This is true, but at least for me, there's a semi-causal relationship, mostly based on time. I wrote up a post on this yesterday but deleted it because, well, screw it. Fortunately I still have the numbers around.Dr.Dinosaur wrote:The idea that once you get better at something, or that you have been doing something for a long time means you aren't allowed to have fun anymore seems faulty to me. You should be able to have fun alongside challenging work. Who says DiVinci didn't have fun painting the Mona Lisa? So a drive for quality (whatever that is) does not automatically make things unfun.
In a sample space of 85 videos that I could establish that the time-to-completion figures were comparable for, 51 got marked as more "fun" than "not fun" to work on, with 34 being the reverse. There was a strong relationship between the average time to completion and whether a video was fun or not:
"fun" videos: 15.55 hours
"not fun" videos: 28.43 hours
There was also a weaker relationship between ratio of the amount of work done before/outside of editing (I cut clips rather than marking in/out on whole episodes/VOBs) to edit time and whether a project was "fun" or not. However, not only is the difference in the averages smaller, the numbers themselves are not completely reliable, because I don't track production time by stage and was going on memory:
"fun" videos: 3.88:1
"not fun" videos: 5.26:1
I also found a weak relationship between editor used and whether a video was "fun" to work on or not. 62% (39/61) of videos in this sample space edited with Dazzle MovieStar or Virtual Dub, which are essentially linear editing environments, came out as "fun". This has dropped to 55% (12/22) after moving to Magix. This is probably a side-effect of time committed -- having a NLE and more control allows you to spend more time getting things exactly right -- and is in any case the smallest difference of the three noted here. Also, I have very low confidence in a sample space of only 22 projects.
How these numbers relate to the original post is this: for most people, the desire to improve their videos results in more time committed, and time is the fun killer. If you want to improve, but still have fun, be a grind and track process time, then before your next project, look back and think about what you could have done to cut down on time committed. My average time to completion is still pretty much where it was in 2001 and 2002, largely because I take active measures to force production time down. If AMV gets too time-onerous, I stop doing it, and get frustrated because ideas are sitting around not getting turned into videos. To keep having fun, you must work hard to avoid working hard.
Maybe this makes sense, maybe not; maybe it's totally useless for people who approach their production in other ways. The numbers remain what they are.
--K
I would further correlate your numbers based on time though as it's a grade of enthusiasm that most likely makes things fun... therefor your analog numbers most probably are somewhat skued... but the fact remains, working on an analog editor is REALLY underrated lol. Given the enthusiasm it's really more fun than it seems. Something I'd NEVER go back to though... but it's fun ^_^
) that it'd be SUBLIME. Makes all the time you took TOTALLY worth it!! Also trying to RUSH your work REALLY doesn't work for me (I would rather tone down my effort than figure out how to do the same thing over less time...). I don't know, maybe some like to do that, but I wouldn't think I'd find it enjoyable at all. You can see the videos where it seems I only put 80% effort in just to get it done 80% quicker lol. most of my catalog is made up of that in fact heheheh.
