www.stevengotz.com

I wrote this for the COW a couple of years ago but thought some of you may benefit from it:

After all the technical hooha, this subject is the bottom line. It's a given that you must be able to provide a top-notch product in a timely manner at a reasonable rate. Know that there are more than a few in your market who can do the same. They will come to you repeatedly for two reasons: State of mind and a good time. Their having a fun day is crucial and should not be over looked. People skills are half of editing. Every market offers different scenarios but here are some tips that can help ensure a long lasting relationship with today’s producer:

1: The session is at nine. Get there at eight. Make sure all the elements are there and ready, if possible. Take this time to have some coffee, listen to some tunes and basically chill. When the client walks in he/she will catch and notate the vibe and that will set a mood for the day.

2: Have fun. That’s the idea anyway right? The more fun you have, the more freedom you’ll be given, resulting in more fun to be had.

3: Feel ‘em out. Do they want to drive the boat? Are they relying on you for input and creativity? If you can’t surmise from their open dialog or actions, simply ask. They’ll honestly tell you and you guys can rock from the get-go.

4: Drawn out times like digitizing beg for conversation. Ensure the technical end is cool but try not to let the one in the big chair get bored. Pick a subject (themselves or their families are two great topics to start with), but keep ‘em into it.

5: Buy lunch. Be happy about it. They’re paying a hansom hourly rate. Have someone bring in some sacks of good food with a smile on their face. Tokens of appreciation are always appreciated.

6: Bring something to the plate. By now they need to know that what you’re providing can’t be found up the road. If you’ve not shown your specialty by now, you’re waiting too long.

7: Don’t hesitate to free them up to do other tasks they may have building up in a workweek. Artists often work more efficiently alone and producers often appreciate being able to run that important errand, knowing they are being taking care of at the same time.

8: Make sure the deadline is met and that you and the client both know the finished product is the best it can possibly be, given what was provided. This is the most important thing in an edit session.

9: Make sure they feel the love. Hopefully by now, they’re already hooked but that almighty dollar speaks loudly. Round down on the hours. If it’s taken 9.5 hours you can easily point out your charging for an even 9. This is always loved by the check-writer and will affect your bottom line in the long run. Note… don’t venture away from your set hourly rate. That’ll pin you down later. Just cut ‘em some slack after the session.

10: Bow tie it. The dubbs are dubbed, you’ve gotten your high five or hug and you can just make it home in time to read bedtime stories. Ask them a simple question as they are leaving. “When will I see you again?” closes another booking nine times out of ten. This easy question is an important link between one-off clients and buddies who show up a few times a week.

Throughout my career, I’ve often been asked, “How do I get and keep clients?” Of course, cutting-edge work at a reasonable price done very quickly is the short answer. The old triangle diagram with the points labeled Good, Cheap and Fast, followed by the caption “please pick any two” surely doesn’t apply in today’s post-production frenzy. Top-notch boutiques are reminded daily that a 20 year-old down the street is oozing with creativity, has a rockin’ NLE in his basement and will happily do their projects for a fraction of the price. Myths and misconceptions swarm the line between home NLEs and million-dollar edit bays. Has this gray area become so gray there is no black and white?

Well, for right now, yes. Perhaps the key phrase is ‘for right now’ and I’ll get to that. The truth is though, and I’m generalizing here, that kid in his basement can do everything with a souped up Mac that I can do on my tricked out Symphony suite. The difference? Time. Think about it. Final Cut Pro complimented with Illustrator, Photoshop, After Effects and a 3D app nested into today’s hottest wiz-bang computer next to a stocked fridge and driven by a young, creative, motivated MTV watcher who cut his teeth on Avid XpressDV in high school and honed his skills on the smorgasbord of killer gear at his local Jr. College is now ready to prove he’s got what it takes to accommodate Ad Agencies, Networks and high-end production companies. Given time, these guys certainly can and will produce a tape, CD or DVD with the same quality as they got last month at the post house up the road for 250 bucks an hour.

