Um, Instagram has always been phone first, which is 9 by 16, which is vertical.

Speaker C: But Instagram hasn't always been 9 by 16. And also, Trish, what if it started out that way though? It started out square.

Speaker B: That was one by one and four by five.

Speaker C: That's right. And I'll also note that I think a few months ago, I mean time is a circle for me right now, but a few months ago, um, we did have the news that Instagram was one of the platforms with launching a TV app. And so they've been moving into this for a while to be on televisions. And there is this trend towards people consuming their phone media on a tv. Um, it's sort of how they're sharing it with their family or their friends. They're like, hey, cheers, out this video, right? And in fact, you know, I was in New Zealand, you know, this, this month. My dad does that all the time. He's like, check out this thing I saw on YouTube. You know, and so it's, you know, it's very much, I think there's a trend that all of these apps now have their TV versions, their smart TV versions of their apps. And so this is just the, the next sort of iteration of that, the next step towards that. Whether or not audience, this is the big thing, right? Whether or not audiences care is going to be the big thing. People, um, the audience habit is that Instagram's not where they go for long form video, it's where they go for short form video,

Speaker A: right?

Speaker C: And so

Speaker A: very much a perception thing,

Speaker C: right? So a lot of, and a lot of it's going to come down to what is that content. And I know they have selected creators only and they've been very selective in that, um, and really kind of moving, you know, coaching their creators towards creating that content. But it'll be interesting to see whether it succeeds or fails. Because, you know, why would you go to another app, have the friction of changing apps for longer form content? There has to be a compelling reason. So it has to be a particular creator. It has to be something really specific that's going to make them, that's going to make consumers take the friction of changing applications to go find another piece of long form content. Well,

Speaker A: let me ask this, Michael, you may be on answer to this. Is it more YouTube wanting to drive people to watch on TV or they want to drive people to go from this to this? Like, I feel like

Speaker C: no,

Speaker A: watching, like this is not a thing. And no one,

Speaker C: no, but you can't do it. You can't, you can't do vertical on a tv. So that's why they've gone horizontal. So it can be done on a TV and people watch. People aren't going to watch 90 minute long things as much. Holding a phone. They weren't going to do that on a tv. They're going to sit back. Right. So, you know, look, Meta is just trying to grow, I think, and looking for throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks.

Speaker B: Uh, I would also temper this with it's a gut check. And what I mean by that is I think all of us have been in the industry long enough where you see a provider that rolls out a new feature and you can kind of smell that this is market research. Right.

Speaker A: I

Speaker B: mean, if we look at Netflix a couple of years ago where they had the kind of choose your own adventure and I think a lot of us saw that as well, a for effort. Right. You're trying it. Even though all research has shown that people want to be. Have a passive experience. I get that you want to test something. This 90 minute vertical feels like a, uh, we're going to throw it out there and see what happens.

Speaker C: Yeah. It's small. It is small. It's not like out there for everybody. It is small. It is selected, it is curated. It's being very specific. And I think it's the right thing to do because Meta, like every other major media company, is trying to expand to see what is the edge of their market. Like, where is that boundary hit? And so they're like, well, is this a thing we could also do to make money? And I think that it's a move. It's

Speaker B: the name of any other thing

Speaker C: for me, I'm just like, look, it's more jobs, it's more content being made,

Speaker A: more

Speaker C: long form is not bad. Yep. Even if I can tell you with all of my education and research and predicting what will succeed and fail and being fairly decent at, um, doesn't matter if it's going to fail because for a period of time there's a bunch of people getting hired and we should not be criticizing people trying things. Um, so I'm very like, cool, cool. Keep trying, Go for it, fund it. Yeah.

Speaker A: I'm going to bet you that a lot of those, some of those content creators they are tapping to do this, might be using Final Cut for their post production. Because Final Cut, even though we don't see it in the big post houses, even though I don't get calls to use it for broadcast very often, um, it is a major player with content creators and Apple, Just as you're watching this or listening to this, Apple may have announced a touchscreen, a new touchscreen MacBook Pro. That's the rumor that's coming out this week. They've announced m, a new MacBook Pro and M6 MacBook Pro and they also announced for Final Cut. We talked a couple of months ago about Apple acquiring Motion vfx, which was one of the preeminent, one of the earliest and by far the best creators of third party plugins, templates, extensions and just more content for Final Cut. Apple bought them and they announced they will be integrating that into Final Cut for the Apple creator studio. So if you are in the creator studio universe with that subscription that gets you was it's Logic and Final Cut Pro and um, extra content and a content hub, um, pages, numbers, um, yeah, that will be part of. And that's a, that's a big deal because that's a big, big software package. A lot of stuff that MotionVFX had out there

Speaker C: that

Speaker A: will be integrated in. So that's kind of cool. That comes on the heels, if we remember, um, Premiere bought um, Film Impact and integrated Film Impact into Premiere. So

Speaker B: this is a trend. But I feel, you know, if you're subscribing to something and you're getting more for that cost without a giant increase in that cost, that's good

Speaker A: for

Speaker C: the

Speaker B: user and um, yeah. So that's kind of cool. Happy to, happy to see that.

Speaker C: Well, on another, as is typical of me, the bringer of the Debbie Downer news, uh, the Hollywood news, um, which is not old Hollywood news, has not always been good lately. Um, and here we are. So we've got, um, Netflix layoffs this month. Netflix initiated layoffs, um, this month. They started at the top with uh, their heads like, their heads like the head heads. So Bella Bajaria was the chief content officer for Netflix and Dan Lin, chairman of film were the first to go. And, and that was actually a huge shock to be honest. I mean that's big, right? Netflix is a content company and they just, they, they canned their heads of content and then they went down and fired 15 more senior executives, uh, across all of the content. Right. So really like everything film into indie films, uh, uh, unscripted scripted animation and crazy. Uh, this is really unprecedented at any major studio that all of the executives basically one big sweep kind of just go. And when I say all. But that's very, very significant. And then recently, more recently, uh, they initiated layoffs of about 1,000, uh, workers, um, about 6% of its workforce, it's pretty significant. Um, it's the biggest since the last one was what, 20, 20, 22, 23, uh, where they did it all in one day and it was about 6% of the workforce. Again, it's a big, big deal, I think. You know, look, I'm not going to go into the guesses of the whys of it all. I think we probably all probably have fairly well, uh, informed, um, opinions on that, considering the state of things and the state of the Warner Brothers acquisition, all of these other things. But, um, it's going to be a huge, huge blow for the industry. And uh, the big question is, what are they going to do to fill those gaps with those executives and that leadership who's going to go in and take it over? Are they going to consolidate? Are they going to reduce the content? Are they going to make a huge shift in what kind of content? And most of these executives come from legacy Hollywood. You know, there was. Most people at Netflix have been hired from within. Um, so, you know, again, are they going to grab outsiders? They can take people from the content creator space who. Many, many questions on this one. So it's been a pretty crazy one. Um, and then of course, Skydance, no shock here. We knew this was happening. Uh, you know, with all the acquisitions, consolidation, Paramount, Skydance and now Warner Brothers, they have begun, um, they're promised layoffs, um, really like. And so they've started with employee buyouts, which is voluntary redundancy. They say, anybody who wants to take a package before we make you do it and choose if you want to do it, you get a slightly better deal. Um, that's sort of what that means. Right? So they've announced that they've, uh, invited folks to take a package, um, or you know, to choose to take that, uh, payout. Have you

Speaker B: heard? Not. I mean obviously it's going to differ from person to person, but have these been fairly generous? Do you have any idea? Or have the packages been a.

