Know Thy Tools

In media production it is important to "Know Thyself" (and so avoid the pitfalls of being overly confident and not accepting help or becoming self-conscious and giving up), but it's also important to "Know Thy Tools". With a little knowledge of how your equipment and software works, you can pull off some pretty incredible things.

This video has been passed around quite a bit (I found it over at The Editblog) and with good reason: It's absolutely incredible. Give it a little watch:



How did they do this? Well, first, they had a very good idea (story) and a very solid idea of how they were going to pull this off. This means they spent a ton of time in pre-production getting ready for the shoot. But they also knew how to use their tools. Without the technical know-how they have, this wouldn't have turned out at all.

How does this relate to me?

Well, I know the few tools I use quite well. However, whenever I encounter problems that must be dealt with outside my software comfort zone, I tend to get bogged down. That's one of the reasons I've built Production-Now.com: So other people can benefit from the many hours I've spent (and continue to spend) trying to figure this all out. It also is a great reminder that there is more to learn, and hopefully serves as an inspiration for us to learn.

I've spent several hours the past couple of days trying to find some viable free video editing software. There's quite a few options out there, but thus far I have been unable to figure them out. In short, I don't know these tools, and so can't recommend them or write tutorials (and the tutorials that exist are terrible... really).

So, yes, I can relate to the frustration of learning new tools (which is easy to forget when you've been using the same software for five years). I wish there was more helpful information out there as well.

If there is anything you wish there was more helpful information on, let me know about it over at the Production-Now.com Forums and I'll see what I can do.

~Luke Holzmann
Your Media Production Mentor