OT: How do you present work-in-progress?

[Herb Sevush]

[Walter Soyka] ” how do you present your WIPs to clients or stakeholders? “

I’ve been using Kollaborate for the last few years and find it fits my needs, for all level of clients, in terms of quality of image, ease of use for clients, and notating & exporting notes in a useful manor.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf

[Greg Janza]

[Walter Soyka] “how do you present your WIPs to clients or stakeholders?”

I use frame.io and it’s made the wip process much easier.

[Walter Soyka] “What do you hope to get out of a review? “

Feedback that either confirms or denies that I’m on the right track with the overall structure of the piece.

[Walter Soyka] “What level of roughness or polish do you aim to provide early on?”

I try to polish as much as possible before showing since time has proven again and again that many clients just can’t see past the mistakes.

[Walter Soyka] “How much does color/mix affect your WIPs? “

With LUT’s the color process is pretty simple and then i do a rough mix in premiere to make even the early versions easy to listen to.

[Walter Soyka] “What process or guidelines do you put around review?”

No guidelines. I simply encourage clients to make all comments on the frame.io website.

I Hate Television. I Hate It As Much As Peanuts. But I Can’t Stop Eating Peanuts.
– Orson Welles

[Bill Davis]

Great question.

The client communication pipeline has changed as much as any other aspect of my practice over the past 10 years.

Lots of factors in play…

My “first drafts” now look very much like my finished work used to.

In my FCP X workflow, my Browser footage universally gets a fast “base grade” for a pleasing, viewable watching experience. And that flows into every subsequent project.

So visably “unpolished” quality video is gone now.

For some clients, that’s nothing but excellent. For others, I find myself getting in the weeds of minuscule “pick at it for perfection” discussions WAY too early in the process. (That “should we use a comma or semi-colon here” discussion can seriously wait, folks – it’s just a draft!) or worse, the comp gets posted around the company for review – and somebody cluelessly slaps it in a deck and USES it!

Yikes.

I mostly use Frame.io and LOVE it.

It really helps to keep the first line review pool contained, since the early access group isn’t just going to a “common space” like a YouTube or Vimeo.

But even faster, easier feedback notes linked to the frames in discussion – is not always the same as BETTER feedback. And sadly, the old system where only internal players conditioned to viewing work in progress – got work in progress – Is kinda over. Now EVERYONE wants to weigh in on the video.

So if you let ANY draft file out “into the wild” and people treat it like any other attachable video. And it’s GONE.

I find I tend to use a LOT of screen overlays these days at the early stages of distributing work for review to insure stakeholders don’t mistake drafts for finals.

Just some thoughts.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Rich Rubasch]

We’ve been using Screenlight.tv and it’s served its purpose. I also put links on our server and send simple links for review. They are pretty far along unless I specify it is just for review.

Rich

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media Inc.
Video Production, Post, Studio Sound Stage
Founder/President/Editor/Designer/Animator
https://www.tiltmedia.com

[Charlie Austin]

[Walter Soyka] “A rather broad question, but how do you present your WIPs to clients or stakeholders?
“

mini DV Tapes via messenger… Oh, wait, we stopped doing that a just few years ago. Hollywood baby!

Currently we use studio-security approved things like WireDrive, Aspera etc. Or, we use a fiber network to the studios for live playback/editing and they can capture if needed. If it’s live it’s 1080, uploaded stuff is 1080 or 720 mp4’s. Regardless of the source NLE it’s mixed well and has no crappy temp GFX. As we do mostly offline, the pix are watermarked anyway, but when we are “finishing” it all needs to look… final.

Would love to use Frame I/O but… Hollywood. It’s hard to turn the Titanic

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~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~\”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.\”~
~I still need to play Track Tetris sometimes. An old game that you can never win~
~\”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented\”~

[Kevin Rag]

+1 for screenlight.tv
It’s pretty simple for clients to use and very reasonably priced. Was using the free version of frame.io before. When I wanted to upgrade, screenlight seemed to give best bang for the buck. Been using it for over a month now:)

K

[Bret Williams]

We’ve literally been putting “work in progress” in the upper corner of all drafts.

_______________________________________________________________________
https://BretFX.com FCPX Plugins & Templates for Editors & Motion Graphics Artists

[Andrew Kimery]

[Charlie Austin] “Would love to use Frame I/O but… Hollywood. It’s hard to turn the Titanic”

This probably goes back more to your previous point about security being paramount (no pun intended) rather than just being stubborn. Back in the day when I worked as a vault manager all of our assets from studios (which of course had code names) were kept inside of a locked safe inside of a locked room in the back of our locked media vault which was inside our locked offices (which took up the whole floor).

Even then that wasn’t enough. On one project we had to send all the assets back at the end of the day and then the studio would send them to us again each morning. Crazy paranoid.

[Charlie Austin]

[Andrew Kimery] “Crazy paranoid.”

Yeah, that is the real situation, and it’s not like they haven’t got reasons to be that way. Some smaller clients will use “consumer grade” sites, but the biggies… no way. We get audited regularly, and some have former feds on their security teams. It’s… serious. 🙂

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~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~\”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.\”~
~I still need to play Track Tetris sometimes. An old game that you can never win~
~\”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented\”~

[Herb Sevush]

[Bill Davis] “In my FCP X workflow, my Browser footage universally gets a fast “base grade” for a pleasing, viewable watching experience. And that flows into every subsequent project.
“

This is a digression but I find this statement to be an interesting result of the, fairly recent, push for shooting log and raw. The idea that you needed to apply color correction to video footage to get a “pleasing, viewable watching experience” is fairly recent, and I’m not all that sure the benefits outweigh the effort. I hire a DP precisely because they know how to get a “pleasing” image in 709, no grading necessary. If I want to add some post color pizzaz I can, but for the most part the only thing all this LUTing around is getting me is some extra details in my highlights, which is what a DP is paid to control in the first place. I understand going to this extreme for a feature or a commercial, where post expense and effort are a minor part of the picture, but for most broadcast or corporate work, I don’t get it.

OK, the grumpy old man has said his piece, move on.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf