Not sure where to post this

[Immanuel Morales]

hm i see what you mean, not sure if they’re professional enough to go and get the software in the first place though. In fact they may not even care enough to go to that extent. My concern is personally developing bad business habits.

Dead the Fed

[Joe Tombarello]

Dear Dead the Fed,

From what I gather, you have 3 jobs/responsibilities at your small television station in NYC. You are the commercial producer, head of graphics and a news package producer. This thread has given great tips for the commercial producer role (workflow checklists, Clip notes, etc.) but I would like to address your other two roles.

I understand where you’re coming from. Being overwhelmed and vacations are difficult etc. Due to an ever increasing workload and technical environment we are all slowly becoming the “one man band” or a “Swiss army knife” of production. You’re doing the right thing by asking your peers for input. We all want to become better at our craft. The only thing is, once you reach a certain point of competence, you can only improve through critical analysis of your creative method.

Get super critical of your time management and production workflows.

Organization is the obvious tool. Find your repetitious actions and find a way to automate them. (Keyboard shortcuts, different workflow methods etc.) Be aware of your daily routines, just because “It’s always been done it that way” doesn’t mean it can’t be improved upon. Sometimes the greatest time savers tend to be those that are too obvious to be noticed.

Also communicate your concerns to your superiors, as you stated in a previous post “they know that I’m overworked”. Communicate (don’t complain) and be constructive. It is in their best interest that you are not “overworked”.

Since AE is your weapon of choice, have you considered templating your most used after effects projects? Creating animation presets for your most commonly used effects? Anything you can do to save a keystroke/click adds up in your favor at the end of the day.

Bottom line: All this you forges you into being a stronger/faster producer, and that keeps working for you in your current job and the next.

Stay Human

JT

Joe Tombarello
Editor/Producer
WMUR-TV ABC-9
Manchester, NH
https://joetombarellomedia.ning.com/

“The motion picture is the canvas of the 21st century. We have yet to see our first Michelangelo, Magritte or Dali.”

[Immanuel Morales]

Thanks Joe,

I use tons of presets; if i didn’t the workload would CERTAINLY bring the quality down and disappoint people. I have presets and templates for everything from DVD menus to output formats. I also have found that being extremely organized is super helpful because I’m always juggling multiple projects so having my “img”, “ftg”, “out/ae”, “out/fcp”, etc.. folders help me handle that. By the way, i love osx’s color-coded folders.. so nice.

However, i can still improve. I will take your suggestion and bump it up another notch or two, see what i can actually handle in terms of running a tight ship. I don’t honestly know off the top of my head what or how I’m going to be improving, but perhaps that’s part of the problem; maybe i think I’ve reached the top of organization and expedience and yet there’s so much more! I will seek to become a cyborg-like commercial-producer/graphics-head/news-package-producer.

Dead the Fed