How do you build a Video Editing Team?

During the past four years I have had the pleasure of learning and experiencing videoing and editing; it has been my passion and I have never expected anything in return.  In this time I have been blessed with opportunity and equipment. But nothing can compare to partnering along side people with that same passion.

I do have a team in the form of Shadrach and Dylan (yip, this is a shout out to you guys – shot for all the work) as well as Pam who helps with Filming and administration, shot

But the video needs of Stellenberg Community Church (not to mention the needs of my family for me to spend more time with them) are increasing beyond my capabilities as well as the team’s ability to copy. So the question begs, how does one build a better team (not just bigger)?

It is all very well to speak to people and put them on a schedule, but it is another thing to equip them with the means to edit and edit well while expecting them to put aside time for learning and doing the work expected of them. I know from experience that editing is not something you can assign a time slot to; it is not like you can say “I will put aside 4 hours in the week when I am on duty” – it may take 4 hours to edit something but then what about capture, render, colour correct, render again, preview, compress, maybe fix something and re-render and compress, etc. And then even if you get this right, what about the time learning and re-learning; I mean it is great learning from experience but what about learning from others, books, DVDs?

Ok, forget Camera Work when it comes to this problem because that tends to be more realistic when it comes to effort and time. So lets assume that we have 4 people on a team to rotate editing duties. In most cases editing work in a roster will end up overlapping resulting in someone waiting for the edit station before they begine work. Maybe the edit station is at the Church and one can edit there when need be? no no no – in all likihood the editor will have to wait for captures, renders and compressors to finish, maybe even set the alarm for 2am so he/she can quickly check the results and fix anything (if it was that last minute). Besides who wants to have to go to an empty Church in the middle of the night when you can get it done in the study (waiting for the render while you read a book in bed, nice and quite typical).

So maybe you get Laptops and software for all the volunteers, ooo that would be expensive. But then again should we not be making things as easy as possible for the volunteers? Hm Four video editors? Thats about R100000, and it would be preferable to use a Mac Pro which could be R100000 for one at the best specs and Software.

I suppose that we were lucky because I bought a G5 Powermac 1.6SP and Final Cut Studio and my Panasonic DVX100BE way back when things started, and we have been blessed with equipment since then. But now the G5 is nearing the end of it’s life with the 6800Ultra graphics card is dead, man Motion is going to be dog slow now.

So then what? Expect people to supply their own equipment and software, hmmm maybe if they have it already, but not to buy it from scratch, that’s 2-3 months salary for a MacBook pro and Final Cut Studio2.

Actually my biggest worry is not equipment, but attitude. I would rather have one person helping me out who has as much passion as me in this area (if not more) than 20 people who were just interested in appeasing their conscience to give time to the Church. I would love to be able to find people who would go the extra mile to learn something new, find a cool way to move the 3D camera through keyframed text or just spend time correctly colour grading a number of shots. How does one propagate this passion, bring it out, or develop it?

Unfortunately anyway there are no answers . But this is where I am, exciting hey. Things are falling into place, connections are being made, soon I will be writing about the cool new team being put together and how we are making cool videos and motion graphics that will blow your mind away.