Surely the time it takes to produce high quality presentations in a room costing under 10 grand takes much longer than what it would take in tricked out bay with over a half million dollars worth of buttons, knobs and lights. Not just render times from lack of real-time features but with interfaces, exporting and importing from one app to the next etc. So the big question arises: Do clients care? Well, yeah, most, if not all of them do care. Deadlines are the biggest reason for this. Habit and comfort cover the rest of the reasons. This, in my book, takes nothing away from these groovy robo-basements of the world. I think they are simply wonderful. The fact we can build a fine NLE with plenty of bells and whistles for a few thousand bucks is a powerful thing. This puts tools in front of artists who otherwise would not have had the opportunity to create and it lights a fire under veteran editors to justify their salaries. It also puts pressure on companies like Avid, Discreet Logic, Quantel and others to justify the cost of their products. This results in more bang for the buck from these companies, from more features to lower prices and provides post houses with a new breed of talent. So what will change this revolution of the ‘power to the people’ non-linear world? Two words: High Definition. Until Hi Def becomes the norm, the gray area between so-called Low-end and Hi-end edit facilities will continue to blur. It is uncompressed HDTV that will re-define this line. From cameras to sync generators, hardware is a do-over for anyone who wishes to dive in. This leaves many or most out, at least for a while. This also sends that client with a budget, deadline and the buzzword ‘HD’ passed down from his client or boss to the post house ready and willing to tear it up with him. In short, while DV blurred that broadcast quality line for us in the last few years, HD will re-define it in the next few years. This will last only until we start to blur that new line, bringing me to my original thought on getting and keeping clients. We have to want it to look better, no matter what it looks like now. We must love and be really great at what we do. We must blend in with our clientele. We must evolve with the technology. And so is created: The revolving revolution.

The art of the edit all alone is just that. art in editing; Making things never seen before or creating a great moment out of a null. Editing for a client is another story.

Long ago I was convinced the art of the edit meant knowing what buttons to push to achieve a look, an effect or a style. Over the last few years I have realized the real art is in the people skills. I’ve watched some editors produce average at best video and receive ultimate praise and I have seen artists make many layers of groovyness to get a scratching head. There is an art in the delivery. It seems telling a producer “this thing really rocks” really makes it rock when they watch it for the first time. Is this the sign of a great salesman or the exemplification of the growing population of young impressionable producers?
Both. I’m sure we’ve all noticed the growth in interns setting behind us calling the shots. Is the art letting them call the shots or letting them think they are calling the shots while we make a cool show? That’s the art. Building a presentation based on experience, education and passion while yielding the credit to that person who is or was a production assistant last year. The art doesn’t stop at making them think they made it but making sure their superiors think likewise. The art only grows when you make a veteran producer say “I love that… I’ve never seen that before!” Those days help fuel the catering to the newbie days for sure.
The art of editing is now a mixture of artistic and technical background mixed with the talent to be able to say good job to somebody else in the presence of others. This is often in the form of typing a producers name in the credits after 50 hours of creating while they were at home with their family.
While the art of the editing used to mean being able to lay an animated keyed talking head with a soft drop shadow over 3 layers of motion tracked video, 4 flying logos, 2 tracks of stereo music and 4 tracks of NAT sound while monitoring levels, it is now doing that while saying “great idea, man.” Is this an art? heck yeah it is! In two years when those interns-turned producers have voice activated PCs, they will still rely on some sort of artist to make things look cool so they can tell someone else what they made. This is the art and the Craft of the edit we have all surely grown addicted to.
My favorite thing in the business remains watching the client as they watch what I have made for the first time. The giggles where I wanted them, the tears where I had predicted and the “wow”s where I knew they would be are all a major high for me. I turn my chair around to watch their faces as they watch the monitor. I swell with pride and go home late knowing I truly do know the art editing.

Jugglin’ just aint easy. That’s why people watch people do it. When done well, it looks very easy, making it frustrating for anyone who’s thrown three of anything in the air at the same time. I’ve been doing a lot of juggling lately. I don’t know how well I’ve been doing it but I’ve been doing a lot of throwing and catching.

I started my own business almost two years ago. Year one, I simply had to work ungodly hours to make what I was making on salary the year before while paying off a good sum of gear and getting out from under a non-compete law suite that hit a month after I went on my own. This did two things. It allowed me to crawl out from under the iron fist of staff jobs and it created really bad habits for my clientele. I’ll explain.

I’ve been programmed to jump when told to. I got really good at it. Nights, doubles, weekends… no hours were beyond what I’d do to get the job done and secure another.
If you read my how to get and keep a client article, you know what I’m talking about. The bottom line is I did whatever it took whenever it took it.

Now, I’m tired, caught up on debt and missing my family as much as they miss me. I’ve been trying desperately to taper the hours down to a realistic work load for one man. I’ve found it impossible to do without making some angry. After a while, as the very goal tends to be, the producer/editor relationship evolves into a friendship. Trust is built and respect is constant. This is a wonderful thing. The best things in life are the easiest to take for granted and in this case, things just became less appreciated and more expected on the part of both parties.