Speaker C: I can't speak to the Skydance specifically, um, but typically in business, you know, VP program, ah, it's often called a voluntary exit. Um, is by its very design slightly more basically you, you have to do. You have to take a gamble, right? You have to go, is it likely to be me if they were to choose? Um, and if I make that choice myself and go out on somewhat my own terms, I'm also going to get a slightly m. More generous package. So for example, if I was going to get six months redundancy, I might get nine months Redundancy, for example, payout, uh, so things like that. So they might do, or they might do, you know, whatever you were, uh, contractually entitled to, you're going to get slightly more than that. So that's pretty much how that goes. You make that gamble, example, you make that decision. If you were someone who was already on the way out, you're gonna grab it, um, and it'll be interesting because obviously, you know, there's been so many changes and so much instability. I think only folks on the inside are gonna have any sense and only within their own departments are gonna have any sense of how things are gonna move forward in the future with that company. There may be some departments that is reading the tea leaves and going, hell yeah, this is gonna be amazing. And they're not gonna wanna take it. And there are others who are going to go, yeah, this isn't looking great, um, you know, for us in our department. So let's maybe. Let me take it. So we'll see. Uh, but again, there's a lot of, A lot of layoffs in town in a very short amount of time. It's going to be a really rough Christmas, I think, for a lot of people.

Speaker A: It feels like there's a lot of layout layoffs in big industries in general. Because I was reading the other day about. I don't. Maybe it was Microsoft, don't quote me. But

Speaker C: yes, Microsoft also did a lot of

Speaker B: 33,000.

Speaker A: Yeah,

Speaker B: like

Speaker A: the 70 thing where if your age plus your tenure at the company equals 70, then you get a certain type of buyout package versus, you know, if, if you don't meet that. And it was just like all these metrics they're using to decide not necessarily who, but like, yeah, I mean you, you could voluntarily take that. Like, oh, I equal the 70. So my. This, this is almost like a mini retirement.

Speaker C: But that's how that works. Yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: I think the other studio news that I would just want to point out really briefly I think is that there was a report that came out that was really interesting from a, uh, company called VN AI that looked, uh, at sort of the biggest AI models, the 15 most popular ones, uh, to see, like how, how bad should I say, well, good. Are they at flouting copyright? So basically they went through the biggest models, um, and tried to prompt things that they're not. Shouldn't legally be allowed to prompt. And in a couple of different categories. One is, could you do something like Iron Man? Could you do something like, you know, like, could you do Star Wars? Things, um, that are very protected copyright and companies have specifically said, no, you can't use that. And then the second one is, could you also, um, prompt them doing something that you really shouldn't? Like that's not okay to do. So could you have, um, Barney snorting cocaine off Princess Leia? Um, we

Speaker B: suddenly now have the inner workings of Katie's mind.

Speaker C: I don't know. Have you tried it?

Speaker A: Have you tried to create this?

Speaker C: Um, and so. And you know, and so these are the. Yeah, thanks, guys. Um,

Speaker B: you said it.

Speaker C: I know I did. Um, yeah, I'm pretty sick in these things. Uh, look, I love breaking AI, so, you know, I love breaking things. Um, so, you know, they basically. Yeah, these, this is. This was. They really looked at that. Um, it's a really interesting report. We'll put it in some stuff in the. We'll put the deadline, uh, report, um, article in the show notes. But basically they found every single one of them broke the rules very easily. Shocker. Um, even the ones that claim to, after lawsuits have claimed to have fixed those loopholes still did it. And the worst was Mid Journey. So not shocking, but, you know, and nano Banana was pretty bad as well. So even after nano Banana has been sued and promised to be good little, uh, boys and girls, uh, was still also bad. Pretty bad. So I know that not very few of our listeners probably really mess, uh, with Mid Journey too much these days. It's not great, uh, in terms of getting anything that's actually doesn't all look the same. But Nana Banana, I know a lot of folks are, ah, using that. Um, so, yeah, again, it's very, very interesting. There's a lot of lawsuits that are still going against these companies, and this really proves that. I mean, this is crazy. But here's what's interesting about it, is that Midjourney argues that training AI on, on copyrighted material is permitted under fair use. And that's what they're arguing in court. Some of these companies have not argued that as ferociously. But Midjourney's like, f you, fair use, free speech, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, I don't know. Uh, it's kind of crazy to see it out there in stats, right? Like, how bad it really is.

Speaker A: I mean, I think it's still. This is an ongoing thing as lawsuits happen and companies pivot and a lot of these big tech companies just. I think it's kind of like the sumi attitude, just, yeah, let's do it.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: What's. What does it move fast, break things? Yeah.

Speaker C: Too big to fail, all of that. Well, Apollo. Yeah now, apologize later, whatever. Yeah. Um, so.

Speaker A: Well, yeah, I think the thing we learned from that was Kenny should probably clear her search history or her generation history. But that's, that's neither here nor there. Hey, let's do one cool thing and then get to um, Patrick's, uh, Patrick's article. Katie, why don't you head. I'm going the way that the list. What was yours? It's involved.

Speaker C: Mine was actually like when I was in New York and the Women Without Boundaries awards, Uh, I actually met some incredible people. Um, and one of them was a woman called Ayanna Pate. Um, she blew my mind. She was incredible. Um, she is a lawyer but she's got like a million side hustles and they're amazing. Um, among other things she's currently leading this uh, this project in Ghana. It's a sustainable development project. Project. It's a sustainable city, um, which is super, super cool and just incredible, incredible work. She's also worked with Haiti Housing Collaborative Initiative to work with architects to find sustainable uh, housing ways to kind of rebuild Haiti. And now they're doing similar stuff in Ghana to uh, also help uh, the locals there to also be able to be a lot more self sustainable to uh, not have to rely on foreign aid and to kind of build cities that last. She talked to me a little bit about how she, when she was in Ghana she noticed that the buildings that were made of mud through the traditional way for example were very cool. They didn't need air conditioning. They were really, really great in that sense. And the new buildings were made of concrete and they were hot. It was really uncomfortable. They need a lot of air conditioning. And so really looking for example at uh, like how do you build at scale in that traditional way? How do you build a whole hospital or whole school or you know, um, in that way. So those are some of the things that she's doing. It's totally solar powered. It's, it's very, very cool. And this woman is a day to day a New York City lawyer. Like she, she does so many things and I'm just like, you are the coolest person I've ever met. I, I just want to be like you. I want to be a friend. It was super, super cool. So it was, that was my one cool thing was a person.

