At Blackbelt TV, Mike is the only editor. So, he has to do everything including editing, graphics, sound, color correction and green screen work to name a few. As his intern I have had to use many programs from Final Cut Studio like Final Cut Pro, Compressor and DVD Studio Pro. My advice is to learn as many programs as you possibly can before you leave Newhouse. I know that you can learn Many programs from Final Cut Studio, although I never found a working DVD Studio Pro copy. You can also learn Avid Media Composer, Photoshop, After Effects and Pro Tools. Learn them all because you never know which one will make you more useful. Mike has told me that he has had to edit on both Final Cut and Avid during his career. Avid is not the industry standard. It is the standard for bigger productions because they can afford it and because Avid is better at having many different editors work on the same project but Final Cut is everywhere. You may hear that some people don’t like the new version of Final Cut. So what? Its not like the old one is just going to go away. even if everyone liked the new version, not everyone would switch right away. If you do not what to get into production or post then there is no reason to know these programs. They will only take time away from learning about what you care about. And, vice versa. If you want to do post, don’t waste time learning about casting or something when you will never be involved in that. At most take something like Film Business and maybe Dramatic writing if you want to know more about story structure. Otherwise take Avid, Advanced Filmmaking, After Effects and Sound for Picture. You could also try to learn Cinema 4D but I couldn’t fit it in since it conflicted with Sound for Picture. I also took History of Television in the cable era which I don’t think will be offered to Sequence 64 since its part of a series but it was a worthwhile class. However, I was only able to take it because there were some programs I already knew coming into Newhouse, like Avid, so I had some more flexibility. I had never used Final Cut before I came to Newhouse and now I use it at my internship.
Some people may tell you to learn something like Avid anyway even if you aren’t interested in post production in order to make yourself more useful. But if you are not interested and don’t have the kind of mind you need for editing then a lot of it will be over your head and you will forget a lot very fast. You may be able to pick it up again in a work environment but its never going to be what you are best at unless you love editing. So, Some say you should learn it to make yourself more useful but I say you only have a year at Newhouse to do exactly what you want. Learning Avid will just take away from what you really want to know. Although, if you aren’t sure, the Avid class is divided in two parts so you could take part one and not take part two if you hate it. And, if you are an intern you should not be wasting time talking with the editors if thats not what you want to do. Go talk to people who do what you want to do. It might make you more useful overall if you happen to be working at a place that uses Avid but what good will that do you if you want to be a writer?
The point is that any program you learn will eventually help you in some way even if its just to know what some editor is talking about. There are probably other computer programs at Newhouse that I never touched and I will probably regret it. You only have free access to this programs for a short time so many good use of them. Even if you don’t take a class in it, get a book that teaches you the program. Final Cut for dummies or something. Its a good idea to get books like that anyway so you can stay fresh on the programs when you don’t use them for a while. There are books like After Effects Apprentice and Pro Tools 101. I got these from taking the classes and kept them. Never get rid of textbooks like that.