Scot Barbour, VP of production technology at Sony Pictures Entertainment, here at IBC to present the Rising Stars session ‘The Heart of Hell – Craft Skills’ (Sunday, 12:00-13:00 Topaz Lounge) sees a good future for content creation, but worries about the demise of mentoring.
“You will still see the majors seeking talent with a professional level of understanding and use of traditional techniques, and at the same time see great success in talents who utilise less traditional techniques in emerging genres,” he said. ”The beauty is that talent will be able to cross the bridge between the two more readily than ever before.”
Going forward with new technologies, what will happen in terms of the engineer and artist?
“There is an intersection once on the horizon that is now emerging in full view. Artists have always used technology to tell stories. Yet over time they desired to tell more and more complex stories, which initially led them to collaborate with others who could help share the burden of production by allowing each to focus on their own trade and create a more rich result,” he said.
“From there it seems that artists and engineers alike spread out even further in order to seek the influence and collaboration of others like themselves,” he added. “Yet as technology advances and operations become easier for each the artist and the engineer, they are once again merging back to the point from which they began. We just happen to be living in an amazing era to be able to witness it.”
Barbour spent quality time with editors during his time at Apple in its FCP team. “There are a lot of tried and true techniques that are indeed fading away in a sense. Younger editors can be well versed in how to use the software to achieve results, but not versed in the aesthetics of editing creatively and collaboratively under pressure.”
He sees similar issues with cinematography. “Some of the ability to ‘paint in light’ has gone away in the younger generation. It’s not to say that their work is bad, but that it might be more effective if some of the older techniques were employed. “
