Sometimes, much of my work time is spent sitting around, awaiting others to furnish me with the necessary assets to get cracking on with a job. This, I hardly need point out, is time wasted. Such wastage usually occurs when clients, in a sense of haste to get things started, leave out important assets or information, believing that these are blanks that can be filled in later.
Such a belief is not necessarily bad, but since I’ve learned to work quickly and complete things in a timely and efficient manner, I’m usually ready before the client can catch up to me. “Here’s one I prepared earlier” is a phrase I use a lot, lately.
To combat this, I offer up a simple checklist of things that clients can run through before committing me to task:
Prepare As Much As You Possibly Can Don’t Phone Your Edits In Give Me Good Image Files Use The Right Compressor / Codec Don’t Make Me Wait Double-Check Everything Before Taking Action
Six simple rules. Allow me to elaborate:
1. Prepare As Much As You Possibly Can
If there’s one thing I find irritating, it’s starting on a project with almost nothing to go off. No script, no storyboards, no design guidelines … Sometimes, I’m told “Tom does something that looks cool.” This is not a good piece of direction. My job is to provide people what they want. Often, people don’t know exactly what they want, which is fine, but they need to give me something to work off of.
What I’m getting at, is that I need as much as possible in order to do my job. A good project brief needs to say more than “Do something cool.” It needs to convey to me, the animator/designer/artist/pixel-arranger, exactly what I need to be conveying to the audience. You may not know how it should look, but you definitely know a few things, such as a style or theme, the information to be delivered, the emotion that the audience should feel.
Now, to a large degree, I can work a lot of that out myself, but you need to push me in the right direction. It’s no good if I give you some titles that look like something out of Star Trek, if you’re making a period drama set in Ancient Egypt.
So give me as much – as much – as you can at the start the job. If you don’t know what to give me, then give me everything. Even if you do know what to give me, still give me everything, because maybe I do need to see that Youtube video that inspired a later scene that I’m not working on. I definitely want to read the script, lest I give you sci-fi pyramids (which is Stargate, come to think of it).
Here are the things I may typically need:
- Script
- Logos
- Design documents
- Images (Photos, graphics, etc)
- Fonts (often overlooked)
- Reference (images, videos, descriptions of that scene from that film)
Give me as much as you possibly can!
2. Don’t Phone Your Edits In
When I’m given footage to use, it might surprise you how often I’m given what I call ‘pre-placeholder’ edits. These aren’t placeholders by any standard — I’d prefer placeholders (or Tibors as I like to call them). Instead, it’s a random collection of footage vaguely corresponding to the correct theme of the piece.
Or – worse – a half-arsed edit that was given to me because of deadlines or other such pressures. These are the worst edits of all. One may be tempted to think that giving anything, regardless of its state of completion, is better than making me wait. And I do dislike waiting. But what I dislike even more is having to dig out a project I thought was completed, put in the new edit, requiring me to change timings of my work, and basically create more work that could have been avoided.
Although these days, I kind of like it when that happens. Because I charge for a minimum of 4 hours if this kind of thing happens, even if it takes an hour of my day (or less). So it’s in your (the client’s) best interest to avoid this, because it suits me just fine.
The bottom line here, is to get it right. If it’s not right, delay handing it to me so that you can get it right.
3. Give Me GOOD Image Files
*Sigh*
The number of times I’ve been furnished with lousy image files … Well, I wish I had a dollar for every occasion.
What I want is high resolution jpegs. I also want the original file, not something that’s been passed through Photoshop a thousand times.
For logos, I want (in order of preference):
- Vector Illustrator files in .ai or .eps format
- A PDF containing the logo(s) or graphic(s) in vector format (no bitmaps)
- A high resolution jpeg, with your logo on white backdrop
If you have a style guide available, I’ll take that too.
What I do not want is:
- Graphics images from your website. The resolution on your website is too low, and for my purposes, is just about unusable.
- Scans of your business card or office stationary.
- Highly compressed images. (Lots of artifacts, such as boxiness, ghosting, colour bleed … Don’t want it.)
- Logos or design elements on backgrounds other than white. If the background is busy, it’s difficult to separate the logo from its surroundings. Just get me the original, on white.
Now the question may be, at this time, as to why this is important? The answer is simple: because if you do not give me good image files, I’ll be forced to use what you give me, and if that means my work looks crap, two things will happen: 1) you may wish to give me a better image file, causing me to re-visit the work which in turn costs you money; and 2) you will think that I suck at what I do.
Now, if my work sucks, then I will take the appropriate blame (no one is harsher on my work than myself), but if my work sucks because of the images or assets provided to me … well, let’s just stop and think before apportioning blame.
