Star Wars fan, techie, successful editor and maker of sawdust, Chris Fenwick, has some great advice for those who wish to get into the “biz.” This one time record-holder for the fastest Rubik Cube solution was raised by a fine-artist mother and engineer father. How do you decide what you want to do in life if you are good at just about everything? Fenwick says it is by learning how to do many things and loving what you do Curious about the creative psyche? Listen in as he talks with host, Cirina Catania on OWC RADiO’s “Creative Club.”

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In This Episode

• 0:00 – Cirina introduces Chris Fenwick for an impromptu interview. Chris is a visual creative editor with more than 25 years experience.
• 7:26 – Chris talks about how he stumbled upon a lucrative part of his business by mistake.
• 13:26 – Chris reminisces about a childhood story of how his parents molded his knowledge in arts and technology.
• 20:07 – Chris shares how he felt when his dad drew a Xenon light drawing over his moon car drawing.
• 22:11 – Chris explains why he makes creative solutions to technical problems and technical solutions to creative problems. 
• 30:32 – Chris describes the changes in video production over the past few years and how it has shifted the way people are producing today.
• 35:34 – Chris explains why it is essential to adapt when a tectonic shift happens in your industry.
• 40:46 – Chris advises the younger generation on what they should look forward to in the future and what to do to succeed in their endeavors.
• 49:11 – Chris shares some funny stories and experiences of when the Internet first came to be.
• 53:28 – Chris encourages listeners to check out his website, ChrisFenwick.com, or follow him on Twitter at Chris Fenwick.

Jump to Links and Resources

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Transcript

This is Cirina Catania with OWC RADiO’s “Creative Club,” and I have Chris Fenwick on the line. This is an impromptu interview. Because I wrangled Chris, he’s just such an interesting person. And I want to know more about him. And I think you guys will, too. So Chris, tell everybody listening what you do for a living?

It’s kind of a loaded question. Primarily what I do seven to five or so every day because I’m an editor, I sit at a Mac and I push pixels around. Editing in the 21st century, it changes quite a bit depending on who you’re working for. I may be just what I like to call a “hired wrist.” Somebody who does not actually know how to use the computer will say, “Can you put that in front of that, and that after that?” Sometimes I’m given cards of data from the field and say, “Tell the story about these two sales associates.” Sometimes, I get more into the motion graphics world, and it will be creative visual metaphor for this complex financial transaction. And sometimes, I am actually dealing with large companies at a very kind of high-level, brand identity level. One of my clients, as a matter of fact, has hired me for the last four or five years, I think now, I’ve been working very closely with them in terms of building a visual language that is easy to share with other content providers, so that all of the video content providers, everything looks the same. So I’m actually building templates and things that they can distribute among all of their contractors. So there’s a lot of different things that editor in my world mean. And who knows, maybe I’m just jack-of-all-trades, master of none. But that’s kind of in a nutshell, what I do on a day-to-day basis, one of those hats.

In the post-production world, you have to have an artistic aesthetic to get things done. There is always a collision of arts and technology that happens, especially in the 21st century. Click To Tweet

That’s probably why you’re still working, though, don’t you think that in this day and age, we need to be able to wear more than one hat? I mean, I think that’s why I’m still working after all these years.

Oh, absolutely. I think a Norm Holland, there’s a soundbite of him from one of the editor’s lounges where he said, very poignantly, “The Hollywood system is dead. They just don’t know it yet.” And so, in today’s day and age, in the post-production world, you have to be willing to adapt, you have to be willing to learn, you have to be willing to admit your weaknesses and exploit your strengths. And one of the things that happened to me at a young age in this business was, I made some really bad mistakes when it came to my education.

Like what?

