About Us
Mission Statement
"The Moving Pictures Collective of NYC (formerly the NYC FC UG) is about storytelling talent development, we are a tool agnostic community focused on the art and craft of digital storytelling, from development to presentation through effective education."
Established in September 2002 as the NYC Final Cut Pro Users Group, The Moving Pictures Collective continues to foster professional storytelling. We enhance our members abilities and broaden their overall knowledge and skills by keeping them on the leading edge in a rapidly changing film & video industry.
Our core competency is post-production using Final Cut Pro Studio but not limited to those skills. We share techniques, tools, and best practices. Telling great stories is our primary goal, expanding our inquiry into all facets of moving pictures; editing, directing, writing, producing, and shooting. We also promote member collaboration by sharing our work in a supportive environment and creating opportunities for our members to flourish.
The Moving Pictures Collective is a 501c3 not-for-profit organization. We meet our goals by hosting monthly meetings, organizing ans sponsoring educational events, and special events.
The Moving Pictures Collective utilizes a list serve (DigiStorytellers) to assist each other with common hardware, software and workflow issues. We utilize this website for ongoing education and meeting archives.
MoPictive is currently over 2500 subscribers and 6600 unique monthly visitors to the website.
History
1999 Hatched in a dank basement somewhere downtown, the New York City Final Cut Pro User's Group grew out of several Final Cut Pro early adopters. Perhaps this was still the Macromedia beta version or Apple's first version, it was truely martyrware. As the group grew and aged, Apple opened the Manhattan Market Center to these ragamuffins so they could discuss Oxford 911 bridgechips and feature requests. The community grew to approximately 350 members under Scott Pendergast & Michael Yecies, but the loss of Novaworks' offices left the community without a home. The leaders were flabbergasted and exhauseted when Michael Vitti stumbled onto the scene. At some uncercertain point following this transfer, the community's URL lapsed and fell into the hands of child pornographers on another continent when Mr. Vitti commenced the name change to the NYC Final Cut User's Group.
Sept 2001 Good luck befell the nascent group, first the SoHO Apple Store had just opened and had a theater, second, Mr. Vitti was underemployed and was able to throw his formitable resources at community development. The premise of the group shifted slightly from tool to story skills with a focus on digital storytelling. The group grew, changed it's name to the Moving Pictures Collective of NYC, incorporated and somewhere in there, as Final Cut Pro developed from martyrware to full featured NLE, the group grew to over 2000 members and sports an informational website, monthly e-newsletter (the NLE) and monthly meetings in great venues with the best filmmakers, cameras and software gurus the land has to offer.
Sept 2007 MoPictive is 2500 members storng with a real board operating as a 501c3 non for profit organisation to maximize NYC's storytelling talent through education, connection and development.
Pangloss was right, New York City is the best of all possible worlds.