“Do you make your customers squeal with delight?”
My wife Heather is a brilliant, haute couture trained seamstress. We’ve only worked on a couple of productions together, mainly because the film industry is not really her target audience. Instead, she’s fully engaged in her business of bespoke alterations to pricey designer dresses, for women who don’t necessarily have the body shape of a supermodel, but nonetheless, thanks to Heather’s skills, they are able to look stunning in the dresses that Heather individually, and perfectly, tailors to them. It’s incredibly intricate work.
In the past we’ve noted how similar the fundamentals of our respective disciplines are.
We both often get presented with a product that’s expensive, yet still not quite the finished item; but arrives in our work room with the client full of hope and expectations for a miraculous transformation: Heather to seamlessly transform a $1,600 dress by invisibly taking it in and letting it out in all the right places; whilst I nip-and-tuck dialogue around a presented picture edit, and then deliver a well-balanced, intelligible mix.
The principal difference however is in our customer feedback.
Yesterday (a Saturday) we were both working (we both love our work) – me dialogue editing upstairs in my studio, Heather downstairs presenting an altered, beautiful dress to a customer, who put it on and then squealed and squealed with delight, long and loud, at what Heather had achieved.
Disappointingly, no one yet has squealed with delight at one of my soundtracks…
The film creative seldom gets the satisfaction of seeing the pleasure from someone who feels good about themselves because of the work we’ve painstakingly carried out. Also, there’s one other very good reason in my case – as a sound professional, the better I do my job, the less my work gets noticed.
As I like to say, “when the sound is bad, you notice the sound; when the sound is good, you notice the pictures.”
The waiting list for my coaching services and details of my coaching content, including how to download my free eBook on the benefits of coaching for creatives, awaits you here:
www.soundproducer.com.au/coaching
Joining my waiting list is an easy and non-committal way to receive more details and arrange a 1-to-1 Zoom call to discuss your own needs.