Alright, so here’s the deal. I’m 56 years old, I’ll be 57 in a couple of months. So, when I graduated from high school, it was the same year that MTV was born. And so, I saw these little movies, little films, and I love the idea of synchronizing sound and picture. That to me was born out of watching Star Wars at age 14. In the original Star Wars movie, there’s a scene that’s commonly referred to as the “Binary Sunset.” And it’s a scene where Luke Skywalker, after getting in a fight with his uncle, leaves their underground dwelling and he walks out to the sunset on Tatooine, and there are two sunsets on Tatooine. And the Binary Sunset has this beautiful, warm picture on Luke’s face as he looked out over the horizon, wondering about what his life could be. And yet, there’s this moment where the John Williams soundtrack swells, and it’s gorgeous and beautiful. And at 14 years old, I remember thinking, “Oh, I want to do that.” Now, I didn’t even know what “that” meant. It took me many years to figure out, “Oh, that’s a picture editor. No, I’m a video editor,” whatever. And so, in that year, 77 and 81 when I graduated from high school, the accessibility of the tools that we take for granted or quite frankly, often carry in our pockets, it was unattainable to me. So I set out to try and figure out how to make these music videos that I was so enamored with. So, I was dumb, I was monumentally stupid and I said, “Oh, music video. I’m going to make music videos. So I want to take video production classes.” Well, here’s the thing, music videos were shot on film, and video production classes in the 80s, mid-80s were about sitting in a studio in a multi-camera environment with production switchers and audio mixers and lighting grids. And really bad cameras and no music videos of note were made in video production studios, they were shot on film by filmmakers. What I should have done was taking film classes. But I didn’t, because I wanted to make music videos, I took video production classes. Huge error on my part because I was two years into it before I realized, “We’re never going to make a music video here, are we?” I never say that to my instructor. And he said, “Yeah, you should have probably, should have taken filmmaking classes.” I was like, “Damn it!” So, but what ended up happening there was there was a found love discovery if you will, of the process of education. Taking something that was complicated, and putting it on a screen in a way that it could be absorbed by a larger audience, okay? And I’m sure there’s some really fancy, educated ways of explaining that. But to me, it was just breaking things down so that people could learn it, all right? And so, that process became really fascinating to me. And I found very quickly that speakers support graphics, as they later became known now, which I think of it as PowerPoint or Keynote, whatever. That visual aids, very much aided in that. And in the corporate video communications world, all you’re doing is taking complicated things and explaining it to people. And so, I would have never found this part of this business, had I intelligently chosen filmmaking instead of video production when I was 18, 19 years old. So I kind of stumbled into this but, I’ve also grown to really love it.

So then don’t call it a mistake, because actually, I think it was really good that it happened that way. Right?

Oh no, It was clearly, it was no, I will continue to call it a mistake. It was clearly a mistake. Now, that being said, I think I did stumble into a more lucrative part of the business. Because if you just want to be a filmmaker, like if you just say, “What do you do for a living? I shoot music videos.” “Really? How many days a month are you working? Because I work every day.” Right? And so I think that in, in today’s day and age I always tell people, “You know the only reason to purchase a camera is to feed an edit suite.” And anybody in today’s day and age who just says, “Oh, I’m a camera operator, or I’m a DP or I’ve owned that’s all you do,” I think it’s a mistake. Unless you’re in the very highest echelons, I think it’s very difficult to make a living as just a person who touches a camera and pulls focus and frame shots and maybe helps with the lights. I think it’s a very difficult way to make a living. So, post-production on the other hand, I always tell the camera guys I know, “For every day you shoot, I’m gonna cut for at least three. I’m working. So right from the get-go, I’m working three times as much as you are this year.”

I’ve never thought of it that way. That’s a great way to put it.

So what job do you want? Do you want a job where you work a hundred days a year, or 300 days a year? It’s pretty simple equation when you think about it. So, I am always telling people You got to get involved in post one way or another. And I think that there’s ways that camera people can get involved. I think one of the things that nobody has ever explored, is the idea of delivering footage, that’s already long. I’ve never met anybody who said “Oh, and here’s your footage. And here is a log of what was discussed.” “What?” Because camera guys, by and large, they don’t want to, there’s a phobia of getting involved in post. And there shouldn’t be. It’s just where most of the money is, in my opinion.

Well, I’m a proponent of logging being part of the production process. Not necessarily just the post and we can talk about that later on.

Bringing metadata from production into post is super important. Recently, I did a piece that was all shot on a RED Weapon Epic, Scarlett, whatever, the hell it was 4, 8, 6, 19K, whatever I don’t know, but.

Probably the Helium or something.

In addition to the camera footage, he delivered a PDF document. And the PDF document had a keyframe, it may have been the first frame of each shot, and all the camera metadata next to it. It told me what lens was on, what focal length to ISO, the LUT, the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all that camera words, stuff. Great! Love it. But, and I’m sure there’s some piece of software that Google connects to your RED camera and generates and spits all that out. And he mentioned some utility to use it. But what if that utility also had, even if it was just the shot number if it had a shot number or the line of script. And if nobody wants to give you that much, give me the first five words of what the talent said. In this third section of our video we want to discuss, “Okay, give me that. Because that’s a hint in post that gets me closer to finding what I need to find.” I just cut a piece in the last couple of days, where the producer just opted to roll three cameras for 30 minutes at a time and ramble his way through a 10-minute script, stopping and starting and doing pickups and never wants giving me any indication in a 30-minute take of what line he’s starting on. “Now let’s go back one line and pick it up from there.” “I don’t even know what line we stopped at. Because your script didn’t have shot number or line numbers.” 30 minute takes, 21 of these takes, shot over two days.

Wow.

So you’re not helping posts, but then again, I charge by the hour. So whatever, let’s start cutting through this.

