Creative Context
Creative Context blends professional advice with a friendly, down-to-earth approach, making it a valuable resource for anyone navigating the complex relationship between clients and creative professionals. Through stories and practical tips, the podcast helps both sides understand each other’s perspectives and work toward more successful outcomes.
Creative Context
Creative Projects Hidden Time and Effort
In this episode, co-hosts Douglas Duvall of Motif Media and Eric Wing of Darby Digital dive into the intricate world of creative work, exploring the time, research, and iterations required to produce high-quality content. They discuss the challenges of managing client expectations, the impact of technology on creative processes, and the importance of valuing the hidden aspects of professional creative services.
Video Version:
https://youtu.be/e5QDBO2XssY
Dissecting the Time, Research, and Iteration in Creative Projects (0:00)
Challenges in Quoting and Client Expectations (3:31)
The Complexity of Video Production (5:28)
The Role of Research in Creative Projects (10:18)
The Impact of Technology on Client Expectations (10:36)
The Importance of Iterations in Creative Work (30:26)
The Hidden Aspects of Creative Work (41:11)
The Role of Experience in Creative Projects (41:25)
Final Thoughts and Future Plans (45:48)
📌 Topics Covered:
Time and research in creative projects, client expectations, video production complexity, music selection, technology's impact on content creation, iterations in creative work, hidden aspects of creative services, professional development, project pricing, revision processes
📢 Key Takeaways:
Creative time, hidden work, client communication, research value, technology limitations, professional expertise, project iterations, pricing strategies, expectation management, continuous learning
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🔗 Connect with Us:
Douglas Duvall
motifmedia.com for high-end video production.
Eric Wing
withdarby.com for digital marketing and web development services.
or whatever.
Speaker 2:I'm probably going to cut this because I can see how uncomfortable you are just and this isn't even one of the worst.
Speaker 1:This isn't even some of the worst ones. Welcome to another episode of creative context. Today we're dissecting the time, research and iteration that can go into a creative project. I think that can be a little bit of a frustrating position for a client when they kind of expect something to be kind of a snap of a finger, Like we have all the answers magically maybe in a, in an initial call or, uh, you know, shortly into the process that all these things are sort of figured out, when in reality there's quite a bit of time, research and many, many, many iterations, uh, to get to sort of the final product. The old saying a project isn't finished, it's abandoned and that's a. I mean, I think that's speaking more towards fine art, but like a painting or something. But I think there's some truth to that as well. What are your thoughts on this, Eric? Where have you kind of run into this sort of frustration clients have sometimes?
Speaker 2:I think I don't. I actually don't know if our accounts have. I'm trying to think of an example of a time when someone specifically reached out and was like you know what's going on over there. You know it's been a week or something like that. Um, but I think where I think where it comes up is in the, the quoting process, the, the, the original proposal, because we're baking that kind of stuff in, but it's it's like it's intangibles, right? People want to hire us to create something, to do something for them to see or hold or touch, and the research and the inspiration process is part of it. But you can't see it. So I think that's probably where it comes up is discussing cost.
Speaker 2:That's probably where it comes up is discussing cost. There's a lot of people in our space who we charge for just about everything. When you're learning business, you're told to include even the, the rent of your office and all of the salary of the people working on the project, fractional aspects of that. Okay, they're going to work 10 hours on this project, they do all the math and then that really gets baked into the cost. We don't really do it to that degree, but for the consulting side of it my work I do include that and it's very intangible. So I think, to answer your point, or to kind of bring us along, I'd say it probably shows up mostly in the beginning and then mostly at the iteration process, right? Because if we can anticipate that we're going to have a lot of back and forth, we call it ping-ponging. If we're going to be ping-ponging the whatever back and forth, we'll put that in the cost or the estimate, and so sometimes questions come from that.
Speaker 2:One other point though I'd like to make is there are a lot of design firms out there that will that will say you get three revisions and then it's um x number of dollars per revision after that, which is an interesting approach and I think I think um an important one. I we don't we don't necessarily go to that degree, uh, with our web design, but there have been times when I've regretted not putting that in the contract, right. So yeah, that's sort of how it shows up on my side. I say at the beginning and the end and I know it's translatable to you from my perspective, to your world, in that a lot of people just just just kind of see that you, you generate a video, uh, and you know there's not a lot of, you know it's. It's like you just take the raw footage and you cut it up, but there's a lot more that you're doing, right um it's like how do you communicate that intangible aspect of it?