4. Use The Right Compressor / Codec
People just don’t know how to encode video anymore. And now that H.264 is so proliferated around the interwebs, everyone thinks it is the codec to use.
Wrong.
H.264 is an ‘end-product’ codec, because the compression is so heavy, hence the small file size. By ‘end-product’, I mean it should be reserved for the final, completed, nothing left to be done to it file; the file you upload to Vimeo or YouTube.
For nearly every file that I should receive, I should receive uncompressed footage, or at least using a Lossless Codec. This results in large files, but that’s important, because it means that there are no compression artifacts. For best results, a Quicktime .mov file with the Animation codec works well (and, as a bonus, does not require preview renders in Final Cut).
However, some discretion is allowed. If, for example, I am given a rough-cut whose purpose is to illustrate aspects of the video, but does not contain any footage that I need to use, then an H.264 is (I say with caution) acceptable.
The reason for this is because, well, let’s look at jpeg as a format. Grab an image, any image, and open it in Photoshop. Now save it as a new jpg file. Close and reopen the file, and save it again as a new file. Repeat a few times, then compare it to your original file. Can you spot the difference? Every time you save a new version, your file gets compressed again, and this effect is cumulative. And (this is the important bit) the effects are worse for video files. This is because typical compression for a video is based off of ‘keyframes’.
A keyframe, in this sense, is a reference frame, such that for the first 10 frames of your video, the first frame is uncompressed, or lightly compressed, and the 9 frames following are compressed on the basis that they are similar to that first frame. Some codecs allow you to set how often keyframes are placed in your video, and if you are using a codec that has this feature, then it’s probably a file format that I don’t want. That’s actually a decent rule of thumb for this case, but if you absolutely must, set this value to 1, meaning that every frame is a keyframe, and thus minimising the compression.
In return, the file you will receive from me will be either uncompressed or have the lightest possible compression. If file size is a concern, I sometimes use a Quicktime codec called PNG, whose compression is light, but still enough to keep file size down. As such, this codec is acceptable to be provided to me, but please use it only if you are concerned with file size (such as with transmitting the file electronically).
5. Don’t Make Me Wait
This seems to be unavoidable at the best of times, so don’t take this too literally. But I mention it because I want you to think a little before handing things over. There have been times where I’ve been asked to do as much as possible, working around the fact that the one file that would make everything come together is as yet unavailable. If one were to apply logic to this notion, it means that I basically boondoggle (verb, definition #5) until I receive that file, in which time I have to feverishly work my arse off to meet the deadline.
Needless to say, this is inefficient. As always, I work best when my mind is focused on one project only, without having to switch gears and focus on other things. So if I have to put a project on hold to wait for files, then that will of course take my mind away from the project, and kill the flow and even the enthusiasm I would normally have on a project.
This isn’t limited to files, either. Sometimes I’ve had to wait on a script. As I write this, I have just received a script for which I was bugging the client for 8 months! Now I have about a week to churn out work that I could have been doing for all that time.
Again, some discretion is involved. For example, if you need to put an edit together to include in the package you provide me, probably best to take that extra half-day to get the edit right and send me everything all at once. Again, efficient.
6. Double-Check Everything Before Taking Action
When people view things, there is a gut reaction. Maybe something looks wrong, or feels wrong. And my usual advice is that the gut reaction is almost always right. Almost!
Now, I don’t wish to get on my high horse, but I sometimes find that people are quick to cut in with their opinion, sometimes almost immediately proclaiming “the framing is wrong,” or “the colour has to change,” or even “is that it? It looks unfinished!” (In these cases, it usually is unfinished). Things of that nature. Sometimes they’re right, but personally, I think it comes from a position of arrogance. Sometimes, however, they’re too quick for their own good. Things need to be viewed in the proper context. If that context isn’t there, then some imagination is required.
In general, the best thing one can do is to watch it again. Think it over. Gut reactions are there for a reason, and should never be ignored. But it should not be the only driving factor in criticism. My advice is to wait and watch: find out if there is a reason for the framing; wait to see if the colours resolve into what you expect to see.
In short, wait until you have all the information you can muster before giving your criticisms or appraisals. And remember that something your gut told you was cool may also have to go.
However, this rule doesn’t just apply to criticism. It applies to everything (particularly if distance is involved). Got files to send? Double-check that everything is there. Your superior made a comment that you have to pass on to me? Make sure you understand exactly what that comment was about before telling me. Don’t know the level of completion for the video you’re watching? Ask me before freaking out that it looks unfinished. And proofread everything!
Now that you know what all these things are about, go back to the [top] and go over that checklist. It isn’t a form in the sense that you can submit these things to me. It’s not for my purposes, it’s for yours. Are all those items checked? No? Then go over everything that still needs to be checked. Now you may send it to me.