Last week, we had Adam Knight, Owner of Red Element Studios, as our guest speaker. He spoke at length about his journey working in the video industry. Adam also covered the top three factors that he commits to delivering when taking on a project, which are: delivering quality work, creating and fostering trust, and adding value to the production/company/idea. I think these three factors can be applied to any scenario where you are taking on work for someone else.
For this blog post, we have been asked to pick one of these three factors and reflect on an experience where we failed to live up to those expectations. In my case, I had an experience with the first factor, which is delivering quality work. A couple of years ago, my brother-in-law’s dad needed help with a documentary he was creating and asked if I could help him trim clips. He was also going to pay me, so I immediately said yes, not realizing how many clips I would have to do. While downloading the provided clips was easy, the trimming part was quite tedious, as I was expected to trim nearly 100 videos. I began procrastinating on this and giving excuses, and in the end, did not deliver all the clips. I think if I were to take a project like this on today, I’d do the following:
- Make a schedule and set a specific amount of clips to complete each day. But also, don’t commit to doing some every day, but rather every two days.
- Be clear about any difficulties I’m facing with the client.
- If necessary, get help from a friend (with the client’s permission, of course).
Reflecting on this experience, I learned that it’s very important to manage expectations, and set realistic deadlines.