Let’s go way, way back, because I’m always very curious about the creative psyche, because you’re obviously a very creative person. And I know you’re a bit of a nerd because you’ve been at all of our little tribe gatherings. We were at the Apple at The Creative Summit. I love that event. It was so wonderful to be there in that room. But don’t you hate it when they come on stage and they say, “Don’t take any pictures of this room”, and you just want to, but you can’t. It’s like it’s so wonderful being on that campus, and there’s so much. There’s just so much energy there, it’s a great thing with that group of people. But let’s go back to when you were a little boy, what was the first memory you have of something that you actually love to do? I’m just curious.

Well, it’s funny, I’ve told this story before but, I am. My mother and father are diametrically opposed creatively. My father was an Engineer. He graduated from USC on a GI grant. He had two degrees in Engineering, one in mechanical, one in electrical. He got both of those degrees in a four year period. And in the final semester of school, he carried 32 units and passed them all. And he had to do that because the GI Bill would only pay for four years of school. And he wanted to maximize everything he could get out of it. My mother, on the other hand, was an oil and canvas artist. I come home from school, she’d have these giant canvases set up in the family room where she was painting flowers, these big giant broad strokes. And I was always fascinated that my mom could take a white piece of canvas and make something beautiful to look at. But my dad was this Engineer. I can remember one time I was very young, probably six years old or so, seven years old, maybe and I was sitting at the kitchen table and I was sketching on a piece of paper. This is for your science fiction nerds. The Chariot, and the Chariot was the glass dome alterative vehicle that the Robinson family drove on Boston Space. Okay, and it’s super nerd that I could rattle all that off without thinking about it. Chariot was this really cool looking little space car, and I was driving this thing. And my dad had come home from work, and he sat down next to me. And he said, “What are you drawing?” I said “It’s from Lost in Space. It’s like a car to drive around on the moon,” or whatever. And my dad goes, “Well, you know what it means.” And he takes the pencil from me, and on the front of the thing, he draws a mast. And then he draws a little box, and he draws what could only be like a, some sort of a bearing. Here’s my dad being the engineer, he’s drawing the bearing that this thing is going to swivel on. And he draws this thing, and I go, “What’s that?” And he goes, “It’s a light.” And I go, “Oh yeah, it’d be good to have a light.” “No, it’s not just any light.” He’s talking to a six or seven year old son, he goes, “It’s a Xenon light.” Xenon is the brightest light we know how to make, and he starts describing all the technology behind this thing that he’s drawing on. But I’m sketching trying to be as artistic as my mom. And he’s trying to do like an Engineer’s drawing, like an isometric drawing, or like draftsman on top of the thing. But it was this melding of technology and art that got me to where I am now. Because, in this world, you have to have some sort of artistic aesthetic to get the things done that we do. But we also have to deal with, “Oh, my computer’s not working.” Or “What kind of hard drive should I get?”, and what sort of things are cables or whatever. So, there really is a collision of art and technology that has happened, especially in this business, and especially in the 21st century. It used to be, you’d have the machine room down the hall, and you call in the Engineers, they go, “Edit system broke. I’m going outside until you fix it.” And that doesn’t exist anymore. You got to be able to fix your own stuff.

But this brings us right back to what you were saying before, that people who work in the production side need to be more aware of the post-production side. And I think it’s like this patchwork quilt, you have to know as much as you can about everything, before you can create the whole picture, right? That’s my feeling.

Yeah, I used to work at KQED in San Francisco, I didn’t work there full time. But I was some freelance on-call kind of guy. And there was a guy there, and I can’t remember his name. I think I know his name but I don’t want to say it wrong. But he was post-production Supervisor for one of the shows that I worked on. And I at the time was an Assistant Director. And I was able to sit-in on some of the edits that he was doing. And this is like when editing was refrigerator-sized, one-inch tape machines that were down the hall. So it was an unattainable thing for me at that time at that age. And this is a guy who, at KQED, they had CMX edit systems. And this is a guy who was not even in the engineering union. He wasn’t allowed to touch the edit controller. And he had gone in on his own dime, taking a CMX edit class, even though he would never be allowed to enter in a single keystroke on that CMX editor at KQED. Because he was in the wrong union. And I said to him, “Why did you do that?” He goes, “Because I want to know more than anybody else in the room.”

Smart guy.

And it’s really true. It’s very powerful. If you have at least a cursory understanding of every different job on a crew. If you’re a Director, you should know how audio works, you should know how camera works. If for nothing else, then you get to a point where you say, you’re not that guy who says you have 15 minutes to set up and they looked at you, “Are you kidding? I need an hour to set up.” And if you understood that job, you would have planned ahead of time and said, “Cameras need 90 minutes to set up.”

Exactly, exactly!

I think the most important skill that a Director has, is to fight and scratch and claw away for all the resources that the rest of the people on your crew need. And give it to them.

And the producer needs to help with that too. And a lot of times they’re at loggerheads because of budgets. I want to go back to that moment when your dad was drawing on your pad of paper. How did you feel about that moment when he drew the Xenon light?

