By now you’ve probably seen the new ad campaign being run by Apple during the Olympics.  If you’re unlucky enough to be in my house when one commercial in particular is shown, you’ll hear some nasty words come out of my mouth.  That commercial is the one that takes place on an airplane and involves a man who needs the Apple  ”Genius” to help him edit a video for his anniversary.  Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the latest technology and have been an Apple user from the days when Steve Jobs and I were still in our 20s.  But come on, editing a video with music and effects in 27 minutes?!  This is both misleading and very disrespectful of people like us, who spent so many years refining the craft.  It’s like saying that after you watch an hour long home improvement show, you’ll be able to remodel your kitchen in less than an hour.

I’ve been editing video projects for over a quarter century and I can honestly tell you that I’m still learning and always improving.  Of course the commercial doesn’t imply that the finished video is anything professional, but it does lead people to believe they can learn to edit in 20 minutes.  The man in the commercial even says “Look at all this footage!”  Now if you’re good at editing, you’d need to go through all the footage, decide what stays and what goes, and then the order it goes in.  Once you do that you refine your story by making further edits, adding transitions, graphics, effects and music.  If you’re really good you’ll make the audio sound better and you’ll make some color corrections.  But that Apple “Genius” does all of this before the plane lands.

Another thing that commercial doesn’t say is how you’re going to show the video.  Do you need to burn it to a DVD, send it out to people to look at online, or upload it to YouTube?  This is an area that takes some technical skills most people don’t have.  It can be very time-consuming to render video to a format that can be uploaded.

So what I’m trying to say is… if you want your video to be clear, concise, and interesting… come to us.  One of the benefits of experience is learning the shortcuts and getting a video done as quickly as possible so you are not charged for hours of learning like you would be if you paid someone with little experience.  Professional editors show this in their rates.  They may seem more costly, but you know you’ll get better quality and be billed for fewer hours.  And you’ll save the time, cost and energy it will take for you to try to do it yourself!