Speaker 1: Yo welcome back to the channel, today we're going to talk about 3 ways to keep your sanity as a video editor. So first up, strive to make your version 1s or v1s into MVPs or Minimum Viable Products. I'm borrowing this term from a friend who is an iOS developer, they make MVPs or Minimum Viable Products as a first iteration to gather feedback. And to me that sounds exactly like what a version 1 of a video should be. Tell enough of the story, convey exactly what it needs to convey, but it's just not polished, it's not refined. And with that comes a lot of room for feedback. I think the common trap that we fall into as video editors is we spend too much time and show too much love to our v1s. And there's two drawbacks to this. The first is that emotional toll of being hit with a wall of feedback. Can you change this? Can you swap this out? Why is this part like this? I don't like this song. The list goes on. And it's just not a great feeling I think if you've spent so much time and effort and energy on your version 1. There's this feeling of becoming attached to the version 1 and being kind of uncomfortable or offended when people hit you with feedback. But the thing is, it's a very natural thing to get feedback. It's part of the process. That's what it should be. The second drawback is that it just becomes much more difficult if you're hit with large sweeping feedback. A clear example of this might be a song change. Let's say the client chose the song in the first place, but after seeing it with the visuals, they decide, oh, I actually don't like the song. I don't like this vibe. Let's change it. If you had spent a ton of time dialing all your cuts in, all your effects in to perfectly match that song, you're pretty much starting from zero and all that time you spent refining has gone down the drain. But if you didn't do that for your version 1, then you have all this time left over and you have all this energy left over too. And you just have the flexibility. Like you can move clips around more easily. You don't have to spend time undoing effects or transitions or trying to force it to fit into the new song. You just have a lot more leeway and it's easier to hit all those points of feedback. So to reiterate for V1s, aim for an MVP, tell the story, get enough of the final video across to the client so that they can visualize it and not be surprised when you do put in all the dialed in effects, colors, sound effects and everything. Next, we already kind of mentioned it in the discussion of V1, but it's always to keep in mind that your favorite parts can and will be cut out. I think it's very common to have a couple of shots or points in the video that you are in love with, you are very proud of, and you desperately want it to make the final cut. And when the client asks you in a round of feedback to get rid of it, you kind of just implode and die a little bit inside because you loved it. But the thing is, if you push that feeling aside, sometimes you can see that the client is right, that it doesn't really do much for the video and it doesn't make sense to have in the video or it just takes too long. I think an example of this might be like an amazing slow motion shot that just looks so good, but it takes up too much time and it kind of messes up the flow of the rest of the video. And I think this also just applies to the edit overall. There have been countless times where clients have asked me to make it shorter, make it shorter, cut more, cut more. And I was always just frustrated because I thought it doesn't make sense to cut more. How are we going to fit in everything in without giving people seizures? But after the project wraps up and I watch the video again, maybe a couple of weeks later, it's perfectly fine. It's at a good pace and it's engaging because we were so ruthless in our cutting. And perhaps this can be up for debate, but nowadays I approach it with very little emotion, which is, I guess, good and bad. I don't get as emotionally attached, as weird as that sounds, to my edits anymore. I quickly established this is work. This is what the client wants. I am being hired for a service and I need to be professional about this. This is not a passion project, so I can't be holding on to certain clips just because I think it looks sick. That being said, if you strongly believe that cutting out a specific clip or section of a video will be detrimental overall, then you have to be comfortable with saying that and approaching the client in a very professional manner, expressing why you think it will be detrimental. It can't just be an impulsive or emotional response or reason. Third is something that I'm surprised and disappointed in myself at, that I didn't figure it out on my own. I learned it from somebody else when I was working at an agency. And that is to save each version as a new sequence. I don't know if that makes sense to people who don't edit in Premiere Pro, but your timeline, your sequence duplicated for each version. So you have one copy of it for version one, you get your feedback, you make a copy, title it version two, make a copy and so on and so forth. For this one, let's take the example of changing the song again, or perhaps changing the structure drastically. So the front of the video becomes the back of the video and vice versa. Sometimes, unfortunately, the client had that great idea in the round of feedback and once they see it, they realize, oh, that was the wrong decision to make. Nevermind. Can we switch it back? Beginner me would have had a meltdown because I would have to reconstruct that previous version because I didn't have a version of it lying around. Of course, I could go into the auto saves and pray that one of those versions has that old timeline. But if it's not because you're saving every single minute, well, you just got to reconstruct it. So again, save each version as a new sequence because you never know when you'll have to return to an older one. And actually, I want to add this as maybe a bonus thing. I have this discussion about revisions beforehand, before you start the project, even. There are people that offer unlimited revisions, but they price accordingly and they have that in mind. There are way too many times where I've been caught off guard with the number of revisions or how, I guess, picky the client is and how perfect they want the final product to be because that wasn't really established when we're discussing the project. So for me personally, I establish, OK, you're going to get X number of revisions. After that, I'm going to charge you per round. And for me, I've chosen to go with that system because of two benefits. The first one is obviously just for my mental well-being, but my time. I don't want to be caught off guard by a video taking 14 rounds of revisions instead of the initial two or three that I had imagined. Once a video gets into that territory, I'm burnt out by the end of it. I don't want to work on it anymore. I don't care about it anymore. So it's not a good feeling all around. And because my expectations was like two, three, maybe four rounds of revisions, the extra time it's taking to get it to a version 14 is cutting into the other projects that I have to do, which is creates a backlog and just a lot of frustration and wasted time. The second benefit applies more to the client is that phenomenon of having too many choices. You walk into an ice cream store and they have 500 flavors, you're going to take much longer making your mind up in that store compared to, let's say, a store with five flavors. Having a finite number on revisions forces clients to be more intentional with their rounds of feedback to really question, is it worth it to move that text down just a smidgen? Because the thing to keep in mind, of course, is that, yes, your time is valuable, but the client's time is valuable, too. So in my head, this limitation gets a project done quicker, which is better for the client. And they're not wasting their time and money and effort on something that they don't really need. Because furthermore, let's say that they do pay for all these extra rounds of revisions. I mean, my wallet's happy at the end of the day, but for them, the video's value might just not really line up with that. Because now they've spent a lot of extra money on very minute details, which probably have no significant effect in the performance of the final video. But yeah, anyways, hopefully you got something out of the video, like, subscribe, all that good stuff. And as always, thank you for your time, stay safe, be healthy, bye.