I recently received the following e-mail:

Mike:

If you say so. But I don’t know of any place in Redondo Beach that has a view (much less unobstructed) of the Hollywood sign.

But, hey, that’s what words are for, right?

And I have to admit, he’s right—from my apartment in Redondo, there’s no good way to see the Hollywood sign, at least from my computer. If I were to crawl onto the roof of my apartment and look north, I could probably see it on a clear day. But I don’t have a laptop, and crating an 8500/180 up to the roof (complete with 14" monitor) would be impractical, and would bring complaints from the rest of my family.

A place where I should’ve been able to see the sign, at least metaphorically, was at the recent ShowBiz Expo. Variety magazine puts on this extravaganza twice every year, both near me at the LA Convention Center (near the site of the most recent LA riot-Go Lakers!) and in New York, where I don’t live. While there were iMacs at almost every booth that had a computer (green apparently being the favorite color of the industry), Apple themselves were quite conspicuously missing. Sure, Canon was there with their entire range of video cameras (including the XL-1, which I highly recommend), but they didn’t have a Mac or even a PC with which to do a demo. The recent Democratic National Convention, held in the same complex, had more iMacs.

I guess I was hoping to see something like this at the Expo. It’s my impression that if Apple wants to be first in the DV content arena, catering to the professionals who are actually going to create it should be top priority.

Of course, the recent slew of iMac commercials would have you believe that Apple is counting on individual consumers to create the next Titanic. But for every Titanic, you get ten Plan 9 from Outer Spaces, Sturgeon’s Law being what it is, after all. Of course, The Blair Witch Project was indeed edited on second generation Power Macs, but it was not shot on digital video. I’ve had several discussions on the future of digital video on the various newsgroups and mailing lists that I used to frequent (some I still do, most recently, the MacDV mailing list that I’ve referred to on several occasions). Most on the Net believe that big-screen DV quality hasn’t arrived yet.

And now, for an opposing view: I believe that DV is here to stay. QuickTime is already the de facto standard for the Web. FireWire devices proliferate by the day. Web sites featuring short films seemingly pop up by the hour. Check out a few of the more famous: Digital Papercut, Atom Films, Killernerd.com, and others that I’ve mentioned previously. And of course, there’s Apple’s own QuickTime site.

So, what can we conclude? That I’m right :-)? That I know more than Steve does? Or, does he know more than I do? Both? Neither? Okay, maybe Steve has a better view of the big picture. But this doesn’t explain Apple’s absence from the upcoming DVExpo.

Copyright © 2000 Mike Shields, Hollywood Guy, mshields@atpm.com.