Speaker A: And it's, it's. That's meeting in person. That's like being somewhere not online. That's

Speaker C: great. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker A: What you got Michael?

Speaker B: Uh, well, um, before I got into post or when I was still in college learning post, uh, one of my first tech jobs was automation. Um, you may remember a company called Amex and they had something called Panja which they rebranded and things like Crestron and then Q Sys and it's ways of using technology to automate repetitive tasks. And normally uh, it's used in enterprise and things like that. But what we've seen have been the explosion of low cost hardware devices. I know Scott, you've used Loupedeck for years and Stream Deck, right? And we've used them for macros, insider NLEs and also streamers use them quite a bit. But what we're seeing is if you can power that low cost hardware device with automation software, you can now automate a lot of things. And now that we have MCPs with AI and whatnot, you can then tie all that together. So the company I've been working with quite a bit is a company called Bitfocus Bitfocus IO and they have a free application called Companion. And a lot of technical folks use this uh, instead of having macros and multi keys and multiple windows on their GUI for whatever software they're using, everything can be channeled to one button. So when they hit the button It'll communicate with 20 different devices and do it in stages and pass along variables. And it's not automating yourself out of a job, it's just saying I can now make sure I do this right every time by hitting this one button. They now have a paid version called BitFocus Buttons which allows you to use even more control surfaces and can interface with things like 2110 if you're doing video over IP, uh, things like Nmos, um, things like routing on the fly if you're using routers and such. So not only are these tools for post and working with your nle, but also in the broader aspect of how can I automate things better? And I'll give you a great example. I talked about this last month utilizing um, DaVinci, uh, Resolve and their collage feature with their IntelliScript and looping all of those into button presses. I can now quasi automate a multicam edit with the multibox and all that's done via hitting keys on the Stream deck as it's playing in real time. So uh, we are no longer in this phase where we need proprietary, difficult to use software to do automation. You can use things like BitFocus, Companion and Buttons and then MCPS to actually uh, configure and Deploy this with not a lot of hassle.

Speaker C: That's so cool. I love Stream deck. I love it. I have one in front of me right now. It's so cool. And so yeah to kind of supercharge it like that. That's epic.

Speaker A: That's awesome.

Speaker B: So Scott, what you got?

Speaker A: So mine is a relatively simple thing. We all spend too much time on social media. Not we all. Some people don't, most people do. I do. So I have um, and I subscribe to it. I was trying to find, I was almost about to buy one of those hard. I think brick is the thing like the little hardware.

Speaker C: Oh yeah,

Speaker A: the brick

Speaker C: phone. Yeah.

Speaker A: It works with like NFC where you like tap your phone to it and it locks you out of all this cr, all your crap, all your social medias for a designated amount of time or even your whole phone. But um, I have settled on uh, uh, an app on my iPhone called Freedom. Freedom to is the website which I'm not sure where to comes from but it's simple is it has pre built categories or you can build your own where you can say hey give me a period of time where I am locked out of these apps. So I will start Freedom hit start a hour long session and I can't get into any of the social media apps and you might say well Scott, why not just use Focus on your iPhone or why not just have some self control and just don't do it.

Speaker C: And

Speaker A: my answer to that is well I can't make Focus work as well as I want it to work because I wanted to like don't alert me on my phone but still like let me get something on my Mac and I just haven't tried to figure it out and I have no self control so that's why I subscribe to Freedom. Um, I did the seven day free trial and I said I don't know if I want to spend 36 bucks or whatever a year which is really cheap. So I went to cancel it. It offered me ah like a cheaper subscription of 20 something. So I hit yes and I've really actually really been, been enjoying it. I think it is worth 36 bucks or whatever I've not got into yet. I'm using some of the defaults where it's like lock out all the social media apps and just um, that in of itself for the last um week and a couple weeks I've been using it. I really really like it and I would recommend this for anybody. We sit at a computer, we render, it's easy to you know, just, let me just check Twitter, let me just look through Instagram really or Reddit really quick and you know what a time suck that becomes. So yeah, freedom to, or search on your, on your app store and um, yeah, perhaps that's

Speaker C: really

Speaker A: cool.

Speaker C: Well look, I'm really excited for the interview we have coming up.

Speaker A: This is good. So this is Patrick and Hoffer Mixing Light and we're going to toss to that and when that's over, this episode is over. Thanks again to Film, uh, Tools for bringing this to us. And Katie, Michael, good chatting with you. And um, yeah, let's see what Patrick has to say. All right, so we have a wonderful interview set up today and we are talking to Mr. Patrick Inhofer. Patrick, as you may know the name off the Internet, if you don't know him by name, you probably have heard of Mixing Light which has been one of the premier color grading color, uh, centric color focused training organizations for years out there online. I met Patrick many years ago because Patrick and I, I don't want to like toot our horns or anything, we are old. But uh, we had a couple of the original post production blogs out there on the Internet when blogs were new and cool and a thing. And I followed Patrick's blog for I don't know, maybe a year or two before we probably met at nab and it was one of those like, oh my gosh, you're Patrick Inhofer. I love your,

Speaker C: I

Speaker A: love your blog. And uh, you know, so we kind of met and bonded that way. We've known each other for years. Um, you asked me several times to kind of come on with Mixing Light and do some insights and stuff and I was always like, yes, I want to, but let me get done with this or I procrastinated and um, did not join and I've watched lots of stuff on there. But I'm happy that we've known each other for um, so long. Katie knows Patrick well because Katie has done a lot of uh, work for Mixing Light and Insights. Yes,

Speaker C: I have

Speaker A: articles and blogs and stuff and um, Patrick, a little about yourself if someone doesn't know you.

Speaker D: Yeah, I am. Well, number one, thank you for inviting me on this. Uh, we didn't, you didn't mention that Mixing Light is actually, I announced two days ago from this recording that Mix and Light is suspending operations. Um, and uh, so there's that and we'll get to that.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker D: But if you don't know me, uh, I'm a, I started out as an editor In I was, my first edit experience was on an RM440 in 1986,

Speaker A: oh,

Speaker D: at Hofstra University, my alma mater, you know, 3/4 inch to 3/4 inch deck. I ended up working in New York City, uh, at major post houses, HBO Studios and their in house studio doing promos for two or three years where I learned how to cut to music and uh, at big post houses, Betelgeuse Productions. For those of you who might remember, Betelgeuse back in the day. Eventually I went freelance in 2001 when I realized that I, and I was a finisher. I always delivered to broadcast. Everything always went to broadcast, right? So that meant that when I was done, it had to be right. In other words, I was what we now call a finisher, but I was also an editor. And then depending on the circumstance, I would have either had an audio guy next to me doing live mixing as we're going down to tape, or I would be doing the mixing, right. So I always had this career, this side of me that I didn't think of it at the time as a finisher. And then when I went freelance as an editor in 2001, I realized that I had this skill set and I was being hired to work in these nonlinear shops. So I was on Avid, Avid Symphony. And then freelance, uh, Final Cut started popping up all over the place. I learned Final Cut, right?

