So I’ve started at Blackbelt, as a post intern- they’ve got me doing a few different things- logging footage, taking notes, etc. First thing I notice? In a small operation like this, it’s the little things that can kill you.
My boss tells me to pull some files off the network server so I can watch them and take notes, right? But the files are all huge and completely uncompressed, and the network is jammed up because it’s the middle of the afternoon and everyone is using it- ETA, 4 hours. I only work 8 hours a day- you can’t have employees who can’t work 50% of the time.
My boss told me another story that same day- the producer for the network wanted 24 hours of content on DVD. Which meant pulling 24 hours of uncompressed footage off the network servers (which took a full weekend), and compressing all of it down, which took even more time. The network suit wanted this done in like an afternoon. It took a week.
You wouldn’t think that a footage archivist would be that important on a television network, but after a day I could tell they needed one bad- without one we’re losing huge chunks of time to minor assignments. If we had a few more editors, I would say that every week, somebody probably needs to compress everything we do into a smaller format we can get at quicker, and probably burn that to a DVD while we’re at it so we can access it quickly.
But we’re completely understaffed (there’s one employed editor), so there’s not a lot we can do.
There’s a lot of ways to cut costs, and everyone likes to just tell people to suck it up and multitask. But if you aren’t willing to pay people to do what needs to be done, there’s going to be problems- and this was one.