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What Percentage Success = Good Communication?


Jan McL

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Want to talk a little bit about communication.

We sound geeks deal with tons of little things. Sharman says he's a die-hard make/model # communicator. I totally get THAT, for in a pinch, precision counts. Not THAT thingee, but THAT one.

We're so often in 'pinches' perhaps it's good to share strategies for better communication.

In the big picture, find that my experience as a poet -- concision, practice at quickly identifying the essences of things -- daily serves me well on set. Given how many balls are always in the on-set air, I figure I get only a three-to-five-word sentence in which to calmly and clearly communicate a question or pending disaster without raising the blood pressure of the recipient.

Another activity that informs my thinking on the subject of communication is having participated in a few software beta testing email lists. My brain does not naturally do this kind of testing without effort, but it was instructive to observe how the developers embraced bug reports / complaints / suggestions: from the obviously, thoughtfully supportive to the downright uninformed / inexperienced nasty. At every end of that spectrum, the developers were gracious, never defensive, and always grateful. Not always easy to express all that good stuff in text, but they did it, and I took good notes about how to gracefully hear, deliver and respond to what is essentially bad news.

The other beta test takeaway was to always endeavor to identify and include all the information relevant to a question / request. "X isn't working!" doesn't cut it, whereas "X isn't working, and I have Y operating system, v. 2, on fully current Firefox browser," does. Full context.

What else?

-- Jan

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Oh, yeah... It's always easier to grab THAT thing you need, you know- the black one with the blue logo... no, not THAT one!

My guys make fun of this, typical from me....

"On my trailer...... in the tub on the floor near the back..... or if it's not there look in the one just above it.... actually it's.... never mind, I'll go."

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It's also about subtleties... A typical conversation between my utility, Steve Sollars, and myself:

"Hey Steve... Gonna need that thingy soon for the, uh, you know..."

"Ya mean that thingy sittin' by the side of your cart there?"

"Oh! Son of a gun! Yeah, that thingy... Thanks!"

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In the heat of things with people farther up the food chain than me (which means almost everyone these days)--very important to pre-parse your words for how what you say will be taken, and to pick your moment.  It also helps to have a suggestion for an alternative or solution handy.  For everyone--calm politeness is always appreciated, and usually noticed even more if it is short supply elsewhere on the project....

phil p

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  • 4 years later...

I've developed a visual analogy for almost all audio related things over the years.  Really helps certain people understand things.

an example - I was doing post on a production that had lavs in it that were low on batteries and getting super hissy.  I struck an ok balance between cleanup and not making it worse with artifacts, but the source audio was pretty busted and the end result was imperfect.  Client (who was also the picture editor) asked me if there was anything more I could do to clean them up.  

I explain that my situation is a lot like when you capture an image through a smudged dirty lens.  Sure, there are things you can do to help, but after a certain point you only making things different, and not really better.  The problem is that the source image was never captured pristinely, and you can't create it from nothing.

The client was super happy with that explanation since I spoke in his laguage, and we moved on from there.

--

Anther little rule of thumb is that if people aren't listening on cans but they hear something extraneous and ask if I heard it, I just about always say "if you can hear it, my mics can too"  this is easy to understand for people and tends to strike an okay balance on what to let go and what to re-do.

--

The other little part of diplomacy is to never be negative, and never assign blame.  Its not "You changed the lighting and ruined my boom placement", its "the lighting moved and forced a boom placement change"  

I've even noticed in VO sessions, I'll include myself in an actor's mishaps.  An actor will substitute an incorrect word on a script, and after the take on the talkback I'll say something to the effect of "cool, lets do it again because we said 'he' instead of 'she'"  obviously without emphasizing the word "we" but still using that word. It just helps me avoid saying something to the effect of "you fucked up, now we have to do it again."  It doesn't hang that baggage on the actor and allows the next take to proceed unimpeded. 

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be clear and concise.

colderidge says: prose consists of the right words in the right order.

in emails, reread before hitting send.

e.b. white says: rewrite and revise...

the substance and content should be clear to the reader the first time they read it.

 

Edited by Gerard-NYNY
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