Thanks for the great article and workflow efficiency tools. I been working in Post Production for fifteen years in NYC and I have found that establishing a relationship of trust with clients is the most important part of my job. I agree with Shane, being consulted with first would save time, money, and frustration down the line. Most good post supers know the vital importance of testing workflows prior to shooting, logging material effectively (Metadata), technology research, VFX Bibles, stripboards, budget guidelines and effective communication. The fact is we work in an ever changing workflow environment (technology and financing), if you don’t have a fully researched and tested plan you are asking for trouble and wasted money. Branding a workflow process is an interesting idea, but it will require mass saturation and acceptance which is difficult. Effective workflow integration must be supported from the top down, it doesn’t mater if its a micro production or a large studio production, without it, everyone is wasting time and money. If you are shooting with a digital camera, hire or consult with an experienced D.I.T. before the shooting schedule starts. Consult and listen to your editors, don’t fall back on a tape workflow because it’s comfortable, utilize your dollars effectively and do your research, and please this is most important, always remain teachable.

Thanks,

RL

To further compound the above problem, some of us are involved with non-profits, bringing further limits, such as the financial resources available for training (and equipping) new blood, and leadership/producer/director roles and deficiencies.

Given this environment, your “words of wisdom” and highly focused input/analysis is certainly valuable, timely, wanted and needed.

Thanks…(give us more, more, more!)

Philip

I also concur with the recommendations that you should brand your process. You have stated in a number of articles and books that a good growth strategy for a content creator is to create and market your own programs rather than work on someone else’s. I see that branding and marketing a “process for the process” as a similar strategy.

Philip

Philip

It would seem from your post that film production is going through the same hyper-distortion at the moment that print went through a few years ago.

When print was changing rapidly and there were few common denominators across media types and projects consultants with a handle on all the technologies would step in and assist in developing a workflow on a per product/media type basis.

Given that, you may well find that Mark is right. You need to “brand your process,” even if you don’t have a fixed process for post production. What you may well have is a perfect example of a meta-process – a process for developing the right process.

So what you need to sell is THAT meta-process on a consulting basis. Think about what you do to develop the right production process for a project and THAT is YOUR process. Brand THAT.

Take one very popular DI facility here in NY I found that thought the colorist there are A list, Best of the Best ect. the other members of the staff are generally younger, overworked and underpaid. (even the producers)

Not only that but in this big company innovation and change is not encouraged at all. As a matter of fact employees know of better workflows and solutions for problems that company has however when I asked them why they have not advocated for such changes they expressed that if anything went wrong it would cost them their jobs because that company has a culture of finger pointing and self preservation above all else. I’ll add that these underpaid youngsters have very important jobs and they have an unusually high turnover rate.

Smaller companies are more open to change as they are usually more efficient and budgets tend to be smaller therefore there is an incentive to keep things lean mean and as profitable as possible.

Many producers just say “we are doing to do things this way” and it is up to people to try to figure out how to get things to work THAT way. Only on a few occasions have I been consulted with the best way to do things before shooting started. And even then, the company switched from Avid to FCP, and I told them that they needed to talk to be before they started capturing so that I could go over organization with them. I kept reminding them but to no avail, I was hired a week AFTER capturing had started and organization was a mess. The assistant knew FCP, but not what to do in a SAN setup. “We were trying to save money” was the excuse. They didn’t, because we had to take a while to re-organize while we began editing. Overtime.

I’m really tired of that.

Some producers simply don’t believe what you tell them. That the plan you laid forth will save time and money. “No…I really prefer tape. I cannot see this saving money. We are going to do things THIS way.” Comfort level…they all just want comfort.