Speaker 1:yeah, so quickly. Actually we are implementing a two round, two rounds of revisions kind of policy for like a one-off video. Yeah, uh, just because, to your point, more often than not it gets to to three, four, five, six revisions, and each time it's to maybe two hours or something. Yeah, so if you're operating at a fixed cost, you've kind of killed it at that point, because you know if you let people walk on you, they're going to continue to do so. I just thought I'd chime in on that. I am starting to implement that for that exact reason.
Speaker 1:Yeah I think it's smart yeah, the time thing is interesting. Uh, because there are so many levels to video production. Let's, I'll use an event as an example. Um, some people want to get the event recorded and they want to get out a highlight reel or something that same day or the next day, like this kind of quick little edit, and they just don't think it's that big of a deal when something like that can take five, eight, 10 hours, 12 hours, depending on you know, are we, you know, is there graphics? Like there's so many levels to it. Yeah, and I think that's where the time thing, like people don't understand. Like, yeah, we could turn around something super quick. That's like real rudimentary edit, that edit that no one's going to get excited about, but we could do it fast, so you have it that day. Sure, we could do that. You're not going to be happy with it. People watching it aren't going to be happy with it, like you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:You're not going to be happy having your name on it.
Speaker 1:Exactly no one. No one is going to be happy with it. One is going to be happy with it, um, so, yeah, I think that is where the time thing kind of comes in, because everybody wants it to look cool and slick and all that and that's like, okay, that takes time, uh, and communicating that is. I mean it's, it's straightforward. Like hey, what are we, what's the goal? And if they give you examples and you know, I've run into this recently about not having examples on hand immediately that match examples they're taking from another creator it doesn't mean I can't do it, doesn't mean my team can't do it. We can. It just hasn't a maybe.
Speaker 1:I did it 10 years ago at a, at an ad firm I used to work at, and I don't want to share that. Like, right, it's just my, that's my decision not to share that. Yeah, but we're capable of it, and sometimes that's hard letting people know, right, like hey, certainly we're capable of doing it and it's going to take us this amount of time. Um, and there is a hidden element of like, like research, like finding music, finding music takes. It's very rare that I just log on. We use artlessio. I don't like to keep these things secret. For a long time I used audio junglenet yeah.
Speaker 2:I've heard of that one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was a very early adopter to that website. I've probably been using it over a decade and I use it kind of less and less. Artlistio has kind of come in as a superior product for the money, and there was a while where I was using this thing called killer tracks, which is now not killer tracks anymore, but that was sort of like top, and that was when I worked at the corporate place. They had a I don't know how much. They spent a year, a lot to have access to it. Yeah, so I've worked in a lot of different platforms.
Speaker 1:Finding music is takes a lot of time. Very rarely do I just log on, start a rudimentary search and find something like oh wow, that's that works. And that was 20 minutes, that was, that was awesome. It could take hours and I'm not necessarily charging directly for those hours and maybe I should, but there's so much that goes into it and we're just talking about music, right. And then to start, and then the initial edit Do we want fast-paced, do we want slow motion?
Speaker 1:And then is there graphics. Are there titles for people's names? Do you have a branding package? Is there a branding guideline we need to follow? Like all of that stuff takes time, yeah, and if you're not sort of answering the questions like like, hey, we want this thing done really fast, we have all this, we have our brand guideline for you, we already already have a music track selected, we have an example we like, and if you haven't provided all that stuff and then saying you want a quick turnaround for like an event video, probably not going to happen Because we kind of have to forge, the way you know and I'm just using events as an example I mean this for an example of someone wanting something quickly, but that goes for anyone wanting anything quickly, unless we're sort of provided a ton of info up front that, hey, this isn't your first rodeo, you have all this information, chances are you're not getting that thing super quickly.
