Glen Montgomery the Third
Posts tagged Life Lessons
The Human in the Machine Interview #1: Director David Smith
Apr 7th
I’m starting a new series of interviews with industry professionals to really focus on the relational aspects of the editorial process. Blog posts and bookshelves everywhere are flooded with technical information on the craft of editing, but there seems to be little out there on the human side of it all. Even though we hit all these keyboard shortcuts and plan out intricate workflows, what is at the heart of it all is spending 10-15 hours a day locked in a room, usually with other people, creating stuff. What makes those other people come back to your edit suite instead of walking down the hall to the next one? What keeps those other people from killing you, or what keeps you from killing them? Why do so many editors and directions reference a “psychic relationship” where they instinctively know how the other would proceed with an edit? Some of my questions don’t even pertain to editing alone, but all work that involves relationships and collaboration. I think, especially in school, so much of the curriculum is geared toward the tech side instead of the human side. Unfortunately, I know too many great guys who are wicked machine operators but fall More >
Learned the Hard Way #1: Output Follow Through
Aug 6th
You have spent days, even weeks, on your edit. You lived in the footage, heard it in your dreams, might even buy stock in the company you edited it for; its that close to you. The client session went amazing, you made the revisions, and now they want to get it out there. Finally, you are home free. Time to set the computer up for lay-off to tape or maybe to compress a file that’s going to get posted to their website. You hit enter and go do a little arm in arm celebratory swing dance with the single receptionist on your way to smoke a cigar by the dumpster out back. Hazahh! The tape gets shipped out on time or the file gets uploaded successfully to your FTP site, now for margaritas.
Or this happens… Rewind! (Cue fast tape rewind sound effect)What I described above is not how this photo came about, but in a weird delusional way it might be. This was early on in my career, maybe even within the first 2 months. I had to make a couple text changes to a spot that my senior editor had cut. Something in the realm of “Buy 2 More >