Hi All, and Welcome.
I wrote this mainly with video editors in mind but it also works well for producers and advice for life in general. There are places in your work that you can apply the words to in this article
I write this from a place of love. I currently work in the audio post-production industry and as such I receive audio prep from all sorts of editors for large clients. While most of the elements I receive are passable, there have just been too many times over the years, and still currently to this day, where I receive audio elements and it just ends up making things harder than they need to be.
I would like to make everyone’s lives easier by writing out this article as to what problems I see most in the world, why I believe they are problems, and how to solve them so that everyone involved in the process of making any video media can have an easier life. The solution and ways of thinking I’m presenting will save you time, thus it will save you money, and as time goes on you will come off as more of a professional than other video editors.
I will mainly be speaking on what I see in smaller form content such as advertising and shorts. Movie/TV editors are a different breed of this but there are some similarities.
The Problem
Lucky for you all I’ve fairly certain the root of the problem stems from something simple: shortsightedness
Now what do I mean by shortsightedness?
I mean you are simply thinking on too small of a scale.
It appears to me, that many editors live in “editor world” and that’s it. They get really good at editing, it’s their passion, maybe they end up liking to sound design as well, but they never leave their editing room with their mind. Once their portion of the work is finished they send it out to audio post houses and forget about it and wait till it comes back to post to final picture.
Editors, do you know what happens while your video is out at audio post houses? I’d like to think that many of the seasoned veterans and places do but the evidence I have in the work I’ve received makes me doubt that. The type of work I’ve received often results in the audio post house having to “roll with the ball/punches” and solve problems/quality check your work.
Now that is our job, and we do it very well. We know what we have to look for so you don’t have know what we have to look for. That’s the way it has always been and I don’t expect anything to change any time soon, so please don’t take this as complaining or wanting you all to do my job for me. I’ve done it before and I can keep doing it, it’s really no issue for me. I don’t mind having problems and as they come up and we solve them (in fact it makes me look better when I catch the problems), but other people do.
And you know what? Keep the problems coming because it’s job security, that’s what it is for me.
So what’s your point?
If it ends up taking more time for something to be made due to problems arising it ultimately costs more money.
And you know who cares about saving time?
Your boss(es) & the clients
Do you know who cares about saving money?
Your boss(es) & the clients
Should you consider what I am pointing out and apply it to your workflow, you will end up being a very smooth editor to work with— bringing clients back to work with you and your bosses admiring your knowledge and forward thinking. I think everyone can agree those are both very positive things.
One more problem stems from being shortsighted, or at least the possible inference of one: being uncaring
Being shortsighted and not having a good understanding of what happens to your work at an audio post house can make it appear as that you don’t really care about your work. That may come off as harsh but it is true.
Think of it like this: You send audio prep off to the post house. After a while they come back to you and say “Hey there, something isn’t matching”, or “Hey there, these video fps’s are different”, or “Hey there you designed this all with sounds you randomly found on the internet” (happens more often than you would think for the bigger players).
There are many different things they can come back with to you, but the ultimate goal in my mind would be to know exactly what they need so they do not have to come back and the job can keep moving forward.
Q: So how exactly does not knowing what happens at the audio house show that I don’t care?
A: Because if you truly cared about your work, you would care about what happened to it while it was out of your hands.
You would care about it in the same way as how a caring parent asks questions about where their child goes when they’re out of their sight/protection (before their child is ready for the world on their own that is). They often want to know every detail of who/what/when/where until the child is back under their wing.
You should treat all of your works as if they were your children, you want to set them up for success in the world, you don’t want to do anything to hold them back or make it take any longer than it has to I’d imagine.
You should care about your work like this because:
1. You want your boss to be happy with your work
2. You want the client to be happy with your work so they can be happy (have their vision fulfilled and so they’ll come back to do it with you again)
And at the very least,
- You care about the things YOU touch/take a part in. If YOU touched it, it should have been the very best you could do. Why wouldn’t you want to take care about something you were involved with? It is your craft after all isn’t it?
Common Occurrences and How to Solve Them
In no particular order I’m going to present some of the common things I see that could stand some improvement.
#1 – Not following prep specs
Delivery specs exist for a reason, we should do them the respect of adhering to them.
Far too often editors/animators deliver prep not to spec. I would say that 90% of the time this is why problems happen. I don’t mean that it happens often, but a lot of the times when problems happen, they’re not following the spec. They “have been exporting this way for years”. When people say this and still deliver prep that we always have to come back and ask questions about I HIGHLY doubt that statement and if it’s actually true I often wonder how it’s possible that they’ve gone on for so long delivering like this without being corrected.
Editors/Animators believe they know the spec off-hand and just end up exporting stuff as they see fit. Not all specs are equal. When you’re on a project and are delivering elements to an audio post house REQUEST their SPECIFIC specs, READ them (seems like most people don’t), and deliver correctly/accordingly. Really, it feels like nobody ever reads the specs.
Each audio house will have their own specs but here is a fairly common, relatively safe, and annotated spec that you should make your bible (barring any technology/industry updates).
