Starting a new year at Giant Bomb means a lot of excitement but also involves a fair amount of preparation. We usually exit the previous year with hair on fire and arms flailing as we finish up Game of the Year content. I've been producing Game of the Year videos for almost a decade and every year it winds up being a race to the finish line. A lot of it has to do with the timing of releases, managing resources for Game of the Year content against daily site content, and just plain project management.
When January rolls around we have our work cut out for us. On the production end we begin with archiving and collating all our Game of the Year assets. There are a lot of pieces that go into the videos and we want them archived and tucked away so we can make room on our work machines for the following year's content. We recently switched from using Final Cut Pro to Premiere, so our project management has changed a bit and we're figuring out what we want to keep and how we want to keep it. We've got some extra footage that we'll be putting up for Premium members in the near future.
While that is going on we've got to transition our 2014 archive system to 2015. This means taking our 22TB 2014 NAS offline and putting our new 22TB 2015 NAS online. We also want to clear off our work machines of 2014 content so we spend more time making content and less time managing free disk space. We prune our machines and offload everything in pretty little folders to last year's NAS archive, and take it offline.
This usually involves a footage audit to make sure we haven't accidentally deleted something we might want later. Then we have to make sure everything is backing up and transferring correctly. We make daily backups and transfers of footage. Our producers are our ops team as well when it comes to video, so this year we decided we should probably document the whole process. I'm about nine pages into a document that covers most of what the transition between years involves. Since we don't have a big team we rely on technology and automation to make sure that when we have to clear space on a computer to record two hours of UPF we can delete old footage with the confidence that it is backed up somewhere.
Then comes the inventory audit. Again, we don't have studio managers. One usually discovers a broken piece of cable or gear minutes before a production starts. Sweating ensues. Frantic replacing of equipment and testing takes place. By the end of the year there's usually a pile of broken or questionable "stuff" in a corner of the studio. Mic clips break. Cables mysteriously stop working. Windscreens are eaten by goblins. You can start the year with eight mics and four cameras and finish the year with two working mics and a tin can.
We have to go over what is working and what is broken. Once we have that list we can put together a list of new equipment we would like for the coming year. This is usually generated by technology and content needs. Do we have what we need to make the content we want? Is there a better or more efficient way to be doing what we're doing? The answers are usually "No" and "Yes" in that order.
I then work with the production team to make a general budget for the year and focus on specifics for the coming quarter. While I'm working on this Jeff is usually going over travel and events budgets with the editorial team. Again, with a small team we try to be smart about technology to make things possible. How can we do a better live show without adding more producers? What's the best way for one person to record footage in the field? WHY IS THE AUDIO STILL OUT OF SYNC?!
Meanwhile, also happening in the first weeks of January is a content audit. We look back at what we did and how we used our time. What worked? What was a good use of time and what wasn't? What did we want to do but couldn't? Then we try and see what the next year might look like. Since we're part of a large organization this has become more formal than having some beers over a long lunch. Presentations and phone calls are needed. Though it takes more time, I actually find it more useful to have to present this stuff formally. Seeing the actual costs and numbers is really interesting, though obviously never tells the whole story. Something like Game of the Year is a good example of something that takes a lot of man hours and numbers-wise we would probably generate more traffic if we just recorded Quick Looks during that entire time. But Game of the Year gives us a chance to do some really dumb, fun material. It's some of my favorite content. So numbers are interesting to look at, but I still love making entertaining video, not necessarily balanced spreadsheets.
Then we've got this whole NY Studio to do. Construction is still on-going, but I've been told we can start putting stuff in it, so that's what I'm going to do. We'll be setting it up for a bit, and will be continuing to set it up for the indefinite future. But at least content should be coming out of it very shortly.
It's a really interesting job. Part of my day is filling out spreadsheets, then I get up and build a studio, edit some video, open a terminal and write bad Linux scripts, and possibly play a video game or two. The part that makes it onto the internet is usually the last few links in a long chain that begins January 1st. Well, January... 2nd, 3rd, 4th-ish. From what we've been talking about so far, it seems like it will be a really interesting year and I'm excited about getting all the pieces in place. As a very loud, but wise man once said "Buckle up, motherfuckers."