Heeeey, it’s another 200K Audio Thing!

Is it a podcast? Kinda—but no—but sorta.

In it, you’ll hear how I made two big shifts in my career by ASKING for it.

• When I went freelance in 2016

• At the beginning of 2021 with Project 200k

Both times the ASK looked different. So take a listen and see if there’s a way YOU can ASK for what YOU WANT. *so many all caps words*

Still on track to hit 200k 🥳

I’m happy to report, I’m still on track to make $200k by the end of the year.

What I learned from making a 30-min video

I had a big project in June/July with a new-to-me agency (Glass & Marker).

And yes, this was another project I got because of a peer recommendation. My buddy Chris used to freelance for them, but he took a full time job and put my name down as someone they should bring in since he wasn’t available anymore.

It was a 5-week project with just a few late nights. All-in-all, it was a wonderful experience and I think the end product, a 30 minute video with a mix of video and animation, turned out pretty awesome. I can’t talk about the client yet (NDA), but I will say that this was one of the tightest run projects I’ve ever been on from a production, schedule, shot-tracker, etc. standpoint.

Things I learned and will use going forward when I can:

• Strict naming structure (SHOTID-V001-AS … AS=Austin Saylor) ← And this was enforced because all After Effects projects were in one folder.

• Every shot had its own After Effects project.

  • Every shot got rendered with the same naming structure, which made it easy for the editor to put the latest shot in his Premiere timeline.

• There was a dedicated REVIEW Slack channel.

  • The only thing allowed was posting with SHOTID-V003-AS, linked to the exported video (which resided on Box… could work for Dropbox or Drive) and a screenshot of the video for easy scanning/reference.

  • Notes were made in a thread.

  • Emoji response from the creative director has specific meaning:

    • ❗️= needs revision

    • 👀 = I’m looking at it (or will soon)

    • ✅ = approved

• A detailed Shot Tracker was created by the Post Producer

  • This was a spreadsheet with columns for Shot ID, Script, Design/Animation notes, Screenshot, Assigned to, and what state it was in (things like… DES-needs design, ANI-needs animation, IED-in edit design, IEA-in edit animation)

  • This was updated by the Post Producer when shots were approved by the CD in the review Slack channel.

  • And the Post Producer notified the editor whenever there was a new shot that was approved.

Kudos to G&M. This was a massive project with a CD, Producer, Me (Lead Design & Animator), 5 or so other designer/animators (some were in and out of the project for a few days at time). And that was just the post team… they did full video shoots on site before we started.

I’ve been on some big projects this year with various degrees of organization. This really showed me what a super well organized project can look like and it resulted in many fewer stressful, long nights.

Stay organized my friends.

Go make something move (and make good money while doing it).