Speaker 1:Thing super quickly, it's not means it doesn't mean it's impossible, but you probably don't want to pay for the you know, emergency room visit. Uh style, yeah, the rush fee.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that usually that usually gets people to back off. I will mention that as I don't weaponize it, but I do. I. I will say that to to bring light to the fact that what they're asking for is a little bit up and beyond what we originally discussed. But it also makes it available, because people will sometimes say yes, if they're really against the wall. I find that maybe it's.
Speaker 2:We don't charge enough for the rush fee. That's a whole other thing, but I can count right now on my hand like maybe five examples where people have been like all right, we don't prefer that, but yeah, if you can get it done by that time, then we're willing to pay that extra. And so, yeah, what was coming to mind too when you were talking was do you think that, because you've been doing this for so long, now that iPhones and the do-it-yourselfers, there's more tools available for the common person? And do you think that they're sort of shopping with their own wallet in a way where they're like, gosh, I could just do this on my phone in like 10 minutes and put all this stuff together? They're not thinking about, like, the copyright on the song. They're not thinking about about the copyright on the song, they're not thinking about all these things that you just listed off. So have you seen a rise and fall of that at all with the new technology that's?
Speaker 1:I think that does play a factor, because you can log into TikTok or Instagram or in their TikTok thing is CapCut, right. Instagram's new thing is edits. You can log in there, use copyrighted music. You can use your favorite Led Zeppelin song or your favorite you know whatever, whatever pop culture, whatever it's all on there, virtually, um, without repercussion, right, if you have a brand account, I don't think you can use the copyrighted music. But if you switch your brand, get access to it and yeah, you can. You know you get 30 or 40 shots with your phone and you can edit together something pretty quick in a couple hours with really nice music. Um, everything's in the phone, ready to go, ready to post.
Speaker 1:Um, I still, I really haven't noticed too much because those type of people probably aren't reaching out to me anyway. Yeah, but to your point, like someone who sees a creator do that, and then they're coming to me thinking we can do that if we're using professional cameras or you know that sort of thing. Yeah, I mean, I think there sometimes is a gap there in knowledge that they see a creator doing things quickly on their phone versus you know a professional setup. I honestly don't see it that much. I think when people have come to me, they're generally speaking, they've worked with other professionals in the past or they've they've done it themselves, and now they've come because they're they've hit a wall or they just don't have the time, or whatever. Um, yeah, so I think it really is two kind of separate camps. Yeah, and, and we've started to do that and you know I've kind of we've discussed this before like I, we've overproduced things in the past. You know, now we we've started to use the phone more, um, for client work and, look, we're still doing the professional camera stuff for like long form and brand videos and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1:But there's a place for us using the phone too, to give that super quick turnaround. Like, hey, we shot a complete in-camera brand. You know, like little social edit. You just need to uh put captions in or whatever and you're ready to post and like we send it to them on dropbox right then. Yeah, so we've been doing that ourselves.
Speaker 1:Like it works for certain things, uh, but if you're getting into intensive editing, like b-roll montages and that sort of thing, you know that's generally speaking we're going to pull that into non-linear editing, something like da vinci or premiere. Uh, we're, we're, we're pretty much exclusive. We're exclusively on da vinci now. Uh, da vinci resolve studio um, where I'd been on premiere for a long time, probably over a decade. I made that switch a couple years ago and have not looked back, um, but yeah, there's most people when they've come to me they're they to me. They kind of have that understanding that it's not social and they've come to me for a reason. But there is still that little kind of bridge in how quick things take place as you're talking.
Speaker 2:What's coming to mind is going back to the other point of today's discussion of research. What research looks like on our end is and I'm realizing, as we're having this conversation, that I'm doing a lot of research for free geo, or you know as ai optimization. Uh, we, I will put the research in in to the proposal as a way of saying you know, this is what we see, this is what we see going on out there, this is how we're seeing you not fit into that, and here's our plan forward to do it. And it's like I know there are industries where people pay for that, you know, and probably in my industry as. And it's like I know there are industries where people pay for that, you know, and probably in my industry as well. It's just, it's so not the standard for me to say, yeah, you know, hey, uh, okay, yeah, you reached out, you want to. You want to do some website marketing? Uh, okay. So for us to do the initial research is going to be $1,500. And then we'll write a proposal for you.