I think like anything, I was just in awe of how much my dad knew. My dad was always the smartest guy in the room. He always was the one when you’d say, “What does that mean?” He said, “Look it up, there’s a dictionary on the table, there’s a reason I paid that money for that seven-inch thick dictionary over there, go open it up and learn it.” but he was always the smartest guy in the room. So it didn’t surprise me, it was just another example of him being able to teach. He liked to teach, he liked knowing that when he was done with you that you were smarter. He took everything as an opportunity to teach. He used to say, “My job is to learn a job and then teach somebody else how to do it.” And that infuriated my mother. Because she’d always say, “Tom, you’re going to teach your way out of a job”. And he would just look at her and go “No, there will always be something more for me to do.”

Well, that’s pretty awesome. Did your mom see what he drew on your pad? Do you remember? The Xenon light?

I don’t recall. I don’t think so. That’s a vivid memory. That’s a memory that happened I would say probably 50 years ago. And I remember it like it happened yesterday.

Because those are the moments that form who we are. I think you’re born with a lot of this stuff. And where you grow up and who you grow up with can mold you in different ways. But that is one of those really revealing moments. I think that Norman Holland probably would have say, “That was your first lean forward moment.” Right?

Yeah.

Yeah. You have a very big brain. And you’re very creative. So I think you really are a mixture of the two, wouldn’t you say?

Yeah, I think, there have been times in my past where I’ve said that most people have some sort of a membrane between their left and right brain. And I think I was born without that. The creative solution to technical problems and the technical solution to creative problems for me, those are like one in the same. They always have been. I’ve always been kind of blessed with the ability to conceptualize difficult things, and I don’t know what it is, but it’s like, good troubleshooting. Have you ever met somebody who’s really good at troubleshooting a difficult problem? Most people would say “yes” to that. Have you ever met somebody where you look at them and you say, “You have no idea what you’re talking about.” 

I admit it, yes I have.

They don’t understand cause and effect. They don’t understand that one thing is not even remotely related to the other. You walk into the office, you’re wearing your Levi’s, the internet isn’t working. I obviously can’t wear jeans to work anymore. No, those aren’t related. But look, it’s not working, and I’m wearing Levi’s, you’re a moron! If you honestly think that, you’re a moron. I’ve always felt I was really good at taking complex things, of breaking them down into tiny little pieces. And here’s something I’ve never admitted to anybody. I’ve always found it fascinating people that carry around notepads with them all the time; “I’m going to jot down this idea” or “I’m going to sketch this out,” or “I’m going to write down the ten things that I need to do today,” whatever it is. I’ve never been that person. For some reason, complex things stack up in a very accessible way in my brain hole. And like, I can keep track of a couple of dozen complex things and the order in which they need to happen. And I don’t know why that is. But I’ve always looked at people that like they have their little notepad or a little notebook and they flip it open and then jot down a few things. “What are you doing?” “Oh, write down some things I need to get done.” “Hah, okay. Interesting.” I would never do that. I just don’t do that.

That’s pretty awesome though.

I don’t know why it is, I’ve never, and again I’ve never expressed this to anybody. But I’ve always kind of looked at the person who’s jotting down ideas; there’s something kind of cool about that. I’ve just never needed to do it.

Do you play chess?

I know one time I did have a little book. I don’t play chess. I understand chess, but I’m not a good chess player. I would be beat a hundred times out of a hundred probably. I played with anybody who plays, but I get it. It’s one of those things where you have to invest the time in it, to really absorb it. I will tell you this one and I think a lot of people know this about me, but you may not. There was a time in the early 80s when I was tied. I don’t know if you’ll use to this in any of the stuff you’re doing here, but it’s interesting. I was actually tied with the world record for solving the Rubik’s Cube.

Really?

By that time the world record was 26 seconds, it’s like six seconds, and I will be completely forward about this. It was a bit of a fluke, I think certain things fell into place. If you know anything about how to solve a Rubik’s Cube, you get good solves and bad solves. And this is a good one. And I had a fluke moment. But yes, at the time, the world record was 26 seconds. So when I hit my stopwatch, it’s like, “That was fast.” But, there’s something about that process and breaking it down. To do a Rubik’s Cube fast, there’s a certain amount of physical dexterity, there’s visual acuity, you have to be able to glance at a cube and flip it over once and know where every piece is like in a split second. And then there’s the logic of I want to get from here to there in the least amount of rotations possible. And there are things that you can do to skip over steps and have things happen concurrent with other things that you’re doing, if that makes any sense. So, you can take something that normally would take 21 rotations of the cube and you may be able to do it at 9. And guess what, I just saved 12 rotations, and now I’m doing it faster, because I’m turning it less time. There’s that part of my mind, and I was doing this in the early 80s. And when I realized in the early 2000s that there were whole web pages devoted to the Rubik’s Cube and solving the Rubik’s Cube. I went down a bit of a path for a while. And I toyed with the idea. I realized that I kind of had a personal goal that I wanted to be able to do sub-30 seconds every time I did the cube. And then I started studying some of these websites. And I had a moment of clarity when I realized I would probably take me another 10,000 hours of work to be able to get sub-30 seconds every time I touched a Rubik’s Cube. And I said “Nope, that’s good. I’m okay with doing it in under a minute every time I touch it”, but there was like a moment where I was like, “Do I really want to go down this path? No, no, no, that would be bad. It’d be a waste of time professionally.” But my mind gets fascinated by things like that.