A couple of other notes – this means not exporting multiple frame rate pictures for a project (accidental export of wrong framerate picture), excluding when they need to be different due to destination specs. This also means working at the final destination spec fps so as to allow audio to not need to be conformed later down the line. It’s just extra work if that happens. Save us work and your clients money, please.
#2 Not triple-checking work
Editing is a hard life. Often you are juggling projects and with deadlines that don’t allow for comfort. Sometimes you get into “robot” mode and don’t think keeper, I’m also victim to those types of days.
What really saves me pretty often in my work and a definite reason why I’ve never been fired is that my mistakes are not very often. This is because I have done my best to program triple-checking into my workflow.
Double-checking doesn’t do it for me. Eventually that becomes a habit and I get too confident in doing it.
Triple-checking is a conscious thought I have to make myself do, and extra thing to think about and subconsciously increase the level of importance and attention in my brain to the task.
Triple-checking doesn’t have to happen all the time, and in-fact the real spirit that will help you is ensuring the quality of your work so being ready to look at it until you’re certain (or at least highly confident) what you’re doing is correct.
Don’t over-check, this has the same effect as saying a word over and over again till it loses its meaning. Eventually your eyes will just be going through the moments and you will be roboticly glossing over when you should be attentively evaluating. If you catch yourself doing this, snap yourself out of it and check attentively two more times as “catch alls” and move on with your life knowing your did your best and if it’s wrong you will remedy the situation promptly and appropriately. It’s likely whatever happened was not the end of the world.
Lastly, if I may offer a tip when striving toward this mindset. Realize you are human and you make mistakes, you aren’t perfect, that’s ok. It’s helpful to make to extra realizations from this and those are:
1. It is ok to be confident that you won’t make mistakes but you realize you are not infallible and will make mistakes so you make sure to check properly because this is what ensures quality work– it is an extra level that most people don’t take advantage of and will immediately set you apart from others in your profession.
2. You realize you are human and are prone to make mistakes even if you check your work one thousand times. This removes the pressure for perfection in one’s work when mistakes slip through. This also means to realize that noticing mistakes going through is your opportunity to buckle down again and refocus your attention. Increasing your time in-between the instances when you make mistakes is your goal and mistakes popping up are merely a meaningless blip as long as you remedy the situation. Not adjusting your behavior to producing mistakes is how you get fired and let your life be harder than it needs to be. This is where many people fall short, they don’t care to adjust for whatever reason. It almost seems as if they would prefer to keep making mistakes to keep life interesting– really it’s just a lack of thinking/care or maybe more innocently said ” preemptively avoiding mistakes in their work never crosses their mind”.
It could also be the same reason as me, a potentially unhealthy and higher than normal amount of self-confidence. You’ve been doing this work for years, you’ve done this little step over a thousand times, you were multi-tasking because it was busy, you have the muscle memory, and you could almost do some of this with your eyes closed.
There are many possible roots as to why we are the way that we are. It would be responsible to have a real sit and think about how you think and where your weaknesses are because once you know why they’re there you can take affirmative action and learn how to properly mitigate yourself.
#3 Good and Clear Communication
Look everyone, I love you, I do, you’re awesome, you really are but let me tell you something. It’s very likely that you are communicating far from effectively as you could be.
Your lack of communication skills is mostly not your fault however, it’s the fault of the world.
You see, high speed communication over the internet is very new and humans as we are, largely are not cut out for digital communication currently.
For millions of years as humans we have learned to communicate through physical in-person methods. This is how nature has molded us. We read faces, body language, and voice pitch/speed to help us understand each other and very few people pay mind to losing those complexities.
After all, why should they pay mind? They know what they mean so you should just as easily know what they mean (common misconception)– while usually we are able to make sense of what we get there are times where the wrong association is made in one of the minds where both parties thought they understood each other but the one who made the mistake that inhibits the other is often blamed for not understanding. This is the mostly accepted convention of society, I’m sure it’s happened to you, “you should’ve understood!”. Well you thought you did. Where’s the fault in not realizing you were at fault? Depending on the specifics of the situation it’s possible the fault is of the one pointing their finger– they communicated ineffectively, or at the very least didn’t bother to verify that the other person understood properly.
Complexities aside, after about 200,000 years of pretty much no technology and to now have 85-90% of our communication being text and screens it’s no wonder we have so many prevalent communication issues. This is not one sided either, it goes all around and we are all “guilty” of not communicating as well as we should.
Now that you are actively aware of this I highly suggest reading public speaking books (Unaccustomed As I am… is all anyone will ever need in my opinion) as well as other books on communication/psychology (Never Split the Difference also reveals methods of communication you can benefit in knowing).
However, you don’t need any books All you need to remember is one simple rule: BE AS CLEAR AS POSSIBLE.
That’s it.
Look, even when you’re in person it can be difficult to know what someone is talking about. You can point/gesture and you more readily catch attention just by having your physical presence.
In the online world there are a few ways to be as clear as possible:
- Pay attention to your words and sentence structure – Your words and sentence structure builds the world in the reader’s head. You are effectively entering their mind and having them pull up thoughts based on what you send. A nice person would consider the readers experience and attempt to make it pleasant.