Speaker 2:It's like you know, either I'm not working with the right type of people that would honor that right, because it's primarily business owners and that's so foreign to them. They're like I'm going to pay you to write a proposal for me. But you know, perhaps if you're working with a fortune 500, fortune 1000 company, that's common because all their vendors do it. You have to pay to do the research, so you understand how you can write the proposal. And so where I see this showing up a little bit on the web dev side is uh, we will sometimes just charge for the, the research phase, which involves the wire frame, so a lot of iterations going back and forth to make all the decisions, and there have been times when I've either they or us, like we've decided to not actually pursue the project.
Speaker 2:But they can take that wire frame, which is is essentially research. It's like everything, it's the blueprint and you can shop that around and get design quotes, and so that's really ideal for us. But I'm noticing through today's topic that there's a lot of clients are getting a lot of freebies from us, and it's a reminder for me to maybe go back and take a look at that. You know, like before the project even starts, we're doing, we're, we're putting. It's like hours are just going out into the black hole, right, because there's no guarantee that you're going to get the project. So yeah, it's an interesting seesaw.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's, I guess I see both sides of it. It's like okay, cost of doing business, right, yeah, making the proposal to get the business is part of it. It reminds me of Nick Schiffer, tyler Grace, co-host of the the modern craftsman podcast. They, um, they made a like a master class. I guess, uh, like an educational series about selling pre-construction as a service. Right, because that's another thing. Rampant in the building industry is and you'll see it on the letters on people's trucks free estimates, free quotes, you know, and their argument is like look, this is taking a huge amount of time out of your, your schedule. You know if you do, if you do four to five free estimates a week, you know times, you know four for the month and so on, like it's a full-time job. You're pushing yeah, you're pushing out a ton of uh, free stuff for maybe a five percent or ten percent of closing closed work yeah, so they're proposed.
Speaker 1:They've proposed like, hey, charge for this. And it's like, exactly like you said, you're handing them a wireframe that you can go shop this and have someone else build it If you find someone else to build it cheaper. They're effectively saying the same thing, like, hey, get all the documents together, everything that's going to take, and then that's the clients. Whether they choose to build with you or not, they have all the information ready. So if they go shop that to someone else and they find someone else who's 10 cheaper, they can go build with them. But the work's been done in great detail. Yeah, so they've had I guess they've had, you know, pretty good success with that.
Speaker 1:Um, a lot of people have, you know, bought the course and then, in turn, you know, told them like, hey, it's, this has totally changed my business rather rather quickly, you know this. This course has only been out like six months or something. Um, so like it's changing in the construction industry, which is an industry that's known for sort of uh, not really changing too much, at least on the residential side. I think the commercial side is much more uh, corporatized and you know the the expenses are expected to get things done in a certain way. So I think there's something to be said about that. Um, in our industry, for sure, to your point, there's and I've done, I guess, in our like for video I can make like a boiler plate, pdf deck that sort of spells out you know this type of edit is, you know, generally speaking, this type, you know this amount of hours or this kind of budget or whatever. But every, every job is so specific it does require some like hey, I got to sit down and put this all together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're now starting to use a little bit of automation to do some of this work and we have some good tools that have AI built into them. Now, too, that is speeding up the research phase for us. But, yeah, I really love that idea. In fact, you just gave me a new idea of maybe you know kind of doing something similar to what, uh, what the guys at um, modern craftsmen are doing, where you know, because a web like a good, the difference between a good website and a bad website is having a plan going into the website. And it's the same thing as, like, you can build a house, or you can build a house with like a plan, like a strategy. You have the rooms where you want them to be, you have the features in the house that you want. It's not someone coming along and just giving you a templatized house, right.
Speaker 2:And same thing with websites, where you can go to Squarespace, you can go to Wix, you can go to HubSpot.