There’s a metaphor in there because I think editing is a lot like working the Rubik’s Cube trying to solve that puzzle. I remember one client sending me 58 hours of unlogged footage and saying, “Can you turn this into a one hour network show?” It was one of those unscripted things. And it’s a bit like that, isn’t it? Because as an editor, more and more now, editors are being called on to help develop the story. I think that’s just an undue burden on an editor. I think everyone needs a story editor working alongside of them. That’s my forte as a story editor. Maybe that’s why I’m saying that. But I think the Rubik’s Cube and your ability to do that is also what makes you a really good editor because you can handle all of those pieces. But you know what comes to mind when you talk about that, I think about all these young kids who are going out with these cameras, and they’re just shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting, and none of them are logging, like you said, you’re right about that, they’re not logging. And then they bring it all back and they go, “Well I know what’s in here.” And I always tell them, “No, you have to organize yourself because you may not be the only one touching that stuff number one and number two. 10 years from now, if you have to do a recut, how are you going to find anything?”

Yeah. I totally agree with what you’re saying. And yet simultaneously, I totally agree with the kid. So here’s my point.

My friend Chris Fenwick, the anarchist.

Well, I’ve always said that the only thing that’s consistent in this business is change. So when I started 35 years ago, it was right before the death of the video tube cameras, and everybody switched to CCDs. All their cameras had chips in them instead of tubes.

Right.

A few years later, we saw people starting to ditch their VHS offline systems, or computer-based early Avid systems that edited little postage stamps that nobody ever thought would be a real stream of video and yet, here we are, in 2019. We’ve seen so many changes, we got to the point where people would online in the computer, we got to the point where people said, “We will never let go of videotape.” And then there’s a great Tsunami in 2011. And the biggest videotape factories in the world are destroyed and everybody starts rethinking the idea of shooting straight to hard drives. So things change. Every couple of years, something radically changes. And so, you and I come from an era where it took 20 people to put together a TV show, and what is a TV show anymore? Are we talking about something that I sit in front of a screen and I’m entertained by sound and pictures? Well I look at somebody like Casey Neistat, who for a while there he was putting a 10-minute video on YouTube every single day.

And who by the way, is moving to L.A. I’m so excited. Anyway, go ahead.

Yeah, and yet did he have a staff of 20 people? He did not. He was doing it all completely solo. And does he know what’s on the video? Yes, he does. Does he change the way he shoots? Absolutely! When he started doing his gimmick–and I say gimmick, and he’s not the first person to do it. But he did it really well and he did it with no crew, and no production assistance. But where he would start a story in his living room and finish the story ten shots later as he walked into his office. That’s somebody who clearly knows what they’re going for. Now, did he sit down and log everything? He absolutely did not. Because if he had, he wouldn’t have had another video out tomorrow. Because this thing’s going to be posted by the end of the day. And so, it’s a different objective. It’s a different level of production value. Casey Neistat is brilliant at making the one-man-band look like it’s a crew of 20 people. And then the other thing is, “Really? Do we really think in 10 years I’m going to recut my May 22nd blog post? No, I’m not.” He’s putting just as much work into it as he needs to, to do what he’s trying to achieve. So in some ways, yes I totally agree. If you did want to recut something 10 years later, it might be hard to find it. But he’s probably not gonna need to do that. He is really good, I will say this. And I’m a huge Casey Neistat fan. He is really good at very quickly finding things from the past. And I’ve seen him talk about how he organize his things. And he does cut in Final Cut X or at least he was, I think he still is. And he sorts things by date, so he can go back to a specific day and find something but, yeah I mean he’s shooting as much as he needs to shoot. I think it’s really ambitious when you see things that he does where he’s managing multiple cameras. But to be fair he did kind of burn out. He’s not doing stuff daily anymore. He made a point and he got 10 million followers on YouTube. You know?

Yeah, I think he’s awesome.

And then he slowed down.

Do you like the way he cuts? I love the way he cuts.

I absolutely loves the way he cuts. Yeah. I’ve been doing this for 35 years, and there’s not a video he’s ever posted that I would be absolutely proud to put my name on it to say “Cut by Chris Fenwick.”

