Join our live chat on Youtube! If you think it has been a bit quiet around here, you would be wrong. Today we announce the big news that two of FCPX's most respected community members, Sam Mestman and Ronny Courtens are joining FCP.co. Please watch our live chat above and read Sam Mestman's exciting news below.
TLDR: I’m stepping away from LumaForge to help take FCP.co to the next level and make We Make Movies into a worldwide filmmaking community.
The long-winded version:
I feel like I’ve been in a time warp only to find out that not much is different. A little over 4 years ago I demoed 84 streams of 4k at LACPUG, my life changed, and I went into a black hole of no longer being an editor, colorist, or filmmaker anymore.
Instead I became a tech company CEO for a tiny shared storage startup that quickly turned into something larger than I ever could have imagined possible. I began LumaForge by locking myself in a room and banging away on 6 computers connected to a cobbled together machine I didn’t understand trying to figure out why it wasn’t working... and I loved every minute of it.
Four years later, with thousands of Jellyfish users around the world, I realized I had locked myself out of that room and that my professional career now consisted of meetings, phone calls, putting out fires, and hearing from everyone else what it was like doing the thing I used to love doing.
Building LumaForge was easily the most intense four years of my life and it challenged me in ways that I really never thought were possible. In the end, I realized something about myself, though… I was living someone else’s dream. I don’t like meetings, or phone calls, or spreadsheets, or marketing, or running a company. I like building things, breaking things, figuring things out, being on the bleeding edge, getting my hands dirty with cool people, teaching people how to make their projects better, and being part of a community that is trying to change its corner of the world for the better.
I built LumaForge to solve a big problem in our industry, and the amazing team there picked it up, ran with it, and solved it better than ever should have been possible. I’m incredibly proud of what we did there, and what we created out of nothing.
The only issue I had, though, was that LumaForge wasn’t solving my personal problem of needing to create, make movies, solve workflow problems, and be a part of my community again. I realized it was time for a change, so I made one. 18 months ago, I saw that I was never designed to be a tech company CEO and it was never anything I wanted I for myself, so I replaced myself as CEO with Josh Minney, who is far better designed to build LumaForge than I ever was going to be. I've been slowly stepping into the background ever since knowing that one day I’d be be able to come back to what I loved doing without needing to worry about the health of the company. That day is now here.
So, It’s with great excitement that I’m officially stepping away from the day to day of LumaForge to build my filmmaking community We Make Movies and step in as the lead contributor for FCP.co.
I’ll be teaming up with Peter Wiggins (still running the show as editor in chief) and Ronny Courtens as we set out to take FCP.co to the next level and revitalize the FCPX, iOS, and Apple creative education communities.
So… what is this going to look like? What’s going to be different?
First off… there’s going to be a lot more original content designed to help you approach a new paradigm for content creation. We are here to help you see the trends and optimize where you put your time as a professional. We want to make you more money in less time, and save you a bunch of money, and get you home before anyone else you work with.
We want to help you plot out your career as a content creator, bet on the right technologies, and help you skate to where the puck is going. We want to become the definitive, curated, trusted source for all things Apple-FCPX-iOS video workflow.
A lot has changed over the last few years when it comes to making content and optimizing for post production, and I’m not sure the industry has completely realized it yet.
Video is not just narrative, doc, and industrial anymore. Video has become the new universal language for how our world communicates on the macro level and that now comes in many more forms than Hollywood and poorly produced industrial and Youtube videos.
Every company you know of now has, or will have soon, their own in-house video department. Those assets need to be organized and managed and they have more of them than a lot of post houses currently do. Every small business you know of is going to need to generate their own video content for web and social media in order to stay competitive.
Content creation has become decentralized, the talent pool is now worldwide, and your livelihood as a filmmaker/pro-editor/storyteller can now come in many forms with many hyphens attached to it.
Our singular goal is to help you become the best version of yourself as an editor/filmmaker/educator/creator/influencer/ETC… and we want to be the place you come to for the truth and for quality information and discussion. We are going to dive head first into the future of video and storytelling with you all, and we are going to build a better industry and community together.
The design of the site, contributors involved, and community and social media platforms we’re involved in are going to be evolving as well.
We’re going to modernize with the industry, try new things, and share our results with you. Iteration and experimentation will be our constant, and dogma mixed with FUD and “this is the way we’ve always done it" will be for everyone else. We’re going to eat our own dog food, find the best way to do things, and then make sure you know how it’s done.
We’re going to help you discover new things that are worth watching, and find new ways of displaying, engaging, and monetizing with your audience. As far as we’re concerned, the entire industry is ready to be completely disrupted, and we want to be the people that helped you find your way into where the future is going that feels healthy and sustainable.
Do you have a great FCPX case study you’ve been working on with a novel approach to workflow or how you’re building an audience? We want to know about it and help you find an audience for your work.
Are you working on an app or a plugin that solves a problem for the community? Tell us and we’ll help get the word out.
Do you have an interesting take on the industry and want to hit a wider audience? Lets figure out how we can work together. Did you make the world’s greatest tutorial that solves a problem for a whole lot of people? Tell us and we’ll spread the word.
Are you going to be at IBC? Lets get together, have a drink, and hang out. Are you coming to the summit? If you’re not, you should, and lets all figure out how we put a dent in the universe together there.
Bottom line, it’s great to be back in the community, and I can’t wait to see how all of this is going to take shape. Game on.
