When I was teaching an editing class at Pasadena City College, I always started the semester working forward from the first films which were just locked off shots of a train coming towards camera, or a mule train in the mountains, etc.

Then I would work forward and show how the language of film developed. In a practical sense, your brain shouldn’t understand jumping from a long shot to a medium shot to a close-up. We train our brains to follow the language of cinema just as we train our brains to understand spoken languages.

Everyone in modern society has the language to understand television. Some instinctively apply the tools of production and editing, just as some folks can naturally write great stories after reading enough books. For the rest of us though, learning the tricks of the trade is essential to creating good work.

So I agree that there will always be a space for the professional who has learned those tricks through experience. For comparison, anyone can make a web page or make a flyer for their friends birthday. How come a professionally designed flyer or website looks os much better? It isn’t just luck.

I was convinced that in the near future anyone would be able to shoot and edit their own video. The editor thought that was ridiculous because if ordinary people wanted to edit they would not only need special training and gear but a “literacy” for cinematic storytelling. I told him that may be so, but it didn’t stop non-designers from using new desktop tools to be creative, especially when it’s easy to use and affordable.

I think the adoption to the vernacular of emerging technology has a profound effect on all literacy. New digital SLR cameras can shoot true 1080i HDV so photographers will now be HDTV enabled (with an array of lenses – wow!). Anyone that can use a browser and word processor can create a professional-looking Web 2.0 site.

But with all the new cool tools at our disposal it still comes down to how to express yourself, and technology has a way to go before it can think creatively for us.

I like this statement. Gets to the heart of at least part of it. When I first posed Philip’s assertion I phrased it more like: “Are moving images the new literature?”.

And I like this as well: “Video production skills are becoming, as Philip said, nothing special, which means that a more competitive video meritocracy will be developing.”

But I don’t think there should be too much emphasis on “competitive”. What we’re discussing has to do with much more then the sanctity of a particular professional group. The situation is more interesting then that.

About 20 years ago I was supervising an online edit session. The editor was, I thought, the most visually talented editor in New York, and clearly much, much smarter than me. During a brief lunch break we had some fun with Trivial Pursuit, each person in the room taking turns reading the trivia questions. When our editor took his turn, he had trouble reading anything on the Trivial Pursuit card. He was barely literate.

It made me realize what a funny thing intelligence is. I thought: If this guy had been born in another era or in another place, he might have been considered some kind of idiot. In fact, he was brilliant. Maybe if he hadn’t been lucky enough to work in video and eventually operate this million dollar online room, he’d have been driving a cab or worse.

Nowadays, visual intelligence is ever more important, while the tools to make something of one’s visual talent are cheap. Video production skills are becoming, as Philip said, nothing special, which means that a more competitive video meritocracy will be developing.

The same thought crossed my mind, apparently around the same time that it did yours. There are many kinds of literacy, and I agree that video, or in a larger sense the field of moving images and sound, is one. People learn it like a native language, the basics coming as if by osmosis. With the addition of this rich visual and audio component the exchange of ideas and information can grow richer, more nuanced and complex. I look forward to seeing what’s done once we quit seeing this media just in terms of traditional film and television, what has been, and begin to employ it in previously unconsidered ways.