So what NLEs have you been using?

Well, since 2012, exclusively Final Cut X.

Really? Why?

Because I’m thinking about the future and not worried about the past.

Think about the future and don't worry about the past. Click To Tweet

I mean, I haven’t to agree with you. But I’m just curious.

And I think Apple is, too. When you understand what Apple was trying to do. And you take the time to get over the learning wall, which is what I refer to as the learning curve, what most people would call the “learning curve”, it really is a wall, it’s a brick wall. You open it up, you’re pissed off almost immediately. And 99% of people just quit it and never launch it again. I get that, I totally get that. But, the first person who sat in an automobile, having ridden a horse their entire adult life, is going to be very much daunted by how much complicated the user interface is. Driving a car is not like riding a horse. But the car has kind of worked out for us. And the early adopters who said, “No, I’m gonna go with this gas pedal, brake pedal, I’ll figure it out. Yep, steering wheel.” So there’s no leather reins. “Okay, I’m okay with that. Let’s figure this thing out.” I mean when something makes a tectonic shift, you’re gonna have to adapt. You’re going to have to adapt to things being a little different. And so when you get to the point where you get over that learning wall, and you realize, “Okay, so there’s a reason why Apple didn’t bother putting logging capture into this, because tape is dead anyway.” “Well, no, it’s not. I’m still using tape.” “Yeah, but you won’t be.” You know? They’re absolutely looking toward the future. And everybody else is radically holding on to the past. And so, because I’m much more worried about the future than the past, I tell people all the time, all of the time. “You need to be looking over the fence. Something is coming, and you need to know about what’s happening.” I’ve always sort of enjoyed the process of making a little bit of stuff, do a lot of stuff. The first TV station I worked at, the production suite, I did a lot of live teleconferencing. Multi-cameras, live switcher, live to satellite.

What stage was that?

It was a station in San Mateo, California called KCSM. We had a thriving retail department where we would rent our studio out to various local companies. And that’s what I did. I did some of the broadcast stuff that the station was doing. But I was also predominantly like them. I was like the main TD for all of the retail work that they did. And the production switcher that KCSM had in the 80s; it was awful. It was really bad. But, I used to really thrive on making it do things that I would like routinely have the production manager come in and go, “How’d you do that? This doesn’t do that.” I go, “Well yeah, it does.” Or I can remember one time I got into an argument with the chief engineer and I said, “I need you to put another router in the control room because I need to be able to control what’s on the backside of the A channel of the DVE.” And I realized that there’s a whole generation of kids that are listening to me that have no idea what I’m saying.

That’s true.

But the chief engineer said, “You could put something on the back of the DVE?” And I said, “Yeah, and I need to be able to change it.” And I remember getting in an argument with him about it. “I don’t know why we need to do that.” I said, “Because it’s gonna make the client happy and they pay the bills around here.” Very reluctantly, he threw his hands up, he said, “Fine.” And he brought in another router head so I could control what was on the back of the DVE because I was gonna make a lot of use out of that by flipping it over. But it was taking a little bit of technology and Xenon lights and putting it on top of a sketch of a moon car that made sense to me. It was technology and art together.

Yeah, I love that. I love those images. That’s one of the reasons why I love doing OWC RADiO because it’s the marriage of tech and creativity. I think the two go hand in hand. Your mom and dad with a marriage literally have tech and creativity. And there’s beautiful music that can happen when you bring the two together. So I’m thinking about the younger generation that is listening in, what do you tell them? What can you as someone who has been through these hoops, what can you tell them about what to look for in the future, and also what to do now so that they can become successful at what they do?

The first thing I would say is, don’t get too comfortable. You should know that there’s always something new coming around the corner, that’s gonna make the thing that’s on your desk that you absolutely love. It’s gonna make you want to throw it in the trash can.

Yep.

And just accept to that. There’s some financial things about that, that I would definitely tell people to be careful about. One thing I tell people all the time, and I apologize, this is a bit of a departure. But remember, this two questions that you just asked me, because I do want to come back to that while we’re here, “When you buy a computer, the day you buy your computer, start saving for the next one.”

Oh, cameras too. Any technical equipment.

Anything.

Yeah.

Start saving for the next one that day. Because the alternative is in a couple of years when you want to buy a new laptop or whatever, and you don’t have the money sitting aside. But the alternative is, you’re going to put it on a credit card, and then you’re going to be paying interest for something while you pay off that credit card. But if you save from day one of any purchase for the next purchase, when that next purchase comes around, as long as you save enough, you’ll have cash to buy that next thing. And you will carry no guilt, when you say, “Oh, there’s a new computer that’s better than what I have. I want to buy it. Oh, guess what? I already have the money in the bank.” Because you’ve been saving for the last two years. The other thing is, don’t buy one of everything. Skip a generation on everything. So that’s finance 101.