Speaker A: Disruptor.

Speaker D: Yeah, Final Cut three was it. And for me, the great Disruptor was the original, um, Decklink card.

Speaker C: Oh yeah,

Speaker D: that Decklink card where I could get 10 bit out of an SDI card in a desktop computer. I could buy myself. I didn't have to go to Silicon Graphics or any of those other big iron shops. I could just buy an Apple computer, plug this PCI card in there and now I could feed out to a digibeta at 10 bit. I could record off a digibeta at 10 bit. I'm like, hold on, wait a second. I can, I can do this in my own shop. And by the way, as a freelancer, I'm thinking, you know, in 15, 20 years, like I'll be able to do this on my laptop, right? I mean, you could just see it. You could just see that trend. And so that's when I just, I opened my own shop at that point, um, even before that, what I started doing with my clients when I was freelancing was I was like, all right, I'll edit for you, but then you're going to hire me for two days to do the color grade. And they're like, why would I do that? Well, because, number one, I won't edit for you if you don't let me do that. Because it's my name going out on this program, so my credit has meaning. And so I want my stuff to look as good as it possibly can. Which, by the way, you should want that too. And so that's what I started doing. I started requiring that I be able to grade, um, color correct. We didn't call it grading at the time, color correcting, uh, and as well as edit. And then eventually I was able to do that. And then eventually I was like, you know what? I just love color correcting and color grading, and that's what I'm gonna do. And so that's what I've been for the past 20 plus years. And so, you know, about 15 years as an editor, 10 years as an editor, five years as both, and then another, you know, 20 years, um, as a colorist. That's about my career.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker D: And in the meantime, I started teaching people because I met this dude, which you may or may not remember, Michael Vitti. Uh, he ran the New York City Final Cut Pro users group, and he found out I was color grading stuff for network delivery using Final Cut's three way color corrector. He's like, how are you doing that? I'm like, well, I mean,

Speaker A: which was so cool when they introduced that, because that's the first time many of us had seen color wheels like that ever in a piece of software. Even like some of the online suites we didn't see those things in. It was like, oh, um, my gosh.

Speaker C: Yeah, you couldn't do it. The mouse or the pen. You had to use the poggles and whatever. Yeah,

Speaker A: yeah.

Speaker D: And in Symphony, you had curves. And so I was well, uh, acquainted with curves. But, you know, I quickly learned to master the three way color wheels. That's Final Cut 3 is where I jumped on with that release that allow me to do the finishing work I wanted to do. And, uh, so he invited me to teach a couple sessions at, um, the Apple store in Manhattan. And, you know, the rest is history, man. I mean, from there I started blogging about it. I mean, there was a huge insatiable appetite for it. People didn't understand it. They didn't understand the workflow, they didn't understand how to use scopes. They didn't understand their images. They didn't understand how to deliver. And it's like, it just, you know, you just kept sharing and sharing and sharing and sharing. And then eventually I ran a website called Tao of Color, which came out of a. I started going around doing presentations to user groups and my presentation was called the Tao of Color. The Dao of Color. Right,

Speaker C: right. M.

Speaker D: How do you do this thing? That became the website that became a whole bunch of training classes. I did that. I still like when I. On Facebook the past couple days, people have been reminiscing and emails that come in, people reminisce, they took those courses where I went shot by shot by shot.

Speaker C: Tower of Color is what made me like one of your fans.

Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. Tao of Color, I've been huge, huge, um, fondness for that. And that led to my relationship with, uh, Robbie, Carmen and Dan Moran, where we decided to start mixing light. And, um, Mixing light was a bit of a different beast. Uh, it is what YouTube wasn't at the time, which was you never knew what you were going to get week to week. It was three of us coming together and just sharing what was on our mind and what we wanted do to talk about. And uh, so there wasn't structured courses, although we ended up offering those. We eventually created those and offered those. Uh, but it started out as kind of a random video blog and then we got into podcasts and then, uh, you know, Robbie loved writing articles. He'd write these long, in depth, you know, technical articles. And that's what mixing Lightspin, that launched in 2013 and uh, it ended on Monday and. Or, uh, suspended on Monday is the language I'm using because it will live on. We could talk about that. Um, but, uh, in terms of continuing to produce content, hiring contributors, um, and being able to sign up for access to it, that's done. That's all gone. So, um, yeah, and that's kind of gets you up to speed. That's kind of my career and you know, 10 minutes.

Speaker C: That's a pretty impressive

Speaker A: question where in there? Because I think both Robbie and Dan stepped back because of what, you know, their own careers changing, lives changing. But you kept it going and you brought in a lot of other contributors. I think over a number of years, which I thought was cool, because there's a lot of different perspectives that came in there. When did that change a dynamic for you with the business side of things? Or were you like, hey, this is a chance to pivot. I can keep going on my own. Because that's, you know, two thirds of the founders stepping away for any business sometimes is. Can. Can be tough.

Speaker D: Yeah. We've been together nine years before we did the handoff to me right and before I bought them out. And during that time, you know, when we started this thing, I was like, they want. They were thinking about starting a subscription business. I said, you want to start a subscription business? A membership subscription business. I can help you do that. But it's going to take three of us. We have to publish. You're making a promise of continual content production, and that's a really hard thing to do. I said, it's going to require at least three of us, and at some point we're going to have to get other voices in here. And that very beginning, I mean, I had the same. The homepage for Mixing Light was the same for almost 13 years. Wow. I meant 14 years. Like, I didn't change it, right. Partly because I didn't know what else to say. And partly one of the things I loved about it, one of the things was there, um, one website, multiple voices, right? And that was always important to me when I helped co found Mix and Light, was that we have multiple voices. Because one of the things that all of us in this call right now know is that for every one thing you want to accomplish, there are at least four ways of getting there. And everyone has their preferred reasoning for why. And it's based on your personal style, how you think, what you want to do, where you're starting from, what your final delivery is. So all of these can change your approach. And I always thought there was just tremendous value in having multiple people. I have contributors say to me, but, Patrick, you guys already talked about this thing that I want to talk about. Why would I talk about it? Because I want to hear how you do it. I want to hear your way of doing it. Because you may inform, even though I have my way, I might get something from you. That one little tweak and now you've opened up whole new ideas for me. Right? And you know, for me, the value in Mixing Light over the years was even if you're a working professional, it would only take two ideas a year and you've just paid for your annual membership, right? That's it. Two ideas a year. That's all we had to deliver to you, to a working professional. And, um, that was always one of my goals that I strive to achieve with Mixing Light. So by the time the changeover happened, after nine years, we had already established having multiple contributors besides the founders. And really, after about four years, I think we were really burned out. I mean, for four years straight, Robbie, Dan and I were publishing each of us an insight, a blog post, a video tutorial an article every week for like three years. Yeah,

Speaker A: that's a lot.