It’s been building over the last two weeks but with one client it came to a head today when I simply had to turn him away. A capital sin in the post world and it doesn’t come without reprimand. This is when people settle in elsewhere. Its most likely how you and I ever got a client the first time and there I was doing it. It’s math and physics though. I was booked solid for weeks to come and couldn’t give a project of the size of this one the justice that it needs. I would have had to spread not only that project very thin, but having not much left in me, compromise the quality of the projects already in the works. Surely if he would have called ahead to book it, I would have found a way to accommodate but even with a project the size of this one, he didn’t call to plan it out or book a single day, let alone the handful of days it would take. I couldn’t even allocate drive space to squeeze in the footage. I had to tell him I couldn’t do it this time. A part of me felt like a total failure while another part felt like I had just stood up to the school bully. As he made plans to edit elsewhere it felt more like I broke up with a girlfriend in the ninth grade. I sit reflecting on the day searching for the moral of the story and I come up with only this:
Priorities are the meat and potatoes of life. Work or play, catching one item out of order can result in others thrown falling on the ground. It takes not only rhythm but knowing one’s limit of items to juggle.

I don’t think for a minute, I’m headed for a nine to five lifestyle. I’m just a glamorized freelancer and when gigs are there I gotta take em because I may go weeks at a time without a single project. I’m learning I can take it easy on myself though. Tell myself good job while laying in bed at night instead of shoulda woulda coulda. I’m learning to walk outside during the day and look up at the sun. I’m playing with my kids more and holding my wife longer. I’m ordering desert and even seconds if I feel so inclined.
I’m in the entertainment industry, not the medical field and there just aint nobody gonna die if I duck out every now and again.

Live this thing we call life not to conquer, but to savor.

This was Grinner's response:
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I started out by going to college. SPC in Levelland TX. Awesome experience. The music dept was built by Tom T Hall and we had a live show each day on local cable access. I cut my teeth there and had to be run out of the linear edit bay every night. My 3rd year, I was tight enough with my professor, he gave me a key and called me part time. It was on then. I was commuting from Lubbock. Between taking 20 hours or more per semester and being in 3 plays, the commute was getting to me so I started jimmying the theatre door and sleeping on the set. Worked great. There was a bed on the set, the bells in the tower woke me at 7am and I had just enough time to shower in the dressing room before my first lab.

Finally got busted by the renta cops. They said they had been watching me for 2 weeks waiting for me to steal or vandalize something. I just had time for sleepin.

In '90, my instructor got a lead on an opening for a teleprompter operator at the local ABC affiliate in Lubbock and sent me with a great recommendation. I got the job. Started at 3.35 per hour. It was an old school prompter though... a conveyer belt with printed copy shot by an old tube camera. I laid out copy one page at a time and adjusted speed manually as needed. Seemed like alot of work. One night I had a brain storm and decided to pre-tape all of my copy together as one big sheet. I could then just concentrate on the speed. I tested it alot and wondered why nobody had thought of this before.
We went live on the 9 oclock news and, proudly, I started with the new grinnerized way of teleprompting at KAMC channel 34. Well, about 6 minutes into the first segment, trouble hit. The weight of the paper collecting at the end became more than what still needed to be fed and...

swwwooosh... the whole dang thang got pulled into the studio floor, not only with audio that came out over the anchor's mics, but with me following with a loud "duuuuude!"

There it was... the 9 oclock script in a pile beyond repair. The more I tried the more it was obvious these prompter monkies were gonna either ad lib or find their spot on the hard copy on their desk (which they never used). I was sure I was fired. Finally, I just sat still and kept quite until we went to break. Wadda ya know? I didn't get fired. They never let me run prompter again but being moved to studio cameraman/floor director was the coolest promotion I could think of from such a screw up. I stayed at the same hourly rate. I was just happy to still get to go to a tv station every day.

My next gig was in Denison, TX. Man, it was cool. Wild place I worked for and I was a grip, gaffer, camera dude, editor, producer and director. While it paid less than my first job (18k a year with 80 hour weeks), I knew I was learning much more than I ever paid to learn in college. It was a great deal and I knew it. I was rubbing elbows with coutry musics' most famous artists, rolling lots of film and growing my hair long. That company got sold to a Dallas company who kept only 3 of us (from a 30 person staff) and liquidated everything else. 3 months after working there the building was siezed because the owner liked to sell fake stock to the wrong people.

Darn... I had been getting paid with that stock for quite some time.

