Even Vice Presidents Do It

A chance invite to a Hollywood sound stage
Reveals secrets to dealing with your own bloopers


Last week I spent a very interesting Friday evening watching Al Gore on a Hollywood sound stage talking about global warming.

Now if this doesn’t sound like your idea of a hot Friday night, bear with me. Because this isn’t about politics. It isn’t about Al Gore or global warming. You don’t have to like Al Gore or believe in global warming to sit up and take note of what I’m about to tell you.

First, I’ve been working my fool tail off over the last month or so on some future Audacious Audio goodies, so any excuse to get out of the office was welcome. Plus its been years since I worked in movie effects, so I jumped at the chance to get back onto a sound stage, where I spent so much of the 90’s.

But its what I saw and learned on that sound stage that made me glad I did.

Because what the former Vice President was doing on that stage was filming a glorified Power Point presentation for his new cable TV venture. Now mind you, his presentation came complete with a 100 foot wide HD rear-projection screen, a ton of animated effects, embedded video, and enough techie gadgets to make George Lucas envious. But take away the gadgets and its something that you’d recognize immediately, something you may have done many times yourself.

Or something you may eventually WANT TO DO to turn into a product. Now here’s where you’ll want to listen up.

It was because of all those gadgets, that there was also something else you might recognize. Mistakes. Lots of them.

Videos which didn’t play correctly. Slides out of sequence. Make-up that had to be re-applied. And even an ending Mr. Gore completely re-shot because it didn’t ring with the emotional urgency he wanted.

Now what was interesting is that the Vice President didn’t get all huffed up or pushed out of shape about the guffaws. In fact the director, camera folks and grips didn’t get pushed out of shape either. The filming didn’t stop. He simply paused and said something like, “can we start again beginning from the slide of the glacier?” waited for the presentation to recycle, and then started again as if nothing had happened.

Because the former Veep, the director and the tech crew knew something that you should know when you record your audio products (whether live or in the studio). When you’re recording digitally (as you should be) EACH AND EVERY MISTAKE that you make can be removed as easily as deleting a sentence in your word processor: Every crummy background noise, sneeze or toilet flush (yes that has happened).

In fact, smack in the middle of a recent paid teleseminar I recorded, I had to answer a knock on the door and accept a UPS delivery. And if you listen to the recording of that program, you’ll never know it happened because I removed it with surgical precision.

So when you’re recording your programs (especially in a studio setting), you’d be wise to follow the Vice President’s lead (even if you don’t like him):

1.
When you make a major mistake DON’T FREAK OUT! Simply go back to the last easy to identify point before you made the mistake and start again from there.

2.
DON’T stop recording. If you stop the recording each time you make a mistake, or create a new audio file, you’ll have quite a mess on your hands figuring out which part goes where. You might also forget to START THE RECORDING AGAIN (don’t laugh, it happens!)

As they say in Hollywood: Keep rolling! Simply mention on the recording what you’re doing – “Lets go back to the start of the Top Ten List” – and begin your presentation from before the point when you made the mistake.

That way you can easily delete the offending sections (using familiar Cut or Delete commands in your editing software) and no one will ever know there was a screw-up.

If you believe this might be difficult at a live talk, think again. Your audience will follow your lead. If you act like something’s horribly wrong, so will they. If you simply come off like you want to go back over the point with greater emphasis, they’ll go along with that just as easily.

3.
Especially if you’re recording live, DON’T be afraid to create your finished product from a composite of several identical presentations. Because I forgot to mention . . . when we all filed out of the sound stage, an entirely new audience filed in behind us. And after a dinner break, Mr. Gore took it from the top and filmed the entire thing all over again. In fact, there was a third taping of the identical program the night before.

All so they could take the best sections of each filming and splice them together for a kick-booty final production. And no one would know it was three separate filmings. (Except, of course, you and me).

Look, I know you might be sensitive about wanting to do the best job possible. And I know you may be thinking its below your integrity to do what I’ve just suggested. My advice to you is: Get over yourself.

The goal is not to be perfect. The goal is to create the best possible experience for your customers so they’ll get the value they’re looking for, and will continue to purchase your products. If that means splicing together three presentations so that they sound like one, that’s what you’ll do.

Because the secret to getting to the point where you’re making fewer mistakes is to make as many as you can up front. And to thank our lucky stars we live in an age when bargain basement editing software lets us do that without compromising the quality of our final product.