Speaker D: Three of us. Yeah. And so we had to get other people. And so by the time I took it over, I already had this foundation. Like, one of the reasons I took it over is like, oh, I've got the foundation, I have a community. And now my job is less to be a creator and more to be a publisher. Right. To be, you know, an editorial manager and manage production pipelines. And that's what I ended up becoming.

Speaker C: So, obviously the news dropped, um, that you're suspending operations this week. And, um, it came as a shock to a lot of people, um, and there's been so many people reaching out, um, obviously to you, to a lot of us, including to me, because I've been a contributor over the years. And so although obviously you've talked a lot and in depth about kind of what that means for folks who are members m. And contributors, I think people are really wanting to understand what led up to. I know we kind of know a lot of the time things are changing and et cetera, et cetera. It's a lot for one person, et cetera, et cetera. But I'd love. We'd love to hear from you. Like what. Tell me about the last few years and kind of what led up to your decision to suspend operations for Mixing Light.

Speaker D: Yeah, it is both sudden and gradual. It's like not quite like a bankruptcy. Like, what do they say about bankruptcy? What's the famous line? It's like, it happens very, very slowly and then very suddenly. Right. And, um, so it's not like Mixing Light went bankrupt, but honestly, if. If I'd give. Given another six months, it would have. Right. It would have gotten to the point where I'd seen the trend start two years ago. Two years ago I. I was like, the business is trending down. I'm having trouble retaining members and I'm not quite sure why. And I'd made some business decisions on. And I don't. We don't need to go into those details, but I'd made some business decisions that, that I look back now and I'm like, probably not a really good choice. Um, certainly didn't help with the subscribers and retaining subscribers, but I started thinking about what was going on here and I started looking more outside because I've always worked with blinders. I'm like, I don't care what these other training companies are doing. Like, I'm going to focus on what I'm doing. I want to focus on my promise to my members and then I'm delivering on that promise. And if I do that, I don't have to worry about what anyone else is doing doing, including YouTube. Right. And so as the, as the membership, the retention slowly starts dropping and we're still pulling in new members, but it's harder to keep them. Right. And I'm thinking two years ago I started thinking, all right, what do I need to do? And it took me six months to come up with a plan. And it was basically community, right? It's like it needs stronger community. There needs to be a reason beyond just videos and the types of videos we were doing, which are kind of randomized because you're getting that on YouTube now. Right. And so we're filling a space that when we started was so hard to do. You have no idea how hard it was to deliver a 15 minute video back in 2010 and 2013. It was a really difficult thing to do. And then downloadable assets and then, you know, all of that stuff. Right? That stuff was really hard to do. Now, I mean, you know, I mean, I could get that set up in Claude in 10 minutes. Right now. I could replicate Mixing Light like that right now. Yeah. So about 18 months ago I actually started working on this, um, to tell you, I actually, I hit a crisis moment and I was like, I don't know where this business is going, I don't know how to solve it. Like, I have some ideas, I don't know what to do. Um, I went into depression and then that's when I had my literally a coming to Jesus moment. Found Jesus, found God. And then God has been walking with me side by side, step by step the entire way. I, um, just have to give my testimony there because he's been an instrumental part of me executing what I've executed over the last 18 months to do it in a joyful spirit and to get to this point when it was finally time to make the decision, make the decision with no recrimination, without any fear, with doing it all in peace and knowing I had done everything I could do, do, right? And what I did is I reimagined Mixing Light where we were going to have. We're going to integrate Discord into the membership. Not an easy thing to do. It's API is really limited. I was going to integrate, um, GitHub. I'd start integrating GitHub because I have this idea for a shared GitHub repository in an age of agent decoding. Right. I think it's a great idea. There's some like legal weirdies about it, like, is it open source or not? And I'm like, well, you could kind of open source it, but still keep it closed to the community. But anybody within the community can build upon it, can fork it, can use it, right? And I think there's a tremendous opportunity still for that, um, type of shared community resource with these new tools that we have. I think in post production especially, these agentic coding tools are tremendously powerful. And if you're not using them, you need to be using them because they take the drudgery out of your life. It's not about turning transcripts into timelines, because I've been editing. I started editing from transcripts in 1991 when my first producer walked in with a binder this thick of printed out transcripts and giving me time code numbers. And I'm just doing it by hand, right? We've been editing from transcripts since forever. And the thing is, is when you got into trouble, you had to throw the transcript away and you had to know how to hunt the footage, right? You couldn't find the right transition moment. You couldn't find the right cutaway, the right reaction. No one logged that, right? So you had to go hunt for it. You had to go find it. You had to recognize you had a transition problem. You had to recognize that something was missing from the story and there was something missing that the transcript wasn't capturing, right? So you can't fully give it over to AI. You can't fully. You can't just do that. And I see people on YouTube now claiming you can. It's like, no, you can get a good rough cut out of it, right? What you're talking about is a rough cut, right?

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker D: Radio edit.

Speaker C: Yeah,

Speaker D: that's it exactly right. And so you've got a good starting point, and there's nothing wrong with that. But don't finish there. If you're finishing there, you're leaving every. All the humanity out of it. And, um, so that's kind of my little take on that. So I'm building Mixing Light. I'm building version three. I'm, um, redesigning the website, and I'm doing things now that I could never do. It would have cost me $60,000 to redesign the website the way I did over the past eight months. Would have cost me $60,000 if I farmed it out and I didn't have those resources. Instead, I was able to do it. I mean, I was working 40, 50, 60 hours a week with Claude maxing out my, you know, $200 Claude plan every week doing things I had m. I had never imagined. I mean, there were times when I was literally, like, crying at the keyboard. I can't believe I'm actually doing this. Like, I'm making this work. I have this vision. It's happening. It's beautiful. But I didn't know. I didn't know how to be received. Right. That's the one thing I didn't know. And I. I probably could have done some surveys, things like that. You don't really know, right? I mean, surveys tell you people's preferences, but if they don't understand what you're trying to go for, they don't get the gestalt of it. They'll lead you down the wrong road. So I got to deliver this thing. I'm delivering radio edits.

