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Approval Process and Work Environment
This doesn’t have to deal with any technical issues but more just environmental issues.
As most of you know, working in a corporate environment around others that don’t understand video as much can be difficult. I just want to hear some of your thoughts, advice and alternatives on how to overcome some of the difficulties.Approval
A co-worker was recently promoted as my Supervisor and then I still have a Marketing Director to get videos approved by. This has created more chaos in the approval process because now I need to send video to my Supervisor and then send it to the Marketing Director. Then beyond that I need to send it to our Safety Department as well as Project Managers and VPs (which have a major delay in returning feedback). So the process goes like this: Capture video, cut video, create titles and animations, edit audio, export. Send to Supervisor. Supervisor gives feedback, then I send to the Marketing Director, I make changes, then I relay changes back to Supervisor so she is kept in the loop. As well as sending to Safety, PMs and VPs. Anyone have a similar issue and tips on how I can mold this approval process in a better way?Titles
Premiere doesn’t have any sort of plug-in to help with spell check that I know of. So one of my recent requirements is placing text in a word document to mitigate any spelling errors. I haven’t used this method too long but it seems like a more difficult process because Corporate life tends to add way more text than needed. Adding it into a Word Document doesn’t really help with the timing at all, it just ensures better spelling. Any tips on how to integrate this method better?I’m sure I’ll have more issues that come up.
Thank you,
A
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5 Replies
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Well, the approvals thing is not uncommon in corporate or government situations. The main problem I see is that your approval process is linear, hierarchical, and undefined, and they need to “flatten” it to one step where everyone sees it at the same time and gives their two cents and then one designated person makes the final decisions on what feedback to act on.
In your case if it was me, I’d post the video on a private YouTube or Vimeo page or on a corporate server, then make a group email to the list of stakeholders who have a say, give them that link. Preferably, a link that “expires” in one week, to put a clock on the decision making process… Then ask that they come to a consensus between themselves and tell ONE PERSON, who then tells you.
Really, this is a failure of management; IMO, there should be one person designated as the point person and interface to the stake-holders, and neither the ex-peer or the boss above seems to have voluntarily assumed that role yet. That’s a bad sign.
Another point I’ll make as a writer, editor and producer, is that using a Treatment stage before the script stage eliminates a lot of the changes that will otherwise come and hit you out of nowhere, at the end, there they cost the most time and/or money to fix. If all the decision-makers had spent the time in pre-production to go over and work thru the treatment, where changes cost nothing, and everyone gets a good grasp of the project, there should be few surprises in post.
As to the spellcheck issue… really, Prem doesn’t do that? FCPX does….
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Thank you for the reply! I feel we are on the same page on this. It needs to be a more streamlined process. Again, thank you so much for the reply and I will try to make changes to this approval process!
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I would ask why your supervisor isn’t the one taking it up to marketing.
As for titles, if they’re for creating lower thirds, once you proof it in Word, save it as a .txt file and open it in Illustrator, choose your font, and any other graphics you want to give it. Photoshop works too, but illustrator is vector based and gives you better control of your fonts. If you want to add bitmapped graphics, create them in photoshop and then open it in illustrator.
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John,
Thank you for your reply. It is definitely something I think I need to sit down and write out my concerns for and give reasoning to my thoughts. These replies have definitely helped me out!
I will have to start using your method for creating lower thirds. It sounds like a pretty rock solid solution.
Thanks again!
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You’re welcome Andrew, hope it all works out for ya.
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