If you don’t really know the answers to these questions, I would challenge you to take some time to think through and write down your goals for the remainder of the year.
If your goals involve getting more clients and paid jobs, it may still be worth your while to learn more about video.
However, if you’re looking to just improve your mixes, focusing on video might be a waste of time.
Don’t Be Spread Too Thin
Perhaps you’re at the beginning of your career and still trying to improve as an audio engineer.
You’re working on more and more music, and you’re excited about the fact that you could start producing videos, which could open up all sorts of opportunities for you.
In all the excitement, you may start learning and practicing your video skills…at the expense of your audio work.
You don’t want to look back a year from now and realize that instead of being a better audio engineer, you’re just a mediocre audio engineer AND a mediocre video guy.
Only focus on video if you have time to do both audio and video well.
Partner Up with a Video Expert
Businesses do this kind of thing all the time. Rather than taking on a new skill themselves, they’ll hire (or buy out) another company to do the task for them.
The second company specializes in the new skill, so rather than wasting time learning a new skill, the first company partners up with the second company to get the job done.
You could do the same thing with your studio. If it doesn’t make sense for you to learn video yourself, find someone else who knows video but could use your audio expertise.
You can then refer clientele to one another and even work on projects together. This way you can still access a lot of new opportunities without needing to invest the time and money into learning video yourself.
What do you think? What are your plans/goals? Do you plan on tackling (or have you tackled) video in your business?
Joe Gilder is a Nashville based engineer, musician, and producer who also provides training and advice at the Home Studio Corner.