Your Job Role – Collaboration

Video is becoming, if it’s not already, a part of every administrative job role. This chapter will show how any job role requires some knowledge to at least evaluate and critique video productions.

In this chapter, you will learn what specific jobs require the ability to edit a video. You will learn which roles in your organization edit videos, along with the specific job titles within a video production team.

The chapter also covers the vast area of collaboration between Final Cut Pro editors, both at a local level and collaborating globally.

You will learn techniques for collaboration as well as the actual setup and use of the various services and software applications designed for video collaboration. By the end of this chapter, you will have learned about the various job roles in a video production team as well as roles in the industry where video editing forms a major part. You will also be aware of the benefits and disadvantages...

Understanding the job roles in video production

The various roles in a video production team require not only capable people to fill them but also people who know how and where they fit in the pecking order.

The hierarchy of roles is likely to be the same in different-sized organizations, but smaller teams will have people taking on several roles, ultimately to the point that sole proprietors will be responsible for all the roles. Even in the sole proprietor’s case, it is important to know the roles and how they fit into the postproduction process.

In a full postproduction environment, there are two distinct teams that need to work together. The communication between these teams is usually between the producer and the senior video editor, each being the head of their respective team and the glue that binds the whole production together.

Since this is about teams, there will be a number of people involved in small-to-medium-sized organizations who will be responsible...

Exploring the industries that require video editors

There are various industries that require video editors: corporate, social media, feature films, documentaries, commercials, TV, trailers, music videos, and weddings.

You will be surprised at how many different types of video editing jobs you can specialize in, and each industry has its advantages and disadvantages. Hopefully, the following list will help you decide which industry type will suit you the best by explaining the differences between them.

Corporate

The corporate realm is not an area that you would immediately think of as the most common employer of individuals who edit videos. However, it is probably the biggest employer of people editing videos. The video work can be repetitive, but it is well paid, the positions are permanent, and video is usually only part of the job role, which will also incorporate administration, marketing, and even financial aspects of the corporate job requirements.

There is still...

Should you be a freelancer?

As a reader of this book, you are likely employed in some type of video editing enterprise, either on a full-time or freelance basis. Starting out as a freelancer is a big risk and can be expensive to set up. Most people who are new to the video editing field are already in some employment related to video editing, and they may have progressed from assistant editor status to being a video editor.

The question is, should you continue to work as a full-time employee or are you better off venturing into freelancing?

It’s great to have the stability of a full-time job, but you may feel that the company you work for puts their own interests ahead of yours.

On the other hand, to become a freelancer, there is a considerable investment in equipment and the risk of an erratic workflow from many clients. The decision is much easier when there is one main client that you can focus on. However, don’t be dragged into a scenario where one client...

Collaboration between remote video editors

“No man is an island,” so the saying goes, and this is no truer than when you consider the need to collaborate on a Final Cut Pro project.

The number one rule of working with two computers or more in a collaboration environment is that they must all have the same plug-ins, which includes any presets you have created for effects. Refer to the Save effects preset section in Chapter 10, The Inspector Controls. To a lesser degree, you need to have the same fonts on each computer; other fonts can be substituted without the red warning filling the viewer, as shown in Figure 16.1.

Figure 16.1 – A red warning in the viewer notifying about a missing effect

Note

Don’t forget, if you use them, you need to have the same camera lookup tables (LUTs) on all computers.

In whatever way you decide to collaborate on your Final Cut Pro projects, you will need shared storage devices, whether they...

Summary

In this chapter, you have seen the different roles within a video postproduction team and other organizations dedicated to video production. You learned which specific job roles require you to edit videos, as well as an evaluation of the job roles in your organization that may need to edit videos.

The chapter also compared different forms of collaboration between Final Cut Pro editors, both at a local level as well as for those collaborating globally.

You learned different techniques of collaboration as well as the processes that require proxy media and XML transfers. We also looked at the use of Dropbox and LucidLink as web-based solutions.

You saw server-based collaboration as well as mixed server/software solutions from PostLab and Frame.io that allow version control, along with commenting and review functionalities.

Finally, you looked at Blip direct file transfer collaboration, which has the advantage of being simpler and available as a free service (at least...