Insurgent Movie Parents Guide
Faustina Bartsch
This was really fascinating to me and I decided to fact-check it a bit. It turns out that not only is Bill correct, but he was probably being generous. I came across a Harvard Business Review article that basically says the same thing that Bill said, but also theorized that for tech workers, the half-life for their jobs is as short as 2.5 years. And this was written before the AI boom. Arguably, in AI, an unaugmented skills set could be outdated in a year.
Today, again, just a handful of years later, between Riverside, Squadcast, Zencastr, and Descript--all of which replace some or all of the above steps--you bypass most of the time and effort involved with the above process, as well as more than 90% of the cost, and it is more accessible to more creators and editors.
This is an argument I have with many Magnificent Noise staffers, many of whom have been using Pro Tools for audio editing since they started in the industry, whenever I ask them to do something in Descript. Our current default workflow at Mag Noise is often (but not always) to record in-person (or via Riverside or Squadcast), then we import into Descript to do the first few edits. Then, when it is ready for fine cutting, mixing, and sound design, we move it over to Pro Tools.
For those of you who are leaders or managers--is your organization using the same processes, tools, and ways of working you were five years ago? Then you are behind--today. How can you expect to compete when your teams are behind the ball from the minute the idea leaves the whiteboard? What have you identified as the skills and tools they need to know today? And how about tomorrow? And are you providing them not only with those tools, but with the training to use them at the level you need to be efficient and competitive?
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And worst of all, this card is actually teaching its recipients something: it is teaching them to ignore what the station says to them. After dismissing this, as well as some other off mark messages to come in the future, how long until they get annoyed when they see mail coming from their station?
My parents were too busy enjoying time with their grandson to notice me noticing their mail. Nor did they see me observing what happened to this card. It was actually flipped over to the other side, which had a colorful graphic declaring "It's Public Media Giving Days on May 1 and 2." My dad took about a quarter of a second glance at it as he swept it up and put it in the recycle pile.
Not notes to guide an edit, but notes of what this person says because they are sharing ideas I want to use in my life. That\u2019s happened a number of times recently with our show with Emerson Collective, Almost There, and also with If/Then that we produce with Stanford Graduate School of Business. A guest will say something super interesting and profound, and I make note of it so that I can mentally come back to it when I'm not busy recording an episode.
The most recent example happened last week, when we were recording an episode of Bubble Trouble, this time with guest Bill Raduchel. Bill is a unique kind of polymath, having worked in everything from economics to computer programming to consulting with world governments. During a part of the conversation about why governments have trouble innovating and regulating tech, Bill said \u201CI think professions in the meantime to obsolescence or the half-life of professional training is probably five years now.\u201D Meaning that if you come out of school or training with cutting edge skills in the latest research, technologies, best practices, tools, and ways of working in your field--what you know will be completely outdated in five years. If you don\u2019t refresh those skills, you will be a dinosaur in roughly the time between World Cups.
Radio, well, I think most of radio, especially commercial radio, has been stuck in gear since the Telecommunications Act was signed in 1996. It is hard to come out of school with a fresh state-of-the-industry set of skills when fewer and fewer colleges offer specific radio and broadcasting majors anymore (instead sandwiching some audio coursework in broader communications programs) and the industry itself seems so resistant to any kind of change that doesn\u2019t fall under the banner of \u201Coptimization.\u201D
There are many very good places to hear today\u2019s news about the podcasting and spoken-word industry. Here, I\u2019m trying to do something different\u2013create a space to understand several layers deeper, why things happen, and what the implications will be. This is a place for thought and analysis\u2026plus my take on what it means.
I think back to when we started Magnificent Noise in 2019 and what our workflow was then compared to now. Back then, barely five years ago, recording a remote guest often involved asking them to travel to a recording studio (or you would travel to them) and set up a mix-minus between that studio and the one where your host sat (note that both these studios cost $200+ an hour each). Then, after receiving the interview audio via file transfer, you would often send it out for logging and/or transcription (at $1.50 per minute), then import it into Pro Tools (or Hindenburg or Audition or whatever you used) and get ready to edit. And, of course, you\u2019d need to have sufficient editing skills and knowledge of Pro Tools.
The new narrative series I mentioned that\u2019s coming out next month--my collaborator lives in Melbourne, Australia. His ability to host interviews and work collaboratively on audio recording and editing would have been cost-prohibitive if not logistically impossible just a few years ago. Now it is no different than someone who works in my office (except for the 14 hour time difference).
Our producers will grumble and occasionally ask if they can cut something in Pro Tools instead, since that\u2019s what they are used to. Or they ask to do it when they are in a hurry and need to cut in a familiar software environment where they feel they are fastest and most comfortable. I often push back and tell them that they need to force themselves to use new tools--that is how you learn them and how you build the skill to work in them quickly.
The line I often say, which often ends the argument, is \u201CLook at it this way, your next job will expect that you\u2019ll know how to use Descript fluidly\u2013and whomever you are competing with to get that job will know it better than you do now. So be glad you have the opportunity to learn.\u201D
We are just about to install a video recording suite in the Magnificent Noise offices. While we are and will remain an audio-first company, almost every new project we are working on either wants to be able to offer video versions of episodes and/or have some video assets to use for promotion. We\u2019re spending a significant amount of money to install this even though our staff don't really know how to record or edit video.
We plan on teaching them. The people we\u2019ve hired to design and install the video capture equipment are also going to train our staff. We\u2019re also planning to use a combination of freelance editors as well as train up our staff to be able to do basic edits like they do now for audio. Just like I don\u2019t expect every producer to be able to sound design and mix audio episodes, I don\u2019t expect our team to be able to do a fine cut of a video either, but they should be able to establish an editorial POV and make editorial edits on both formats.
And even though we plan to provide training and support, we also have set the expectation that they need to put in some independent effort as well. I\u2019ve told several of them that they can even use work time, but they need to experiment around, try, fail, get frustrated, and figure it out.
That's how I\u2019ve done it. I\u2019m the person on our staff who was first to embrace Descript and am the person the staff comes to with questions or problems. No one taught me. I just imported some audio files, watched a few tutorial videos, and just kept frustrating myself going at it over and over again until I figured out how to make it do what I wanted it to do.
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