- Utilize the call and response method – if someone asks you to do something, repeat it back to them word-for-word. Not only does this give the other person a chance to confirm/elaborate/edit on what they said, but this also proves you’re listening and sticks the idea further into your head. Another method of call and response is to say what you’re about to do to any parties that may be concerned, this gives them the ability to confirm/elaborate/edit whatever it is you’re doing. If it should be different or if there is something you should know this is where it will come up naturally. They’ll hear you say it and then say, “wait no stop, that’s not right!” Be careful with the latter call and response method, do not use this too often and be wrong or people will start to notice that you always need help.
- Typing an email? Here are a few tips for you – Formatting formatting formatting. Think about your formatting. Does short and clear work? Do you need a clear trail to be able to search and find things later? You have all the cool bullets, emphasis buttons, colors– use them. Restate and being as clear as possible when you type through written communication, even addressing concerns readers may be likely to have while reading. Don’t overdue any of this or it will become more like noise, know how to present the proper response based on who you’re speaking with and what it’s regarding.
- Don’t be afraid to ask questions – Don’t worry about bothering anyone because it’s in their best interests to make sure it’s right, especially don’t worry about bothering them because it’s in YOUR best interests to get it right and if they have an attitude for some reason that’s their problem; your problem is to do what you’re doing correctly. If you’re afraid that your question is dumb or triggering you just need to phrase it like “Hey to confirm/doublecheck/make sure I understand [QUESTION], can you explain/verify/or show me?”. 100% of the time any good person would rather you ask a question to get things right than not asking a question and getting it wrong, they literally cannot be mad at you for wanting to get the job done right. Asking questions also saves time from doing things you didn’t have to do or saves the time it would take to re-do it if you do it wrong. All that being said, do not rely on questions forever or too often, you need to learn when you ask questions. If you’re using them as an excuse to never know anything then you’re using them wrong. Eventually people will get tired of repeating themselves or will think that you have no critical thinking skills.
- Everyone is different – For some reason I feel like everyone needs a reminder. EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT. Just because you see something one way doesn’t mean someone else does. In knowing that everyone is different you can also know that certain communicational methods will work better than others. Some prefer short, sweet, and to the point. Other’s like to be seen. Some people need a reason. Other’s responses may need to be navigated to achieve what you need in communicating with them. You will approach a client different from a coworker different from your boss different from your family different from your friends different from hot tempered people different from Joe Blow from down the road. You get the point. Keep an eye out for those who you are in contact with often to see what works best. Also keep in mind that you can certainly plan for a safe communication method if you think about who you’re speaking to even if you’ve never met them before.
#4 – Not Using the K.I.S.S. Method
For those that don’t know that’s “Keep it simple stupid”.
Sometimes people don’t realize how complicated they’re making things. I have seen and heard things enough times that I don’t care anymore. At first it baffled me, but some people really don’t care about taking the path of less resistance. They don’t think efficiently or ahead. Some people are really good about this and can rest easy. Other’s need to take it more to heart. You know who you are.
Why have things be complicated when they could be simple?
People make mistakes, people get distracted, everyone is different, not everyone reads the same. Mistakes are liable to happen. In understanding that mistakes are likely to happen, one should do their best to prevent them from the get-go. This means making things as clear as possible and with as little room for mistakes as possible. Yes you may be able to navigate what you do but that’s because you’re the one doing it. Many people don’t think while they’re doing things, they are more on an autopilot– account for this.
Make an obvious and intuitive folder structure to your files, give your files easy to understand names, remove unnecessary files, if you constantly update links make it OBVIOUS what’s new (though a new link every time, (barring updates) is infinitely safer and costs nothing), lay out clearly and concisely so that even someone who has never been in your business can gather what you’re saying.
Now, is this saying that people are stupid and can’t figure it out? No. In fact that’s their job they should be able to figure out what you’re saying. This is why people don’t make any fuss over it besides in private. It’s just making things as easy as possible to reduce room for error. It may take a little more work on your part but it should be worth it to ensure the quality.
Conclusion
Want to be a better worker and communicator?
Show you care and deliver things so the job can go as smoothly as possible.
Triple-check your work, twice is often not enough.
Communicate CLEARLY and EFFECTIVELY. Keep in mind your words, who you’re speaking to, and what your goal is.
Use the K.I.S.S. method to save everyone time and effort so that people don’t have to think as hard and are less likely to make mistakes.
You already know this stuff. In fact, this really is just a revisiting of foundational skills. Never has revisiting the basics ever hurt anyone, and it’s what the most successful people do. Revisiting helps to refresh your memory, update methods accordingly, and maybe help you see/realize things that you have never seen before.
I hope this article has helped you and I wish you the best going forward.
Even if you learned nothing from the article and you already do all this– take great pride in knowing that you are in a good place that you even found this article and read looking to improve yourself/being open for feedback. That’s one thing that many people just don’t do.
If you have any questions, comments, feedback, or sarcasm don’t hesitate to reach out. I’ll always be happy to hear from you.
All the best,
FCP 🙃
Next Article (You are infinitely valuable)
Previous Article (How to Make Wearing a COVID Mask Better and Brighten Someone’s Day)