Speaker B: You can get

Speaker D: my deadline. October 1st. I deliver mixing, like, version three, complete redesign. Brand is that

Speaker A: 20, 26? Like, October

Speaker D: 1st? That was last year. Yeah, like 28 days ago. Okay. Okay. Yeah. And, uh, so I deliver that. And for those of us, Scott, you especially, um, who sell stuff online, who have launched, you know, campaigns to sell things where you've got a launch date and then you have an end date. And after this end date, the price goes up or the thing goes away. Right? Typical Internet campaigns. You know that the first 48 to 72 hours will tell you how the rest of the campaign is going to go, Right? You'll get, historically, over 20 years of selling stuff online. I could predict how much money I was going to make at the end of the thing by how much money I made at the beginning of the thing. Right. You could just pretty much do the math,

Speaker C: right? Long tail. Yeah.

Speaker D: Right. So I launched this thing October 1st. Send all the emails out, do all the things, and it was crickets, right? The response. Some people took up the offer, some people took up the upgrade. Some people. I had, you know, a handful of people buy. And I'm like, I've been doing this a long time. I have experience in this, and there's nothing telling me in this night. Um, now I'm 20 days in, so it's October 20th. Ish. Like, I don't. I don't think this has not connected. This has not landed. Right? And I prayed and I. I prayed hard several days about it. And, you know, the only. The only impulse I got back out of that was finish well. Right? Just finish well. And I'm like, all right, you wanted me to finish version three, now you want me to finish well. And I'M like, all right, that's what I'm going to do. And then, so when the decision finally came and there were a lot of confirming things like the production pipeline. So we use, um, we use Monday.com for our production board. And so I've got Kanbans and I've got a production calendar. And like, when it goes from Katie submits an article and then we change its position in the Kanban, and it emails everyone in the team who has to do stuff, right? And then you track the whole thing. And then I've got delivery dates set. And so, you know, at any given time, I could look two or three months out and see our production and our production calendar. And on that date, when it was about October 20th, um, I opened up the production calendar and you know, like three weeks earlier, it was full, but nothing had come in. And then my awesome executive assistant, Chelsea, she emails a bunch of people like, hey, what's the status? And everyone was busy. I don't think I get to it till November to December or January, and literally the entire calendar went empty.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker D: I'm like, I have nothing for November, nothing for December. I have one insight left. That's you, Katie, that you did with Jason. That'll be releasing either later today or tomorrow.

Speaker C: That was a good one.

Speaker D: It's a great one. I've been editing it and I'm like, uh, I'm like, all right, I've made this decision. I've looked at the calendar. The calendar is telling me, like, I just, I had all of these small confirming moments where I looked at it and said, it's run its course, right? It's done its thing. And so one of the things I want people to take away from this, as we have this discussion about online training in general, as we move beyond Mixing Light in this discussion is, you know, don't read too much into what's happened with Mixing Light into what's happening with the industry, right? Like, Mixing Light is one business led by a dude co founded with three other guys and had a team of like 25 or 30 people over its course of its life that did its thing and it served its purpose. And times of times are changing. And I think if you can take anything with away from it is, is just that, that that times are changing. And one of the thing, I was listening to a podcast this morning and they're talking about the seven habits of a highly effective. Uh, it's a

Speaker B: bible to some people. It really is.

Speaker D: Now tell me if this is true, Michael. I think step One is start with the end in mind.

Speaker B: Begin with the end in mind. Yes,

Speaker D: begin with the end in mind. So just to close out, kind of. And I'll take more questions on Mixing Light if you want to, but just close out my thoughts on Mixing Light as we've come to the suspension of operations. Um, and I should mention mixing. None of the content will live on. It's behind a paywall until the last subscription expires. I'm honoring that commitment, and there's some details around that that I've emailed members about. But that means until this time next year, it stays behind a paywall. After that, it will continue to exist. No contributor contribution is going to disappear into the ether. You will not have to go to the Wayback Machine to find it. I have ideas on how to do that, but I'm just kind of. I'm putting it all on the back burner. Like, I just got to finish this thing. Well, and then come next summer, I'll decide specifically what it looks like when Mixing Light is no longer behind a paywall and how I can affordably do that. Right. But nothing's going to disappear. And so I just want to assure everyone that. But, um, just to wrap up my thoughts on this, I heard on the podcast talking about, you know, begin with the end in mind, and how I began all of this from the very first time, like that first Final Cut Pro user group presentation to today and everything. All of these businesses that I've run and all of these training courses I've run. You can still find my stuff up on Lynda.com, all of this has been to help people accelerate their careers, to help them move their careers forward, to help them put food on the table, to help them not make the mistakes that I made. I had a, uh, painful learning experience, learning how to color grade. It was hard, and I made mistakes. And some of them live on in some of this content from, you know, those years. And I look back on it and I try not, you know, if it's popped up on television, I don't watch it because I'm like, I don't want to see what I did then. Like, it's going to be horrible.

Speaker C: Me, too.

Speaker D: Yeah, exactly. Well, if you're not. If you don't feel that way, Katie, I think you'd probably say I'm not growing. Right.

Speaker B: For sure.

Speaker D: So that's how I started. All of this is literally, is how I always thought of it when I. Whenever I was going to do a presentation. This is what I want to help these people do. And so now as I look at the end, I'm like, yeah, that's how I ended it.

Speaker B: So there's usually not one smoking gun. And obviously in your reflection, um, you've probably identified several different areas that, well, maybe I could have done this better or, um, maybe out of touch. Uh, and that's probably just more my issue. But what are some of the core things? Was it because the way Mixing Light is presenting information that maybe that didn't resonate with folks, how folks want to learn today? Was it because there was too much competition out there? Uh, was it that it's just a great contraction of subscriptions and, you know, trying to. Trying to save a few dollars? Uh, or. I'd imagine it's a mixture of all three. But, I mean, am I. Were we kind of hitting the nail on the head there?

Speaker D: Subscription fatigue is absolutely a part of it. Like, everything has gone to subscriptions. Everyone loves subscriptions. I mean, I know I ran a subscription business for 14 years. I know the wonders and glory of running, you know, having recurring subscriptions. Right. Um, but it, you know, now everything has gone that way. And so now you get that fatigue of always constantly paying out, you know, month by month, and. And

Speaker C: people don't have a lot of extra money for some of the luxuries. Right. Isn't that a big part of it? I mean, we've got a contraction in the industry. A lot of the core folks in the Mixing Light community aren't working right now.

Speaker D: It's 100%. I mean, I target. I've always targeted. The way I've always thought of it is Mixing Light targets working professionals. But in the process, we pull in the orbit of those working professionals, people who want to be them, people who want the skills that those working professionals have. So if I serve working professionals, I can also serve that orbit of people. So, uh, you know, we have on the website onboarding trainings into DaVinci Resolve, things like that. But, yeah, I think so. You've got subscription fatigue. You've got contraction not only in the economy, sort of contraction in the economy, but also in our industry. There was an article I saw this past weekend that may or may not make it into my newsletter, which is going to run for another three months or so. And it was about YouTube, just regular YouTube, not YouTube TV, just regular YouTube viewership. And if you measure YouTube viewership on a Nielsen scale, in other words, how much of your eyeball time spent looking at YouTube versus all of cable television.

