I'm going to start off with the full disclosure. I am currently editor of a 3D film, and have previously worked on both motion capture and stereoscopic live-action 3D films. Also, I firmly believe post-conversion is terrible and is the number one thing the industry is doing to harm the advancement of 3D. Both live action 3D films I've been involved with have been shot completely stereoscopically in true 3D.

I don't believe that directors are particularly wise to resist the move to 3D. There are a lot of benefits to shooting in 3D and to embrace the technology will allow filmmakers to be at the forefront and to dictate the advancements in the technologies - rather than having the producers dictate the advancement of the technology.

It's just like the move from black & white to colour, from mono to stereo to surround, etc. 3D is going to consume a large portion of the market share in the coming years. Also, working with 3D isn't really that much trouble. You have to be smarter with your metadata and think a bit more about what you're doing ahead of time, but that holds true with any profession as technology becomes more complicated and more capable.

People will expect more out of your product. Most people now expect cars to have airbags, ABS, air conditioning, and power locks and windows. As technology advances, people will expect new filmmaking technologies like 3D to come "standard". Will it increase the cost of films? Sure. Will ticket prices rise? Definitely. Do cars cost more now than they did 15 years ago? Absolutely. Has the experience of driving improved? I would argue that it has.

Should these asinine ideas come closer to fruition I would urge the union of which I am a member: IATSE Local 700 Motion Picture Editors Guild to go on strike and encourage other IATSE unions to do the same. The ideas being proposed can and will harm our industry and our livelihood by creating distrust and distaste of the media in the general public. It is unacceptable to treat our customers as criminals.

If entertainment industry workers took a stand for the country as a whole then public opinion would be on our side. The producers would have to take us seriously.

I'm really excited about this move. The first editing system I ever experienced when I was young was a Lightworks/Heavyworks system. My dad (a film editor, now director) loves the Lightworks systems due to their natural and intuitive control systems. I still have an old Lightwave controller sitting around that I've thought about hacking to work with the Avid.

Currently we work on Avid Media Composer, since it remains the only true pro-level editing software. Final Cut has it's pros but, at least to me, it's more for video editing (by which I mean not sourcing or finishing to film) and smaller projects (promos, commercials, shorts). If you want to cut a feature film - you use Avid. I have arguments with co-workers about FCP versus Avid but we usually arrive at the agreement that Avid is simply the standard to which all other systems are currently judged.

With the open sourcing of Lightworks I can only hope that the best of modern systems like Avid and FCP can be integrated with the very intuitive Lightworks way of working. At the very least, I hope it scares Avid and Apple at least enough to make them fix some of the problems that currently exist with their systems. More competition is always better for the end user.

I do, actually. I own one. It's still no pure EV due to it's extremely limited electric range and very high dependence on the gasoline motor. If I could get my hands on a RAV4-EV, GM EV1, Honda EVPlus, or Hyundai Santa Fe-EV I would gladly trade in my Prius in a heart beat. I'm looking forward to the upcoming EV wars between Tesla, GM, Toyota, Mitsubishi, and Smart. If Toyota wants to do battle they'll need to give us a Prius that relies more on electricity similar to the Chevy Volt. The technology exists today to give us 200 miles of pure electric driving in the current Prius shape due to it's light weight and aerodynamics. Mitsubishi is already testing a full electric prototype called the i-MiEV and Smart has many Smart-EVs in testing with corporate fleets in London. There may be no government requirements for these things but people are beginning to vote with their dollars and whoever can provide a cheap, long range, mass produced electric car first is going to be very well off financially.