Speaker 2:There are a lot of like website builders. But, again, do you want to just use those templates, uh, or do you want to actually have a website that performs? It's a, it's another, it's an extension of your sales team, you know. And so to offer that as a service, uh, doing the, the research, the, the wireframe, the consultation on what conversion possibilities look like, conversion rate optimization and all of this stuff, that is the service and it's the service we're doing for free, essentially right now. But to just button that up and then sell it and say you can give this to your designer, who's not trained as a marketer, and have them design a Squarespace website for you or Webflow or whatever, and I think there's there's a good value there, maybe even for those listening today some and you know, in the past we've, you know, we've talked about this packaging up, having a product for a service business, and I think that's what you're just alluding to with what Nick is doing, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, web development seems to be a very close parallel because of exactly what you said. You want the plan before you start to build, so I think that's a reasonable thing. You can probably test out. Yeah, test the market on it, but it's stiff competition because probably no one else is doing that. Yeah, but it puts a competition because probably no one else is doing that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah well.
Speaker 1:It puts a premium on your time. You know some people will respect that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think on your end you could. Yeah, I guess it would be difficult because you don't know like the shoot locations and like the angles and the lighting, all that Like there's so much to consider. I guess you would have to almost be, you'd almost have to go general to a degree like best practices, and then kind of boil it down to a specific Scope that they've given you or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, even even on Hollywood production level, pre-production is still an Approximate guess of what's gonna happen yeah, you know, it's like it's still. It's still. You can't. And that's this in the I'm rambling because I'm of course pre-production and Hollywood. You know shoots, you know they, generally speaking, run like clockwork. But video, just the nature of filming on on location with actors, with that sort of thing, things go wrong. You know the torrential rain in this area for five days before you got there for shoot, everything's flooded yeah you need a new location, like whatever.
Speaker 1:I'm just using that as an example and I'm not.
Speaker 1:I'm not comparing what we do to hollywood, but like there's so much that you cannot factor until you're there yeah uh, so it is very, especially with on location stuff in studio, a little different, uh, very, very predictable outside of maybe a city-wide blackout or something which nobody's worried about. That, uh, video production at that point, um, so yeah, I I don't know, I'm sure there is some sort of I think it'd be more on the consulting side, like, like you said, just like, hey, this is what general best practice, here's how you could take this, here's what you could do with it. This would be my general approach direction to it.
Speaker 2:People want us to do it great. Yeah, I mean, I guess there is yeah, but again, do you want to be doing that kind of work, Right, I think you? You, you know that the, the advisement, the consulting, it's a lot of brain work, but not a lot of like pixel pushing, as I call it, right, Like you're not sitting for hours designing or editing something. But it does require to us to use a different part of our brain that we don't actually talk a lot about on this show.
Speaker 2:we always we tend to talk about like how we create or the creative aspects of it, but a lot of what we do is advisement, and I I honestly I think that's the difference between good and great, uh, or even like good and better, like it's just to have that have, the person that has the experience, has the you can lean on.
Speaker 2:Hey, this is how we've seen it done in the past, or this is how we've done it in the past and that is really valuable to people, because that's honestly where we are in our career. You know that's one of our advantages over people newer in career. You know like they may be really great editing a video, they may be really great delivering results to on a campaign, but, um, what, where is the ceiling on that? Where you know what's the, is it just you're really good at using tools or, uh, is there a? Is there a partnership? A partnership that's been established and there's a working relationship that leans on our experience, and I think in the beginning it may seem like, well, it's okay, I don't need somebody with experience, but the longer that program goes, the more adversity that comes from it, the more creativity and experience I think will shine.
Speaker 2:And so certainly it's project by project, but yeah yeah, yeah, um, but I will say for the so we're talking, we we were going into research, what was it? What was the three?
Speaker 1:Time research and iteration yeah time, research and iteration.
Speaker 2:I would say that time and research. I think we're able to get some of that time back in more efficient research with AI. I'm seeing that now, even with our proposals, the proposals are really being fine-tuned by AI at this point as well, and so that's really sped things up. But the iterations it's still a real thing. In fact, part of what my afternoon looks like today is working on a couple of projects that have iterations waiting, and I think that is the area of our of projects that have iterations waiting, and you know, I think that is the area of our work. That's just really hard. You just really can't avoid it, unless you just plan on sticking it bullseye every time the first time, which is like impossible to do, right. So, yeah, I think we've got one logo in. I hope this doesn't make us sound like we're not talented, but over the almost two decades of doing this, we've stuck the landing once on a logo.