I love that, finance 101. You’re right, I have a little envelope on the back wall here. It’s actually hanging on the back wall. And I keep putting money in it for the next camera equipment that I might need.

There you go. That’s a very visible way of doing it.

Bright red, funk-shape, red envelope.

So you’re talking about the kids. So, I said earlier.

Yeah, I mean I get asked this question all the time. I try to mentor young people as much as I can. I do think we have an amazing new generation coming in. But they always ask me two things; they say, “How can I get a job?” And then they say, “What do I need to know to be successful in the future?” So what advice would you give them about?

To be successful in the future would be good if you knew the future. That would be awesome!

But don’t you think we have instincts about it? I mean, I think we do. If you’re looking over the fence, you might have some hints.

It’s much easier to look forward if you know some of the past. Because you’ve seen it all happen. And so I was just having this conversation with somebody today. If you had been an editor for a decade, there’s a very good chance you were using Final Cut Pro. Final Cut Classic, as I like to call it. Final Cut, one through seven. And you could have spent an entire decade of your career using essentially the same software, minor upgrades every couple years. A decade using the exact same tool. And then when Final Cut X came out, because it was different, you threw your arms up and said “Apple’s trying to screw me.” No, they’re just advancing and you’re standing in the mud. And you don’t want to move. And frankly, it was unusual that one edit system Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Classic had been so predominant, especially in California or at least in the Northern California for so long. It had been very, very predominant for a long period of time. That was unusual, that was kind of unprecedented. In the previous 20, 25 years of my career, I have used probably 9 or 10 different edit systems. So, what was unusual was the early 2000s, where Final Cut was so stable and so predominant for quite a long time. But when you know that things are going to change, you’re not afraid of things going to change. But if you’ve been in this business for a decade in 2011, and Final Cut X came out, well you’re going to have a bit of a heart attack. So don’t be afraid of things changing, be looking over the fence, understand some of the past so that the future can kind of make a little more sense. And the other thing that I tell people who are looking for a job is I tell them, “You’re much better off making a job than looking for a job.” If there’s the idea, I believe the idea of just handing out a resume to 100 different places and getting a job and hoping that there’s some sort of longevity or protection or future in that, is frightening. A good friend of mine had a job who he’s working on a major Hollywood release film. I won’t go into it. But just literally got notified that they’re gonna put the entire editorial staff on hiatus while they rewrite themselves.

Ouch!

And now he’s struggling to find work. And he’s expected to be available to come back when they come off at hiatus. Which of course, they have no idea when that’s going to be.

Wow.

What kind of security is that?

No, that’s crazy.

I tell people all the time, “Don’t look for a job, make a job.” I remember, when I started in television classes in the mid 80s, BA4 I think it was. I walked into the first day of class, and Doug Montgomery, who was the instructor, he stood in the front of the class, and he said, “Welcome to Broadcast 101. If you’re here, because you want to learn, and then go get a job in the television business, there’s the door, you can leave right now. There are no jobs in the television industry.”

Oh my gosh.

He says “Now, if you’re interested in how TV shows are made, and you just want to learn some stuff, you’re more than welcome to stay. So let’s get started.” And what Doug Montgomery didn’t realize in the mid-80s was that the industry was rapidly evolving and changing and there was a thing come on the horizon called the “Internet.” And I mean, I can remember the first time I made a video that was only going to ever be seen on the Internet. I can remember the first time that I posted an online approval, compression for somebody on the internet so that they could watch it in their office and I didn’t have to send them a VHS tape. They could say “Yes, that’s good. No, that’s not.” There’s a lot of things that have evolved and changed. And so, that’s why you don’t have to think about or worry about this kind of old world metaphor of I’m going to get a job and I’m gonna be there for 30 years, and then I’m gonna retire and they’re gonna give me a gold watch. It doesn’t happen.

Oh, that’s a terrible way to live. I think I love my life, because I’m always trying new things. I’m just always looking for something new. But there are wonderful memories. I mean, you probably can remember too, the first time you ever typed “www” into your computer, I know exactly where I was, and exactly what I was doing. And it was like this amazing thing that was happening. Right? Crazy.

Yeah. It’s not. I remember the first time I typed in an email address that we were going to put as part of somebody’s lower third. And we didn’t know what an @ sign was. “What is this thing?”, “I don’t know, just type a parentheses and a letter “a” and another parentheses.” And that was in the 80s. One of our clients–this is a totally unrelated story, but we had a client who had gone to some sort of conference. And some of the other people at the conference were trading business cards and email addresses. And he didn’t know what an email was.

Oh my gosh.

This would be like 86-88. He didn’t know what an email was. And so, when somebody said, “So what’s your email address?” And he had heard a bunch of other emails, so he just made something up.

That’s hilarious.

He just made it up!

That’s hilarious.

