Just had to share this with the class

[georgia]

___Start of ad____

DCTV NEW EDITORS PROGRAM

If you've ever wanted to learn Video Editing, either as a hobby or as a career, then this is the program for you. In less than 6 months, you'll become a DCTV Certified Post-Production Professional!

Pick an Editing Track (either Final Cut Pro or AVID) and you'll be enrolled in a Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced Level Workshop. Add to your skills with YOUR CHOICE of 3 New Editors Elective Workshops.

Like the DCTV DocShop, this program is scheduled individually for you, and can be completed at your convenience (6-month maximum). Graduating students will receive certification as a "DCTV Certified Post-Production Professional" Becoming an Editor has never been easier!

BONUS: Also Included in this Package is FREE ACCESS to our HOW TO: Final Cut Pro Studio Seminar Workshop.

___AD ends___


So... drat.. I should have just signed up for this and now i wood b a post pro... !

And you wonder why i'm so depressed about all these post schools offering these types of "certificates" .....

cheers
geo

[philper]

Actually I don't wonder about this at all--it is depressing. Please tell me that DCTV doesn't stand for "Discovery Channel TV"....

Philip Perkins

___Start of ad____

DCTV NEW EDITORS PROGRAM

If you've ever wanted to learn Video Editing, either as a hobby or as a career, then this is the program for you. In less than 6 months, you'll become a DCTV Certified Post-Production Professional!

Pick an Editing Track (either Final Cut Pro or AVID) and you'll be enrolled in a Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced Level Workshop. Add to your skills with YOUR CHOICE of 3 New Editors Elective Workshops.

Like the DCTV DocShop, this program is scheduled individually for you, and can be completed at your convenience (6-month maximum). Graduating students will receive certification as a "DCTV Certified Post-Production Professional" Becoming an Editor has never been easier!

BONUS: Also Included in this Package is FREE ACCESS to our HOW TO: Final Cut Pro Studio Seminar Workshop.

___AD ends___


So... drat.. I should have just signed up for this and now i wood b a post pro... !

And you wonder why i'm so depressed about all these post schools offering these types of "certificates" .....

cheers
geo

[Richard Fairbanks]

DCTV=Downtown Community Television

I believe they are still non-profit and they have been around for a very long time (30+ years) providing access to equipment and training in television production, for the masses. MANY "local access" shows have been taped on their cameras and/or edited in one of their rooms for little or no cost. I have no affiation with them in any way but I think they have long provided a good service. Training is something they have always done, as far as I know, while at the same time they have made their equipment available for sign out. They, too, must be feeling the revenge of technology and want to more aggressively market their training service. Of course, a certificate bearing their name doesn't mean much in the real world.

They operate out of a great building, too, an old firehouse.

I am more bothered by the posters for Pro Tools training that are hanging in every other subway car. Where are all these newly trained experts going to work?

[MoreMeintheMonitors]

I think education of any kind is a good thing. Given how many bad editors there are out there, maybe some of them will take these classes and learn a few things.

Same goes for the Pro Tools guys - I know of a few bands that could use someone that had a modicum of PT know-how.

They probably won't be getting high paid jobs any time soon, but their education has to start somewhere...

[MoreMeintheMonitors]

Also - what you're reading there is the illustrious work of a marketing department. Seems like they're following the tried and true formula of promising the world and leaving the delivery to someone else...!

[georgia]

the fact that they offer classes to the masses is not the issue. The issue is that they promise a "professional certificate" as if it actually meant something. I've met with these guys.. they are nice and they have a cool place and they offer basic training in video and audio editing... But what they teach is the use of "a tool" period. I like these guys... they are right down the street from me ( like 2 blocks )! But help me please... SOMEBODY has to have a reality check with their marketing department.

cheers
geo

[Matt Rouch]

I'm not sure all education is good. I'm a college professor who teaches television production and advanced audio. I can tell you from experience it is almost impossible to "de-program" the majority of students who have had "high school television."

These students think television production is all about "having fun" and pushing buttons. They honestly believe that because they know how to capture video shot on prosumer grade camcorders into an NLE and do basic editing that they already pretty much know everything they need to know.

Their whole concept of production is ridiculous, and they are impossible to teach. They don't think about the content of their shows, they don't plan anything and their shows are aesthetically clueless. I mean it's awful. They dismiss the most important aspects of production as unimportant.

Camera positioning? Who cares.
Shot framing? Doesn't matter.
Composition? "We never worried about that in high school."
Rundown sheets? Pain in the neck. Just make it up as you go along.
Contrast ratio? Rule of thirds? Just academic nonsense.
Music choice? What they think is cool, not what is aesthetically appropriate. Anything by Korn is the perfect music to open a newscast, right?
Font choice? Whatever looks "cute." How about Hot Dog for a talk show about the Holocaust? I am not making this up.
Levels don't matter, as long as you can hear the person talking, right?
Lighting kits are heavy and too troublesome to set up. Besides, they can see the person in their viewfinder, so what's the big deal?
Oh, and tripods might take a minute to set up, so just fire up the camcorder and hold it by hand and have footage that's needlessly shaky.

I could go on forever. The problem is, when you try to teach these students real television production, they don't want to make the effort to learn it. In their view, they "already know" how to do television production and all the theoretical stuff you're trying to teach them is just useless crap. I'm serious. And these are students who want to have careers in television production, yet they don't even understand what a television production actually is. They simply refuse to believe that it's anything other than what they already do: push buttons and "have fun."

I have a similar problem in Advanced Audio. Students have had a little experience with a DAW coming into the class and they think microphone choice is much ado about nothing, gain staging is boring, the Haas Effect and the Fletcher-Munson curve and the Nyquist frequency are just academic B.S. Oh, and so is understanding A/D and D/A conversion. At best, they want to know what more of the buttons do; at worst, they're only in the class to get access to the equipment for recording their band.

In both cases, the arrogance is amazing. Despite the fact that you have WAY more experience than them they somehow feel perfectly confident being dismissive of a great deal of what you're trying to teach them; they've annointed themselves experts of what they do and don't need to know.

On the other hand...

When I start from scratch with a student who has had no previous experience, sometimes I can really do quite a bit to teach them. Most of our successful graduates in production weren't brainwashed by some previous educational experience. They quickly understood that, done right, production is often tedious and stressful. EXTREMELY rewarding, yes. And that reward is far greater than any superficial "fun." But it has to be earned, and that means there are challenges to be faced and often lots of barin work to do.

I still type with one hand. I never learned how to type properly. I can type reasonably fast, but because I never learned the right way in the first place, it was too much to adjust. And that's my point. If people don't learn the right way when they first begin, the bad habits and misconceptions they start out with are extremely difficult to transcend -- and may even be a life sentence. So, bad education can be worse than none at all simply because it can create professional barriers that people later find hard to overcome.

Sorry for the rant. I deal with the effects of all kinds of bad education every day, and it can really get under your skin.

[Tiago Silva]

Yep, no mention of storytelling anywhere. That's a basic thing to know if you're trying to be an "editor".

[jimlongo]

I've always found the best trainee's are the ones with an understanding of aesthetics and the right attitude . . . resumes with a list of software are so boring.

I maintain that I could teach a monkey how to operate ProTools in a week. I just did last week. As long as it's a smart monkey with an artisticl sensibility.

As for Matt's observation of students, that's true of too many in a lot of fields of study. Shortcuts to the CEO's office are symptomatic of a disease in our culture.

[MoreMeintheMonitors]

SOMEBODY has to have a reality check with their marketing department.

According to the marketers - they CREATE the reality!