For Teams
Smart people,
made smarter.
What if you had an expert in your corner? Someone who has already seen your problem in a few hundred other edit bays, whose only agenda is solving your problems, and whose career doesn't depend on telling you what you want to hear.
Which one of these sounds like your week?
For TeamsYour group, possibly producers and/or everyone in post
We're delivering. Painfully. And I don't think we know our own blind spots.
Then we build the map first. A flow chart of how post actually works here: camera to delivery, every handoff, every place a file changes hands. You wouldn't go on set without a shot list. You shouldn't run a production through a maze nobody has drawn. Most shops find their two worst problems while we're still drawing it.
Color. Sound. Not everyone here is on the same page.
Nobody's wrong. They've each designed their own way of working, which makes handoff more delicate than it should be. Instead of trying to create a specs document, we learn best practices so we're all working the same way. We're not taking away creative freedom. We're teaching creative process.
AI CAN make a difference, but it's a murky path.
AI. It's moving faster than any technology before it. A large segment of the problem is a lack of understanding of what the tools can and can't do, along with the fallacy that they'll make us five times faster. Relying on them without understanding them leads to a path of spending 80% of your time on what AI broke. We focus instead on what deserves your attention, what actually can make a difference, and with awareness of client IP exposure.
Too many deliveries become a fire drill.
Post is eighty percent planning and twenty percent execution, and most shops have it backward. A dollar in preproduction is a hundred dollars in post. Show me where the fire starts and it's almost always three decisions made before anyone opened an NLE.
For the Individual1:1 style of information and training
I need to upscale [TOPIC] yesterday.
There are times where being a good storyteller isn't enough. Where do you go when you need to get that skill education that's catered to you? It's definitely never going to be YouTube. Is it Color? Sound? Which new features are solid in the latest release? This is the help and education that meets you right at your need. And yes, if it's not something I'm strong at? You should bet that I know the person that fits.
Tool Developers/SaaS groupsPlugins, development, tool makers
How can we build better tools when the users don't always know what they need?
What if you had a focus group in a box, somebody who understood software development and user behavior, regardless of what lane they live in? Oscar winner, corporate jack of all trades, user-generated content creator; it doesn't matter. I can help you find the appropriate major wins for your product, help dial in your marketing, and help you create educational content when development is slower than we want.
For the Individual
Skip the search. Get answers and education that fit.
Tool Developers/SaaS groups
Know what your users actually do.
My favorite NLE? Yours.
I've been in all of them since they shipped. I've helped write their training materials and taught their master classes. They are all wonderful and they are all flawed, which is why I can't sell you the one I like best. I don't have one, and you're likely using at least two of them anyway.
Switching between them? Let's make it easy.
- Avid Media Composer 5.5
- Final Cut Pro 1.2
- Adobe Premiere Pro 1.0
- DaVinci Resolve 9
Every tool I've taught
- Adobe Audition
- Adobe After Effects
- Adobe Bridge
- Adobe Encore
- Adobe Media Encoder
- Adobe Photoshop
- Adobe Prelude
- Adobe Premiere Rush
- Adobe SpeedGrade
- Apple Color
- Apple Compressor
- Apple DVD Studio Pro
- Apple LiveType
- Apple Motion
- Apple Soundtrack Pro
- Avid 3D
- Avid DS (master trainer)
- Avid DVD
- Avid Marquee
- Avid NewsCutter
- Avid Symphony
- Avid Xpress Pro
- Blackmagic Fairlight
- Blackmagic Fusion
- Boris Continuum
- Boris Continuum Titler
- Boris Sapphire
- Discreet Cleaner XL
- Final Cut Pro Classic and 7
- Final Cut Pro X
- Grass Valley EDIUS
- Ocean Systems dTective
- ScriptSync and PhraseFind
- Sony XPri (master trainer)
- Sorenson Squeeze
- Telestream Episode
- Telestream Wirecast
I appreciate your OS agnostic stance — around here that's a huge minority.— NAB Vegas attendee
Master-level certified by four companies that compete with each other.
The hard problems get sent to me.
A lot of the people in my rooms are other instructors. That's a harder room than a room of students, and it's the one that decides whether any of this is real. If your problem were easy, you'd have already solved it. The ones that aren't easy are the ones that land on my desk.
Jeff is the guy the other instructors, editors and trouble shooters turn to when they get stumped.— Che B.
I hear what's breaking before the vendors do.
I'm in someone else's edit bay most weeks of the year, and I moderate five editing communities, about a million people. Problems reach me early, in volume, from rooms that have no reason to be polite about it. That's why I can usually tell you whether the thing you're worried about is real or a rumor.
Of all the presenters, you stood out the most because you made it not about you.— InterBee
Meeting you at your individual level.
One of the things that makes consulting, working with clients, or educating identical is meeting the audience where they're at. It doesn't make a difference what the title of the topic is. The concept is the path of acquiring and learning new information and new workflows, which is a little different for each person.
Sometimes they need more explanations about color management. Sometimes it's more about compression. Sometimes it's more about making the tools feel like extensions of their hands. I won't judge you or your team for what you don't know. I know that's hard to believe. My one rule there: I'm able to teach you as long as you can do undo from the keyboard. If you can't do that, we're going to be in trouble.
He was very willing to adapt his language and presentation of complex information to the level of the attendees.— Adobe MAX attendee
25 years of audience feedback: biggest complaint?
It was too short.
The biggest secret of every talk: the audience should always be wanting more. The best sin a speaker can commit is finishing on time and leaving the room wanting to come back, not just for your session but for the event. That's why I coach other speakers and other instructors.
The secret that goes with it: Empathy. You have to be able to identify with the audience, emotionally and intellectually. If you can't feel what they're feeling, what they need, and where they're struggling, how are you supposed to help them find the path to it?
Getting up in front of a room isn't about being the topic expert. It's about being an expert storyteller and communicator. Public speaking, editing and teaching all walk the same path: storytelling.
Want me to speak at your event? A single conference talk is as easy as flight and hotel. Beyond one talk it's a conversation where we work inside of the budget. And yes, I've built several successful conferences. I know the sessions that put butts in seats.
Let's make this simple:
30 minutes of my time right now, for free.
If I can solve something simply and quickly, I'll just do it. Why? Because if I do, you'll tell everyone. It's the best marketing out there.
If it's something that takes more time, we'll figure out how we can make it work together.
If it's something I can't do or can't find someone amazing to work with us? I'll say no.
Or, as the back of my business card has said for years: Go ahead, email me that question that was bothering you.