Something, something@compuserve.com, whatever. And then he got back to the office, and I know the story because I knew his executive assistant. And he’s like, “Hey, find out about this email thing and get me one.”

Oh my gosh, Chris.

Apparently, it’s a thing. So yeah. I think the other thing I would say to kids is to not be afraid to make mistakes. Because the beauty of not working for somebody is you can make as many mistakes on your own as you want. A slight divergence, a few years ago, I bought my first house. And one of the things that I ended up doing that night, I took the keys of the house as I remember standing in the garage, and thinking, I’ve never had my own garage before. I’m going to get back into woodworking like I was very infatuated with in Junior High. But, because I’ve lived in apartments and condos and for the last 40 years. I never had the ability to pursue that hobby. And so I started a couple years ago, I started really getting into it again. And I’ve been building things for around the house and fixing fences and what not. But, I remember I was talking to a guy at this really high-end woodworking store near my house. And I was telling him about how much I was planning, like, “Well, I’m worried about doing it the wrong way. I don’t want to make it the right way.” And I was trying, and I was like, sketching some things out. And he just looked at me and he said, “Don’t do that. Just build it. You’re probably gonna build it wrong, but you’re gonna learn 10 things while you do it wrong. And then you’ll build another one. And then you build another one after that. And every time you do it, you’ll get better at it.” And that absolutely relates to this business, if you’re trying to learn. Now if you’re the type of person who just sits by your phone, waits for it to ring and somebody goes, “Hey, I need you to do this here’s a bunch of money, go.” that might be a different thing. But if you’re on them, if you’re sitting on the outside, and you want to get into this business, make a video every day. Do what Casey Neistat did.

Don't be afraid to make mistakes. The beauty of not working for someone is you can create as many mistakes on your own as you want. Click To Tweet

Right.

You probably have a smartphone in your pocket, you could probably shoot video on it. And even if it’s not an iPhone, there’s probably some way to edit video, I’m just assuming that there’s something in the Android world like that. Do a video every day and you’re gonna make a lot of bad ones. And eventually you’ll make one that makes somebody laugh or smile or cry. And then, when you’ve connected with somebody on an emotional level you did something right.

That’s wonderful advice. 

Do it everyday.

Chris, where can people go on the internet to find out more about you?

You can go to ChrisFenwick.com, you can follow me on the Internet, on Twitter at @chrisfenwick. If you’re interested in woodworking, you can follow me on Instagram @chrisfenwick.

I would love to do that. Chris Fenwick on Instagram. I want to see some of your stuff.

I love making sawdust. My grandson and I, he comes over every weekend and goes “Papa! Let’s go build something.” I’m like “Alright Liam, let’s go. Let’s go make it.” We’re out in the garage one day and my wife comes in. She says “Liam, what are you doing?” And he looks up at her. And he leans down and he picks up a handful of sawdust off the floor. And he goes, “Look Nana! We’re making man glitter.”

Oh! How cute is that? Oh my gosh.

Yeah he’s four years old. He’s awesome.

Well, to all the people listening in on this, I say, make your sawdust. Make your man glitter. Make your woman glitter. Just get out there. I always tell people, get up off your chair and go do something wonderful today. And Chris, I really appreciate you spending time with us. It’s very inspiring. Congratulations on everything that you do. And we’ll talk to you again hopefully very, very soon.

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Important Links

• Chris Fenwick – Website
• Chris Fenwick – Twitter
• Chris Fenwick – Instagram
• Star Wars
• Luke Skywalker
• John Williams Soundtrack
• Xenon
• KQED
• CMX Edit Systems
• Casey Neistat
• Final Cut X
• Final Cut Classic
• RED

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Checklist

1. Deepen your knowledge on how to mesh arts and technology to have creative solutions to technical problems and technical solutions to creative problems.
2. Admit your weaknesses and exploit your strengths. This is the key to flourish in any industry.
3. Be aware of the things to work on the post-video production side. This will best leverage your work in the video production industry.
4. Have a cursory understanding of every job in your video production crew. Understanding the tasks will help you plan everything ahead of time.
5. Be willing to teach your job and pass on the knowledge to newer talents and younger generations. 
6. Learn to adapt to new skills and methodologies as technology rapidly evolves. There’s always something new to learn and do.
7. Always look over the fence and don’t get comfortable. There is always something new coming, and you have to know what is happening. It’s important to keep yourself updated with the latest trends in your field. 
8. Start saving for a better computer, gadget, or any technical equipment from the day you buy one. Video production equipment is expensive so it’s best to have backup for what you’re already spending on.
9. Learn from the past and don’t be afraid of the future. It is easier to look forward when you know what happened and you know that everything will change.
10. Check out Chris Fenwick’s website, ChrisFenwick.com, or follow him on Twitter at Chris Fenwick for more information on video post-production.