How to tell that a media "professional" is a clueless twit
In one of the other threads in the myths section, an excellent point was brought up ...
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Professionals generally don't take kindly to myth-spreading interlopers that "mess about" in their field, as it can cause extra effort on our parts. We're forced to answer stupid questions that would NOT have existed without the propaganda, and we often lose business because these hack "competitors" promise the impossible. From all counts, myths are a nuisance. When it comes to the media fields I work in, I can generally ask a few very basic jargon-filled questions, as a test of knowledge and competency. I created this thread (and made it a sticky!) to put a few of them out there. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Example 1: Claim: Somebody tells me that they're a professional photographer, and have been doing it pre-digital. My test: "Did you ever mix the stop, or did you just run water?" And if this person either does not understand my question, or does not have an answer, then he/she has clearly never worked in a chemical photographic darkroom. At very best -- BEST! -- the person may have used a darkroom in a school or college class for a short time. But they wre definitely NEVER in a production environment of any kind. And if they're lying about the film era, I can only assume their digital era claim is equally as fudged or bogus. Example 2: Claim: Somebody says that they do (or did) work in marketing. My test: "What's your standard copy ratio in collateral? How much copy do you generally put in collateral?" And if this person either does not understand my question, or does not have an answer, then he/she has clearly never worked in a professional marketing environment that involved any kind of creative production. At best, this person was in sales or telemarketing or something along those lines -- not "marketing". Note: This test can also apply for public relations. Example 3: Claim: Somebody says that they are a professional video service, in the capacity of format conversions and/or encoding. My test (1): "What do you use for ingest hardware, and what intermediary (if any) is used for NLE work? What NLE?" My test (2): "What long GOP formats do you encode out? Which encoder?" And if this person either does not understand my question, or does not have an answer, then he/she is most likely using consumer terminology, hardware and software to run their little non-professional hack operation. That's fine for their own personal needs, but when you start to run a service -- even a small one with a narrow niche -- you need to run it with professional grade tools, terms and methods. Some of the answers regarding hardware and software require judgments, too, as they may have an answer for you that lists $100 or less consumers apps. So you have to know what is and what is NOT a quality item. Example 4: Claim: Somebody says that they are a web host. My test: "Who's your bandwidth supplier?" And if this person either does not understand my question, or does not have an answer, then he/she is clearly not a real web host, but merely a reseller -- or worse! (Lots of horror stories regarding "kiddie hosts" at Webhostingtalk.com!) Example 5: Claim: Somebody says that they are a professional layout designer at a print publication, such as a newspaper or magazine. My test: "Is 'the' part of your official wordmark, or just part of the masthead version?" (Note that this question is specific to a possible scenario, and not a general use type question.) And if this person either does not understand my question, or does not have an answer, then he/she is definitely not designing anything in any measurable capacity at any print pub. Knowing the terminology for laying out page 1 is basic Design 101 college material. At very best, this person was thrown into a layout position with no knowledge, no training, no skills. Sadly, I do see this. I've seen secretaries turned into "designers" because the company is being cheap (and lacks any common media-field sense). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Interns and fresh-faced graduates are very guilty of professing "knowledge" when they (at best) had only mild experience at any of these things. And I used to love making them appear stupid in an interview. Watch the moron squirm. As a general consumer seeking quality media work, are you after a boastful kid, or a seasoned pro? You have to decide what you want. There's a lot of ballsy teens out there, especially in the all-digital services realm (web hosting, web design, etc). You REALLY have to watch for that, or potentially lose time and money from their inexperience and/or incompetence. Not to suggest that adults are necessarily better. ;) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Understand that this isn't just a collection of random jargon or some kind of "gotcha" question, but sincere tests of knowledge that would be required for daily activities in these media professions. These questions are also not something you can "Google" or find an answer to with a few minutes of web surfing. It would pretty much require a decent working knowledge of the field, either from actual education or from experience in the industry! So there's really not a way to cheat. ;) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Now the point of this thread wasn't to "show off" how smart I am, or anything of that nature, but simply to provide examples of how complicated it can be to discriminate the professional from the hack. You almost have to be one to know who's NOT one. The main reason so many people think they're a pro is because access to once-obscure and once-expensive media tools are now somewhat mainstream: computers, cameras, scanners, DVD recorders, etc. And it's not that a hack can't do a passable job, or give a "best effort", but rather it's the difference between a gourmet chef and the guy standing over the griddle at Burger King. Do you want fast food quality, or do you need something better? Are you satisfied by the "old college try" (possible even performed by a college kid!), or do you want a seasoned industry veteran to oversee your important project? Anybody that wants help vetting a professional for info is most welcome to post questions in this forum. We'll help you create a list of questions to ask this person or company. Then you can post those answers here, and we'll help you analyze their competency on the subject. While we may not know everything either, there's something to be said for decades of experience. And a willingness to share it with you! :) Thanks for reading. |
Even those not in the industry can tell you some of these folks give you headaches.