Speaker A: Oh, I Don't want to

Speaker D: hear

Speaker A: this number.

Speaker D: All of cable television combined. YouTube beats all of it combined.

Speaker A: Not shocking.

Speaker D: Yeah. And you do the same thing with all the broadcasters. You combine all the viewership of all the broadcasters and their streaming platforms to YouTube. YouTube wins.

Speaker A: So I think that's one thing worth pointing out here and just, and just like putting a um, punctuation mark on is just YouTube in general because in our, whenever you're going through social media because that's how we communicate with uh, you know back in the day we had post chat on Twitter which was wonderful. Thousands of us that regularly talked about posts. Now it's spread out amongst a lot of different platforms but, but still when a question is asked and I think about Reddit a lot because there's some good discussion on Reddit about post. You know so much about YouTube. This here's a link to YouTube. It's always, always, always about to YouTube. Um, as one who has written over a thousand articles on pro video coalitions, I just checked talking about, you know, doing things for just trying to get knowledge out there. You know, we don't see printed articles, web is not print. But you know what I mean, text based articles shared around with near the frequency we used to back in the day because it's all anybody wants to do is share uh, a YouTube link and you go to like a TikTok or an Instagram where you have a lot of video based stuff including some longer video stuff now on like Instagram you can't share that link like you can a YouTube link. So it's just constantly funneling everybody back to YouTube, you know, for better or worse that we talked about, you know, whether the quality is there or not. And I don't, I just feel like that is the elephant that has kicked broadcast tv. It's kicked online trainings, you know, it's kicked, you know, entertainment for teenagers now because it's all they do is just scroll, scroll, scroll. It's just um,

Speaker C: well

Speaker A: it's the thing.

Speaker C: But you said blaming YouTube. I think it's

Speaker A: blame. I don't think blame is the word.

Speaker C: Well, attributing it to YouTube, I think that it's more a case of people are tolerating the free thing because they can't afford the premium thing right now. I mean look, I was in New Zealand recently.

Speaker A: There are Those that afford YouTube Premium, they've got

Speaker C: YouTube

Speaker A: Premium subscriptions.

Speaker C: But again that's a luxury that fewer people are affording. Right. I think a great analogy. I was in New Zealand recently um, and one of the things I always bring back from New Zealand is Tim Tams. Everyone loves Tim Tams and the Tim Tams that you can't get here. I

Speaker A: don't know what Tim Tams

Speaker D: are.

Speaker C: You need to look that up. Um, and the thing that. And the thing that you can't buy here in the States is the, uh, Tim Tam deluxe, right? You can get regular Tim Tams, maybe like one or two flavors, but there are dozens of flavors, and there are deluxe Tim Tams. They're like dark chocolate and salted caramel Tim Tams as opposed to just plain ones.

Speaker A: They look good,

Speaker C: right? And I noticed this time that in the supermarkets, a lot of the products, particularly the luxury products, had fewer varieties and very little of the deluxe varieties of things. So if you've got peanut butter, you got plain, but you don't have plain peanut butter and chocolate. You know, if you've got Tim Tams, you've got Tim Tams plain, and maybe Tim Tams. One other thing, but you don't have the deluxe Tim Tams anymore. And it's the same kind of idea. Like, I think that there's this overall in society right now that people, because of the general. The cost of living, lower employment in our industry right now, people are taking. They're just not spending the extra 50 cents for the deluxe Tim Tams, right? And they're tolerating the. Right. And they're sort of taking the plain. It's not shrinkflation. It's that if I'm going to buy Tim Tams, I'm not going to buy the deluxe Tim Tams today. I'm just going to buy the regular ones. And I think that that's a lot of what we're seeing everywhere in many different ways and expressions of that idea that maybe we're not getting the added thing on top this time, we're just getting in. So I think in a lot of cases, Mixing light's a premium product. It really is. You pay good money for it, and it's a premium thing. It's amazingly worth it and incredible. But it is a premium product. And I think potentially in this environment where a lot of folks aren't working, a lot of folks are cutting back on their premium things. People are tolerating ads in their streaming now. People are just cutting back on that premium level of subscription to things. And so in the learning side of things, they know with YouTube, they're not going to get the community. They don't necessarily know whether the quality is truly there. But they're sort of having to tolerate the lower end product because it's free, because they're just cutting back on some of the premium things, the deluxe symptoms of the world. Uh, it sort of would be my thought on the matter.

Speaker B: I would almost argue that it's the, you don't know what you don't know. And uh, for years, uh, leading up to the, the big VOD explosion, I, I think folks who were enrolling in film, uh, to learn film, to go in color, to learn sound, you kind of had to know what the other departments were doing to some extent. So you would get the goes ins, goes outs for every division and you kind of understood the uh, industry more of a holistic point of view. And from all the educators I've spoken to over the past several decades, I've made it a very conscious effort to ask where are your students going to learn something new? Where are they going to go beyond what they're learning in the classroom? And what I've heard time and time again is there isn't. A lot of students are saying, well I'm hitting a technical hurdle, whether it's a camera setting, whether it's a setting in Resolve. And they're searching for that fix. And so when they get a YouTube video that describes that one fix, that's the way I should be going. Because this is answering the thing that I think I need to see. But because there isn't, and I hate to say this because there isn't any quality control is that you can have these videos that purport to answer this one question, but they may not do it in the way that helps that user down the road. Right. And as we pointed out, there's ah, at the beginning, there's a dozen different ways to accomplish the same thing, but whether it helps you downwind. So I'd almost be more uh, concerned that this is more a, and I hate to say generational thing, but this almost seems like a, the way folks want to consume is solve this one task as opposed to let me understand everything and then decide what the next task is.

Speaker A: Well, I think that's actually an interesting point when we talk about the days of reading an article with photographs and captions and whatnot versus watching a video. Because I will go to my grave believing that if you say, hey, how do I do this in Premiere? Or what's this one little thing in Resolve I can't figure out. You can go to an article, skim it and get that answer in a fraction of the time it takes to watch. So 6 minute, 12 minute, 14 minute video on YouTube. But yet the, the, the world we live in now, the, the way people are consuming is the idea that video is the only way to learn something. Yeah, so much better for learning things, but

Speaker C: for something that they need. They're visual learners. A lot of us are visual learners. Well, you

Speaker A: can, you can learn visually with a picture and a caption like, what is your time worth to you? Is it worth, you know, finding the answer quickly and getting to what you need or is it worth having to dig through, scroll around and, you know, potentially find the answer? We

Speaker C: don't have the luxury of time anymore, Scott. I mean,

Speaker A: that's my point. That's. You could go to a printed, you can go to an article that you can get the answer much faster than going, but

Speaker C: you have to interpret it. And I think that's really key to all, for a lot of people is that with something written, you have to then interpret it. You're not physically seeing somebody click that, do that, move that, and there's nuances to that. When we are visual,