Speaker 1:Without tweaks no tweaks.
Speaker 2:He loved it, just fell in love with it immediately. The first one, and that was it. It was the most profitable logo project ever because we had packed it and all this other stuff we made good was it? It was the most profitable logo project ever because we had packed in all this other stuff. We made good on it. But we ended up doing business cards and email signatures and some other things too, because we had extra budget left over. But yeah, that's just to say that the iterative aspects of the creative field are such that they really need to be considered on the front end. I think otherwise you you risk losing, losing interest in the project. You're no longer profitable. The the work might suffer.
Speaker 1:You know, the reputation could suffer, stuff like that so I had a professor at pittsburgh state, um, and this is no disrespect to him, I can't think of his name, oh, and maybe it'll come to me but uh, it was editing class, um and he said and this is advice I've always taken with me he said always save your original edit and make a new timeline for each following edit, so v1, v2, v3, v4, that way. And then that sounds simple and it is simple, but it like it could be really easy to just log in, work on the same timeline, make the changes and then the client go. You know what, yeah, I like that first one better, or I like the second one better. It's very easy for them to sort of revert back. So that's just a kind of a rule to implement.
Speaker 1:If you're an editor listening to this, yeah, if you, if you're not doing it already, I think it is pretty common practice. But he said more often than not he'd make two, three, four, whatever amount of revisions. More often than not the client would go back to the original edit and pick that. I've never experienced this, um. I've never experienced them going back to the original, and I'm this is generally when you get into the multiple versions. It's corporate.
Speaker 1:You're working for a corporate client. There's a lot of chefs in the kitchen and you get to those five, six, seven plus versions of something. There's no going back, right? I've personally never experienced it and I'm not sure I think his name is Charlie Roberts. Anyway, sorry, I think experience it and I'm not sure I think his name is charlie roberts. Anyway, sorry, I think. Uh, anyway, I I don't know where his clients were coming from or whatever, where they go back to the original version, but that is something that I've always done is saved every version, uh, with a new timeline, so you can always revert back if someone does. It's never happened as of july 24th 2025 but, you never know.
Speaker 1:It saves you a ton of work if it did happen yeah, that's good but, yeah, there's a ton of, there's a ton of revision work in video. Video, um, especially especially in the corporate world um, down to like the way someone looks and asking you to do things that are like, oh my god, like what? And I'm not going to get into specifics, but like you can use your imagination about you know the way people see themselves and making it effectively your problem to fix those things right right it can be.
Speaker 1:It can be kind of comical, um, but those are things you have to.
Speaker 2:Those are things you have to do when people see themselves on camera yep, yeah, yeah, one thing I had to deal with is I think I think you know I've mentioned we do a little um business owner interviews, uh, so we'll come on at a similar format, as this is not a podcast, but we come on and I just interview, like we write the article for the client and then we write the interview questions, and then we give them the interview questions and then we ask them to interview questions on um, and then we film it and we use that as a as an asset and they're really kind of. They're not meant to be high production, it's really just about getting their message out. Anyway, we have one one such instance where the client, uh, her makeup was darker on her face than on her neck, right, and so she wanted me to try to edit that somehow.