I have first hand experience dealing with #4 on the list. A "kiddie host" had somehow got into contact with one of my computer repair customers. He convinced them to host their site using his services (it was a small non-profit that was hosting on geocities). A few months later he took the site offline and refused to respond to inquires and demanded some large sum of money due to bandwidth overages. My customer's description of the communications with this person were best explained as "erratic" and "bizarre". In the end I had to act as a mediator and contact this person directly. I was pretty lucky in that the person sent me a zip file of the entire site which I re-hosted on geocities for the time being. FWIW he was local and I knew where he lived. That same person was in business for years for what was basically a "VPS with CPanel license" web hosting operation. Nowadays he claims to be a "SEO Expert" and hawks web design/search engine results tweaking. |
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Your post also prompted me to create this new site sticky: http://www.digitalFAQ.com/forum/show...-web-2866.html Good conversation. :) |
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Oh. My. God! KP, you now owe me over an hour of my life back, because once I started reading that thread, I COULDN'T STOP! Oh, it was a train-wreck you could see coming. . . and then after it came, then ANOTHER one you could see coming. . .and then ANOTHER! :eek: That was one of the most entertaining hours of my life that I'll never get back! :D Thanks! J |
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At one point, all of the sites owned by the lunatic went down for weeks. In other threads on WHT, it was confirmed as being down due to non-payment to the actual host (he was just some kiddie reseller). If you visit tophostinguk.com/billing/announcements.php (not linked, copy/paste to browser), you can see he's back again as of last week, complete with the usual near-total butchering of the English language. To go back to the train wreck analog: The engine is on the track, pulling what's left of the train wreck. I can visualize cars bouncing and scraping along the tracks, knocking over barns and cows as it plows through the countryside! Every time I look back at what's new, I think to myself "Really, there's more?! He still doesn't know when to quit?!" Of course, that's how most pretend-professionals are. They'll continue to run something so far into the ground that it's almost painful to watch. _______________________________________________ If topics like this make you both laugh and cringe, you have to visit the site ClientsFromHell.net and/or buy the book. Because it's a two-way issue! Sometimes the "professional" is just an amateur, and other times the client is a blithering idiot. This is my favorite recent bit, from the CFH site: Quote:
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I can claim to know that yes I have done (very little and B&W only) conventional photography, and well there are basically 3 baths and the final being distilled water. But it has been many years, so yes you bascally have the process, the stop, and the fixing, and then water to remove any chemical residue, and then you hang them up on well I used a string and clothespins the spring type, and hang them usually by the corner. Now, I also know that you time each one as you move the photo from bath to bath, using tongs to handle them. And the dark room has a dark red light or no light but to see what your doing a dark red light. I know it is different for color photos in that the temperature of the baths needs to be specific. I did it in Junior High class also it was fun actually and cool to watch your efforts come to life before your very eyes.
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So, I was reading this thread the other day, failing to understand the questions in the OP, and feeling reminded that I indeed have no professional experience with media. But then when I came to this section:
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I PMed lordsmurf asking if he'd be willing to check my answers in PM, because I didn't want to spoil the questions for others here, but he said to go ahead and just reply to the thread. So here we go. Quote:
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I understand NLE to be referring to a "Non-linear Editor" I've not played with those much, but I understand they're now the most common method of editing, as opposed to literally cutting and splicing together physical film frames or tape as was done in decades past. With regard to intermediaries for NLE work, my best guess is that you are querying whether the formats fed to the NLE and used therein are lossless in nature so as to minimize the number of encoding artifacts that can enter in prior to final encoding to distribution format. My guess as to why you are querying *which* NLE is to see if they're using some limited consumer device/program like MyFirstVideoMaker as opposed to a professional program with professional capabilities like Adobe Premier, or something like that. (2) was harder to find. I believe GOP refers to "Group of Pictures", the structure of the frame types within a video stream. Reading up on that, it seems to me that the choice of the length of GOP length can improve compression efficiency (good for final distribution formats), perhaps at the cost of ease-of-seeking through the file. The latter is probably more of an editing concern than a distribution, distribution formats are meant to be watched, not seeked through. Certainly, the videos I've watched never seemed to be able to seeked-through with a precision of more than a few seconds. So, following this chain of guesses, I think your question here is using an industry term of art to obliquely be specific that you're asking about final distribution codecs/formats. As to why you're asking about which encoder, different encoders can have different results with regard to performance or output quality, even when encoding to the same nominal codec and settings. Monty of xiph.org used to be able to tell the difference between MP3s encoded with different encoders[1]. Quote:
Here, you're asking who the supposed "web host" uses to connect their network of web servers back to the wider Internet. They could be buying direct from one of the major carries like Level 3 or AT&T, or they could be getting bandwith resold to them by their colocation provider. There's a number of layers of reselling that can happen here. And as you note, if someone who's reselling web hosting doesn't know or control their upstream bandwidth, then you are at the mercy whomever does. The more layers of reselling involved, the greater odds that you'll be bit by incompetence or negligence at one of those intermediate layers. Quote:
Why does this matter? Let's take the example of The New York Times famous and recognizable wordmark. If the word "The" was not part of the wordmark, then the wordmark would be different, it would take up less space and have different proportions. The size and proportion of sections is a huge deal in layout when it comes to publications. However, that wouldn't necessarily change the layout of the masthead, if "The New York Times" was indeed the official name of the publication despite "The" not being part of the wordmark. lordsmurf, how'd I do? One thing I want to point out to others, is that in a way, he was right about not being able to cheat at these questions. Even though I was able to find all the bits of jargon used fairly quickly, I still had to read what they meant and understand them, and then *think* about the implications of those meanings. That's not something I could have easily done on the spot were I porporting to be a media professional and someone like lordsmurf came to me with these questions. But, on the other hand, I learned a bit while researching these questions enough to understand them, which is seldom a bad thing. 1. https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html (Section labelled, "Genetic gifts and golden ears") |
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