Speaker A: I totally understand that. But that goes back to like, you know, reading comprehension, which I think we are in a, in a world now where, you know, especially young people, it's one with, with teenagers in school now, they don't, you know, I, I can't give you an article to support this theory, but like they, people don't read with near the frequency they, they used to. And how do you best comprehend, you know, something you're trying to learn? You know, reading. I would say just watching a video, perhaps watching a video with a transcript going word for word, you know, it's probably the best way to learn. But you know, are people learning like they used to now that they no longer read? And I don't,

Speaker D: you know, one of the things as I was going through this process and figuring out how Mixing Light fits into all of this and you know, one of the things I built into the website in version three, I built our own custom video player. I did transcriptions on every single video on the website. I built an entire engine to make it industry so all industry acronyms and terms would be consistently and reliably printed out in the transcript, uh, so that you could turn, you could type into the search engine of Mixing Light. And now I can bring you to the moment in the video where you can click on um, that moment where this thing is being talked about and take you there. And I have that built out. It's running on the website right now. But Then I did a test and I went into. I opened up a new tab in my browser, I typed in the same question, and I got a pretty good answer.

Speaker C: That's cool,

Speaker D: right? And so when I was that, like, from. From, um,

Speaker A: like Google's AI overview, you're talking.

Speaker D: Uh, yeah. So then I asked the same question in the search bar, and I get an answer that's pretty good. And as I saw the Trend back in 2001 with the Decklink SDI card, and then I do this search engine test and compare it to my website, I'm like, this is only gonna. They're only gonna get closer and closer and closer to the right answer. Yeah, right. And it's only a matter of time before not only we're having this discussion about written versus visual learner, how long before an engine out there will be able to take a screenshot of the interface and now automagically work you through the steps. Right,

Speaker C: right.

Speaker A: Yeah. Well, that

Speaker D: goes back to

Speaker A: that question of, you know, that AI overview you got in Google, where did it get its answer from? Well, they got it from Patrick's article, they got it from Scott's. You know, like, we're still funneling our knowledge that we've put on out into the world, into this thing that makes people not search out the original source. And this is like a discussion for the ages is right now with, with. With AI and AI overview and things like that. And, you know, if everybody stops creating that training content and, you know, probably not in our lifetime, but, you know, you might be right. You make it to the point where the, where the bots are literally opening up resolve and doing a thing and capturing that and giving it to, you know, the person that queried the question. And.

Speaker C: But one of the things that. And I know we're sort of coming to time would be respectful of that, but one of the things that I think we're not talking about here is training is one thing, but what's really disappearing is community. And I think, you know, we need community more than ever. Over the years, it's been a big part of my journey has been observing that, uh, community disappearing from when I started, you know, like I say, when I started and when most of us started our careers, you worked at a facility or a company until you were good enough to go freelance. That's what Patrick did. Right. And now you start out freelance until you're good enough to get picked up by a facility. And what we miss, uh, starting our, uh, careers as freelancers is a lot of Things. And a lot of that comes down to the things we learned just by being around other people. And that's really what people are missing. It's not how to click that button and operate that piece of equipment. Most people coming into the industry already know that they've done it since they were kids, right? Video editing is video editing. But I think really there's so much else. And, uh, the other thing is, I think a lot of us have said this before. We went into film school wanting to solve one problem or do one thing. However we trained and became part of this, started our careers. We said, I want to be a X. And we were looking to solve one problem at a time and all of that sort of thing because we didn't know the other problems existed. We weren't around those things and we weren't around those people that were doing those other things, those other jobs and solving those other problems. Problems and looking the next step. The person who handed me the deliverable was in a room near me and the person I was handing to was in another room near me. And so a lot of those things that we know, that we know, the knowledge we have came from the fact that we had the privilege of starting our careers that way and doing. And now it's inverted. And so community is more important than ever. And people are really, um, you know, people are really acknowledging that and seeking it out, um, in different ways. And we've also had this fraction, this, you know, we had this heyday. We talked about it before, how a lot of us met. You know, there was this heyday of social media where we built community. And that is now fractured as well because social media has become a bit of a cesspool. Um, and it's, you know, it's not that nice, fun place to build communities anymore. So I think, you know, one of the things that will be really missed from Mixing Light is the community. I think it was a place for people to be around, around other finishing artists, colorists and professionals at every level. You know, that younger emerging artists could be in the same community as established, really established professionals. And that gave us what is missing. A lot of people talk to me about what they miss the most is the lunch table. And the lunch table at the Post House is a really precious and beautiful thing. And I think we're really, we are missing that. I think we do need community more than ever. And I honestly, I do hope that when you do kind of come out of your taking a moment to enjoy life for a change, Patrick, um, that you do think about that, because I think you build a beautiful community. You've always been part of our communities, um, the very various iterations of those online and offline communities. And I think that's really something that is of great value to folks, um, and won't change because learning and training will change as we talk about various ways that we learn, always change. But community is something that we always need as humans.

Speaker A: Yeah. One less online community is one less community. Which is, which is, which is not. Not good for. Not good for anybody. Patrick, thanks so much for joining us. Um, we appreciate your, your candor and your, you know, just your openness and your frank discussion about, um, about. About Mixing Light. So for folks that are, where will they follow you for what's. What's next? Or just to connect and, you know,

Speaker D: I guess you could keep an eye on Mixing Light. I have a nominal presence on X. I think you search my name, you might find. I don't even know what my handle is there. Um, yeah, social media. I follow it. I can't, I can't. It just doesn't work for me anymore. So, yeah, follow me on Mixing Light. If I, I'm sure if something new comes out, you know, you know, I can reach out to all of you.

Speaker C: Patrick, you're never going away. You've been, you've been, you've been a. You've been a pillar of this community for so long. Um, you know, I really. You very much deserve to take some time, um, to take some time out of the spotlight, to take some time to recharge, to.

Speaker A: Not in front of a computer

Speaker C: screen. Yeah. And to find who you are outside of Mixing Light, I think that's, um, going to be immensely valuable. I can't wait to see what you do next.

Speaker D: Thank you very much. And just so you know, this is probably one of the last times I'll be in this setup with that logo M behind

Speaker C: me

Speaker D: in the stick. Right. This is like the last one. So thank, uh, you very much for the opportunity. I'm glad you gave me the opportunity to just kind of share all of this so I can now start pointing people to this. Um, and because it has come to as a shock for a lot of people. Yeah. And I understand because it's a shock for me and it's. Thanks for taking

Speaker A: the time. Uh, there will be a topic in the future and we'll call upon you, like, hey,

Speaker C: that's

Speaker A: right. Again, let's talk about this because there are

Speaker D: a couple things

Speaker A: that came up today, I think. Ooh, topic ideas.

Speaker C: So until

Speaker A: then, thank you, Patrick.

Speaker D: Absolutely. Thank you all. Thank you very much,

Speaker B: Patrick.