Megan and Murray McMillan

Today I’m looking forward to going to my 3:30 Art Video class and critiquing some great art. Over the years this course has continued to be one of my favorites. Unlike other media like painting or sculpture, the tools are easily mastered freeing artists to spend more time on developing the work instead of how to make it.

Click here for three class examples

Of course, this ease is recent. Oh boy. What a headache making a video used to be. Timecode, blacking, extremely expensive equipment, poor quality, destructive image quality, and glitches–the dread of all videographers–were not only common but part of doing business. And you can’t even say the word ‘film’ without hemorrhaging cash.

The early days of computer editing were equally bad. On my first video editing system, a Mac Quadra 840 av (a legend in itself, perhaps only Amiga owners will understand. An Amiga could do more with a K than a modern PC can do with a Mb), I even had to disable the clock, among other things, in order to have enough processor power to get 30 frames per second, the quality standard in normal video (29.97 fps for any tech-heads out there).

Now it’s firewire, plug and play, $300 dv cameras and $1000 laptops that best $50,000 systems a mere decade old. On top of that, everyone is over the need for image quality. Movies are sometimes being made on these new cheap cameras, I teach my students the same editing program that Lucas uses: it costs $1000. Now is the time to be a video artist or filmmaker.