Speaker 2:And I'm like I don't have the skills for that. That's like I don't know how to do skin. I don't even know if that's possible to not affect your face but darken up your neck right and so yeah, with that one example, I can imagine, over the years, the, the, the requests that you've gotten.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, and it look. Here's the truth it is possible, it is cost and resource prohibitive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cause a lot of times it comes down to frame by frame and then frame. I mean especially especially 10, 15 years ago I'm talking. But, like, even now things have gotten a lot better about tracking and spatial awareness and you know, sort of making it so you don't have to do things frame by frame by frame, taking out microphones, oh interesting. So lav mics I it's become pretty acceptable these days to have a lav mic, especially with the coming of dji mics and road mics, like where they actually clip the mic like a big block on their shirt. Yeah, it's become acceptable to see that and it's part of it and nobody cares because it gives you much better audio.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 10 years ago plus you know, seeing just the lav mic, and we'd always try to hide it in a tie if the guy had a suit on, or hide it somewhere. But sometimes you couldn't, especially with women, you know, and dresses and not having a place. And sometimes you, you just see it every so slightly somewhere and you'd put it there because you didn't want her hair to get in it or whatever. Yeah, so we'd have to go in and remove it because in nine times out of ten it was an internal thing, not a client request, I'll say that, um, and it would. It literally became a frame by frame going in and I had two programs, because in photoshop, cloning is pretty, you know, pretty easy to do and you can do it in after effects too, but it's it's a little different. Uh, I got better at it doing it all in after effects, but, yeah, I can't tell you the amount of hours. So they were paying me to do that for something the client didn't even ask for and most people don't know, they're not going to.
Speaker 2:The whole microphone thing is perplexing to me, because you see it, you see, people know you have to amplify your voice in some way. You're doing a video and you see it on. You see, like you, people know you have to amplify your voice in some way. You're doing a video and you see it in the news. You see it like, and so that's really interesting. So when you, when you, when you go frame by frame, it's essentially your, your, that frame is an image, then Right, and you take that image into After Effects or into Photoshop, you, you clone out the mic and then you just bring that back in. Yeah, that's fascinating.
Speaker 1:Sometimes, depending on what it was, you could just go into Photoshop, clone out the area, make it a PNG or transparent, put it over the thing and if there's no movement it kind of lines up it works out great, everybody's happy.
Speaker 1:But if there's any movement, it kind of lines up, it works out, great, everybody's happy. But if there's any sort of you know just a little, then sometimes you could track it and not go frame by frame and it would work out great. Sometimes it would just work out and other times it wouldn't. And yeah, I've drawn a line in the sand. I don't really do that sort of thing anymore. And if people make those sort of requests outside of like, like I said, where it lines up and it works out and I don't spend more than an hour on it, but I will say, hey, this is cost prohibitive, I'm not doing it. Uh, you can. There's a lot of other people. You could probably reach out to her graphic specialists.
Speaker 2:But yeah I'm just telling you, it's resourcing cost prohibitive right it's not a hollywood movie where you have boom mics like, well, you can use boom mics, but boom mics, boom and we're getting.
Speaker 1:I guess we're getting into the weeds here. But boom mics can, they're great because you don't see lab mics on someone but they're also going to pick up like airplanes and they're going to pick up fucking. I mean they, they pick up a lot of other shit. So, unless you're doing a ton of audio processing on the back end, labs are the way to go. Labs have just kind of become a like you still see boom mics in hollywood, but like hollywood level indie films, that sort of thing, but you're just not seeing a ton of them on like the type of work I do. I mean, I'm sure there's people that use them, but you don't see them nearly, nearly as much because they they come with their own set of challenges right, right, yeah.
Speaker 2:And to have a have a mic right next to your face. It just makes sense. Yeah, you know so yeah, I brought us out a little bit of a rabbit hole there, but some of that was just my curiosity than anything else.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and things have gotten easier, but it's still not like a plug and play, click and it all goes away thing. It's still a you know rabbit hole.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that's a good example, though, of the hidden side of video editing. I mean, these are things that I know I've never thought of, and I've hovered around your industry for the better part, like most of my professional career uh, worked with next to and around videographers, and I never considered people wanting to remove things from their video like you. Just give me four examples, so that's again, that's more of the hidden side of the work that you do, and so that was, yeah, good example for the today's topic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I mean there's, there's, I'm sure, and for future conversations we'll cover more, more, more project examples will come to mind, but there's, there's certainly a plethora of them for, you know, unimportant things, yeah, that take a lot of time to do to appease a boss or a client. But yeah, I think that's a good, kind of good, place to kind of start wrapping this up. Is there anything you um final thoughts or anything you've got going on you want to chat? Chat about?
