By Robb Wagner

In the late 1990s, I was a post supervisor/post production AD in charge of delivering hundreds of hours of network and cable shows every year until a major paradigm shift threw television editing on its head. It wasn’t an economic downturn or a global pandemic. It was a new genre called “reality.”

Robb Wagner

• The time it took to digitize the footage
• The lack of storage (hard drive) technology

As a result, directors and producers spent all their time shuttling through Betacam SP tapes looking for the footage or sound bite they needed for a single edit.

Thus began my career as a serial creative problem-solver, by imagining the first of many big “what ifs.” What if I could invent a piece of software that would let loggers create entries including videotape numbers, timecodes, scene descriptions and key dialogue? Then, if an editor needed to edit a story about, say, the making of Jaws, she could search for a key phrase, like “bigger boat,” and let the system automatically generate a digitizing list that included the iconic scene and all of the interviewees who mentioned it during their sit-down interviews. And what if AEs could then use the lists to digitize footage overnight so the editorial team could do their real jobs the next day, instead of constantly searching on videotapes for footage? That’s exactly what happened when I turned those “what ifs” into software to help streamline the process.

Hybrid organizing software is a post producer’s friend.

Cut to 2009, when the Great Recession, a global paradigm shift, brought the entertainment industry to a halt. As a creative-studio owner, I was caught in an overhead trap that forced me to invest in physical infrastructure, while a talent trap kept me struggling to have the right talent at the right time for each project. I told myself that when the world returned to “normal,” I would make my creative business forever agile. I didn’t know that making my company hybrid would be my salvation.

When the world (and the creative industry) came roaring back in 2012, I had to decide between investing in more physical infrastructure and LA-based talent — which had trapped me before — or something else entirely. The problem-solver in me returned with another major “what if.” What if I could write software that would let me decentralize my creative studio?

Lip Sync Battle Live

Back then, the word “hybrid” meant a kind of car, not a future-forward business model, but I ran with it — developing software, a methodology and a curated, global talent pool. This was long before “work from home” was a hot-button topic or an industry challenge.

Cut to 2020, after yet another paradigm shift changed everything in an instant. This time it was a global pandemic, and my serial problem-solving self was at it again: What if a playbook could help creative people live their best creative work lives in a newly hybrid world?

That’s the premise of “The Stimulated Method,” the playbook I’ve just published built on a decade of “what ifs” to provide a very current solution. For my post friends with people working in-house and remote, here are just four of the playbook’s many tips to help you thrive:

• Learn when to handle graphics production in-house and when to outsource it. For large projects with complex deliverables, outsource as much as possible, and do assembly and finishing work in-house.

Outsource smaller jobs that can be done by a single artist because this will require fewer resources and less effort overall. Jobs that require interactive collaboration between creative directors and artists should be done in-house.

• Learn the difference between in-house talent and remote talent. In-house talent needs to be able to mold disparate creative assets into a cohesive final product. Remote talent needs to specialize in something you need. Now, here comes the counterintuitive part: The most important attribute of remote artists is their ability to follow written instructions. Your most important job when vetting your remote creative workforce is weeding out talent that cannot follow written instructions. Ignore this advice at your own risk.
  

  Animated music video for artist Kayla Nicole

• Learn how to flip the emphasis to preparation. Being reactive is a comfortable way of working with your in-house team. With hybrid creative work, you must be proactive. We are accustomed to giving our in-house editors and artists piecemeal instructions while looking over their shoulders. While that not-so-perfect approach will still work with your in-house team from time to time, it won’t fly at all with remote talent. With a remote editor, your job must be to tell them exactly what you want and then let them do the work for you.
• Learn how to write remote briefs. For a remote artist or editor, the job brief is the de facto substitute for you. It is the creative director, producer, coordinator and project manager all at the same time. Therefore, it must be able to answer every creative, technical and logistical question an artist might have in the exact moment when it is needed. It must contain all the written text, creative references, creative assets, upload links and download links an artist will ever need. Just one piece of missing information can cause delays that will cost time and money, not to mention make the work suffer.

I’ve done my best to give actionable advice illustrating how hybrid creative work can help post teams navigate paradigm shifts, so I hope you find these tips helpful now and in the future.

Robb Wagner is CEO of the creative studio Stimulated-Inc. He has partnered with brands such as Disney, Viacom and Carnival Cruise Line. At the core of his success is a radical approach to work, keen ability to stay ahead of the trends and fierce commitment to helping others live their best creative work-lives.