Thinking ahead

I have been working on editing some law commercials for the last couple of days and I came across something that might be of interest. During the studio shoot we recorded lawyers against a law set reading a prepared script. The script was written by the client and had the phone number included in each commercial. I thought it would be a good idea to shoot it without the phone number – changing it to a simple “call us today” as a generic. I was thinking that I wouldn’t have enough time to say the number in the 15 second version or the 10 second version so I wanted a generic as a safety.

The client changes his mind

As it turned out, the client called today and said that he was changing his number to something else. Great! Now I have all these spots with the lawyers saying the wrong number. Oh wait . . . remember those generics that I shot? I just saved this project from doom! Ok, I got lucky! But this is something that you might want to think about next time you’re on set. It’s always a good idea to get a few versions of things before you wrap for the day. This is where good directors earn their money on a shoot and amateurs spend a few days crying in the edit. By the way, I’ve spent my fair share of days “fixing things in post” so believe me when I say it’s a good idea to always think ahead on the shoot day.

Planning ahead

It’s not always easy to try to anticipate everything that your client will throw at you.  On this particular project I had some very strange requests that I have never heard before (and I’ve been doing this for a while – I thought I heard them all!)  The best thing to do is to really study the script ahead of time and search for red flags.   These are things that *might* change in the future.  If you can isolate these “red flags” and have the talent give you one generic read it will probably make your life in the edit that much better.  At the very least, it will save the client from themselves . . . after all, they are paying you to be the professional.  It’s the least you can do for them.