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, I think I think a final thought on the topic would be um, you know, sometimes our point of contact is sort of stuck in the middle between the vendor and their boss, right? So what I see sometimes is our POC. They're really shy about sending over the edit because they don't agree with the edit, but they have to communicate the edit because someone above them wants that, and so it's like they're like oh, we know, this might be a lot of work, this might be really a pain, but thank you so much. It's like because they need to communicate that to you, but they know, it's like they're asking a lot. And so I do have a soft spot for people, for people in that position that I, if I can sniff out, that's what's happening. We tend to be much more lenient because we'll probably never speak to their boss and we're speaking, you know, and we're, we have the relationship with, with our point of contact. So I think that's a, that's a part of this, this stuff that we're talking about. But, yeah, no, I think in general, I'm uh, I'm putting myself into like, uh, in position for maybe to take an actual vacation.
Speaker 2:So, um, going out to oregon and gonna see a buddy, we're gonna do some hiking around mount hood and the the um, the, the valley, the whole area. Check out portland a little bit. It's been a decade since I've been to Portland and I don't know I mean the headlines I've seen. I don't know if I've really missed much in Portland, but I know there's still some funkiness and some cool neighborhoods there. So looking forward to it. Yeah, hopefully, all that stuff's over-exaggerated. Yeah, I hope so. I mean downtown it looks like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I hope so, I mean downtown looks like yeah, we'll see, I'll report back. Boots on the ground yeah, boots on the ground. Speaking of microphones, I'll be dialing in and giving a report. No, just kidding. But what about you? What's going on with me? Yeah, final thoughts on everything around this topic is just like anything. You're coming from a field, like a client coming to a creative. You're coming from a field where you're an expert, chances are, and there's a bunch of stuff about your industry that people don't understand. You know, and it might be, how much time things take or what have you. So if you, if you kind of keep that in the back of your head, um, like, we're all coming from a place of like, hey, you don't fully understand what I do, I don't fully understand what you do. Let's talk, yeah, let's learn about, I'll learn about you, you learn about me, and then you kind of go from there yeah so I guess keeping that open mind it's as important.
Speaker 1:I haven't really really watched anything trying to think we have some do some fun projects coming up in August. F1 picks up again this week after the summer break. I think it's at Spa, I think that's Belgium. I think that's Belgium, I'm not sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm not sure, I think it is Pretty sure. So that's, I might try to watch that this weekend. It's so hard to just because it takes place so early. Yeah, it's so early I usually miss. I'm used to american sports not happening till night. I get I know it's because of the time.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, I've been dealing with that with the tour. Like the tour right now is almost done. Uh, for the day, the tour de france is almost done for the day. Right now it's already 11.
Speaker 1:Yeah Right, you and I are going to meet in person today, yep, chat about lots of things business, life, so on. I have made a personal goal that a couple times a month I'm going to meet with try to meet with different individuals who I want to pick their brain, whether it's via Zoom call or in person, and not make it like a podcast thing but just talk about business or personal life, whatever I just that's going to be my sort of professional development, I think for the rest of the year is just try to get a couple of meetings in a month. Good idea.
Speaker 1:And try to go through that approach. So that's my kind of resolution. I like it yeah.
Speaker 2:I like it. There's a book I'll try to find the title later, but it's like Dinner Mastermind or something like that it's called where this guy, he grew his business exponentially from inviting people to dinner Not just one person, maybe, meeting three, bringing three people together. There's four of them total and no one really knows each other. Three, three people together, there's four of them total and no one really knows each other. And he said that from it, uh, lots of, lots of opportunities came his way and he would just he would do them once a month or whatever. And they got bigger and bigger and then, before he knew it, he basically created his own bni. You know, um, yeah, by bringing people together over casual food and maybe drink, but then, in talking about business and life and just so, what you said brings that to mind, that's essentially what you're doing, but more on a one-on-one, maybe without the food part too, yeah, depending.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no, that's interesting. Yeah, I would like to read that.
Speaker 2:I try to find the book. It's at home, but yeah, yeah, I would like to read that I'll try to find the book. It's at home. Awesome, nice Good, all right. 29 is in the books.
Speaker 1:29 in the books. Thanks for stopping by everybody. Thank you.