A Dallas company called RBG Post bought faith in me about that time for 8 bucks an hour as their senior editor. What a great opportunity. I learned one of the cleanest component linear suites with preread in town and mingled with some great contacts I'd cherish for life. This is where I learned people skills in the edit bay. Sometimes having to say no. Having to explain why. Sometimes doing it anyway. My boss was a very cool hippie dude and their was a savvy engineer there who taught me more than he knew. This was the type of place a fellow could roost at....
but not for 8 bucks an hour.

I met my bride and almost immediately we were married with a baby girl on the way. I had interviewed at TNN in Nashville a couple of years earlier as a director. I knew I wasn't gonna get the gig but I figured grinner may be a name they'd recognize later.

It worked. I called em cold asking if they needed an editor and they asked if I had experience with a Nightsuite. I told em I was a wiz on it and looked forward to showing it in person. They set up an interview and I figured that was a good time to figure out what this Nightsuite was and learn a thing or two about it. Avid was juuust getting popular. This was '95. Nightsuite was a great little NLE that was trying to break out. There were two in Dallas and I weezed as much time on one as I could. I got the job and stayed at TNN/CMT for almost 3 years. We had another baby in that time and I had to start working at TBN on a freelance basis to make ends meet. I was hourly at TNN at less than 19 bucks an hour and could only milk the Crouches for 25 bucks an hour. I got to hook up their first Avid though.
In '99 we moved back to Dallas. I went freelance for a while and purchased a neat little wiz-bang premiere system for home. I charged the same rate on it as I did for linear or non-linear freelance editing at a post-house. I had Premiere v5, AE v4, Lighwave4, Aura1 and a mess of plugins. I had a DC50 breakout box and with the exception of doing uncompressed post, I could literally do anything on that little system that I could do in a multi-million dollar linear suite or decked out Avid.... just taking much more time to do it.

Nan got pregnant again about the same time the tax man was callin'. Twas time to get a real job again.

Cornerstone pictures in Raleigh, NC brought me on as the Director of Post-production. Was havin a good time with some nice toys when my youngest boy was born. He had a breathing condition sending us to specialists and Cornerstone Pictures offered no benefits. Ouch.

A company in Fishers, Indiana called Tour Design told me they’d start me off at 60k a year and put me on the books 90 days ago... starting my benefits the day I started. Dadgum.
Off we went to INdy. Great tools. Great talent. Great projects.

Biggest peckerhead of a boss I've ever seen though. Plum mean. He was the creative director and one day I just had to tell him he lacked creativity and direction. I went home early and didn't go back. My son was now healthy and life is too short not to have fun every day especially after paying dues in a field that requires passion.

That brings me to St. Louis. I had built myself upwards of aroung 75k salary-wise and we still lived week to week. My wife is a stay at home mom so I'm the provider. Having just told my boss to hug a root, I took the first big salary thrown at me. Mistake. Maybe not in the long run but imagine my dismay 1 week into the gig when another editor pulled me aside with grave concern asking "WHAT did they tell you to get your here?"

Long story short, the company was owned by three dudes. Three dudes who hated each other, fought in the halls (literally) and had each other in court constantly for the 2 years I worked there. It was a nightmare but I had used up all my whammies with my wife. Picking up and moving to another state was not an option. I told Nan when I met her we'd move around alot but when our first born turns five, like musical chairs, we'd sit down.

I saw potential in Anheuser-Busch. I catered to their every need on my own, made a name for myself with them and when the time was right, quit a six-figure salaried job and went on my own. I rocked for a month or so ... enough to sign a lease on an office space and a puchase agreemant for an Avid sytem. That's about when I was hit with a non-compete lawsuit from my former employer that resulted in my not being able to work within 50 miles of St Louis until it was resolved. In 2 months I lost 40k worth of billing and racked up 5 figures in lawyer bills. Mrs. Grinner wasn't grinnin', man.
I stuck to my guns, came out on top (just in time) and was able to pay of an Avid Symphony the first year.

Now, we're settling into the first home we've ever owned. My business increased 50% in 2004 and I'm lookin at adding a second suite. It seemed only fitting to call my company 51 Mile Post.
It's been 17 years since my first official 3 point edit. I've gotten to meet folks ranging from the homeless to our president. I worked 36 hour shifts and loved it and I've made myself cry with edits. There has indeed been hard work along the way but I'd be blind if I didn't see the gifts along the way as well.

Some people wonder why someone would choose a career such as this.
I didn't choose it.
It chose me.