Add Social unrest to social distancing… WFH is here to stay

[Oliver Peters]

Of course, all this WFH stuff is fine and dandy until it doesn’t work… AGAIN.

Started off today – on a day where I really needed to get a head start – to find that somewhere across the country selective servers were down (back up now at least). So no Frame, no Slack, no Adobe. Fortunately the Adobe issue didn’t impede running the apps this time. But that meant I couldn’t see the client’s notes for revisions and didn’t have the normal location to which I would upload files.

At least it all came back up in time, but it just shows how fragile the whole system is.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Oliver Peters] “But that meant I couldn’t see the client’s notes for revisions and didn’t have the normal location to which I would upload files.”

This would have happened at the office too, presumably.

[Oliver Peters]

[Jeremy Garchow] “This would have happened at the office too, presumably.”

I’m not saying it wouldn’t. In fact I’m working from the office and this wasn’t a localized problem. But as we set up systems that are more dependent on the internet and all servers working 100% 24/7/365 we run an increasing risk of failure.

Obviously in this case, FedEx wouldn’t be a solution either ☺ Ultimately it’s because technology has encouraged/enabled clients to avoid sufficient advance planning and push the envelope with just-in-time production and delivery schedules.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com

[Scott Witthaus]

Being in the commercial world mostly, I have been working in a modified WFH scenario for years. Granted, it’s a much smaller amount of footage and approvals are “email-able”, but I try to make the process as “dumbed-down” as possible and I am the only editor. Fed-Ex me the files. I cut proxy versions from home and email my first versions. Before Covid-19, take the show on the road to the agency for creative team tweaks (either my gear or their in-house suite). Go to finishing houses as needed. Salt and pepper to taste.

In the Covid world, I do everything at home with no agency visit. Zoom meetings with screen share allow the creatives to comment on an edit. Zoom playing video from FCPX is far from ideal, but it can be slogged through if necessary.

I just finished a doc that had to have color and sound done remotely. Far from ideal (thankfully the director got one color session in before everything shut down, so at least the colorist got a start on the look we wanted). The sound mix approval was a bit of a pain, simply do to environment and lack of quality monitoring.

[Don Scioli]

I’ve had a home studio since 1998, strange people in my house, no commuting, no paying $500 an hour for CMX, then Avid suites, any distraction were a welcome break. And I own my own equip which I can write off. Not too shabby.