WIZARDRY!
Wizardry!
Those of us who offer creative services are well served by keeping some perspective on what we have to offer. We help to solve specific problems, sure, and tracking those individually helps. But often I find the value we have to offer is in making an issue simply disappear, taking it off a client's plate altogether, so they can worry about the countless other entries on their to do list.
Recently a longtime collaborator and friend sent me some interview audio with a pretty big hiccup: the edit jumped from one day’s voice recording to a take from an interview recorded on a completely different day. It was supposed to flow seamlessly as a single sentence, but it was clearly two different takes bumped up against each other.
I went to work on the audio, dialing in filtering, EQ and some other techniques as needed to heal the gap. When I was satisfied, I sent the results in.
The client was elated. His evaluation included the phrase “You are truly a wizard.” I’d lifted a cloud.
And the funny thing to me is that it doesn’t feel like wizardry at all– it feels more like plumbing, or carpentry. You get down into the dust and the muck of it, stitching and scraping and sanding and caulking till it’s a smooth and shiny surface where it doesn’t look like anything ever happened at all.
I imagine folks who work in some sort of editing craft can relate. To us it’s dirty work, but to the clients we serve it’s nothing short of magic. And the magic is the value. I have the same experience as someone who purchases services from others. Good to check in on how it all works.
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