Workflow Pro: Creating an Effective Teaching and Video Workflow
It’s all about the workflow.
In this series, I want to share some of my personal tips surrounding the idea of creating an effective workflow. I don't know if it’s genetic or some byproduct of my environment growing up, but I have found this is just something I'm just really good at in life. If you are into personality tests, I’m a #1 on the Enneagram which is the “perfectionist,” and on the Strengths Finder, I'm an “achiever” with a “restorative” nature; meaning I walk into a room and the first things I think of is how can I make things better. It’s a blessing and a curse, as it means I don’t often take time to smell the roses because I’m too busy rearranging them.
If you teach video production, broadcast journalism, or just about anything that has some type of production-related theme at its core, you probably understand that what you do, and what your students do, has so many moving parts. The plates are spinning, and you are hopping on one leg...barefoot...in a room full of thumbtacks. Now I think all teachers are jumping around the room, but the difference for those of us with production courses is that we are spinning a lot more plates, and the place we are in has strobe lights.
I got into teaching video production and broadcast journalism in the late ’90s, just as the analog to digital revolution was starting to take shape. There was a short transition period of using digital tape before full-blown HD file-based clips.
In just a few short years, I saw the editing workflow shift from writing down timecode and selecting only the clips you want to ingest for editing, to the ability to dump an entire SD card of raw files into a bin and begin editing on the spot. In either scenario, it's easy to see that the key to being a successful editor is workflow. And if you work in education, let's add to this scenario 50 to 100 students who will also be editing their project footage in your lab.
Hopefully, this series provides you with some workflow strategies that make life easier. Maybe this will spark a new idea that you implement in your teaching environment. I would love to hear what workflows you have created, so shoot me an email at tom.wilson@northcantonschools.org, or post it on Stream Semester’s Facebook Group Broadcast Education Professionals. We're all in this together, folks.
Meet the Author, Tom Wilson
Tom Wilson is the coordinator of district media and video-journalism at Hoover High School in North Canton Ohio. You can follow the work of his students on social media @nctvmedia and his unique production vehicle, the Mobile Storyteller Project.