6/21/2021
Over the last couple of years, I've been given the opportunity to visit many classrooms and answer many emails. Mainly, these opportunities revolve around giving advice. We're consistently changing as humans with our lived experiences and influences, so advice is an interesting concept, because the minute it's given, it's immediately outdated.
Recently, I was put to this challenge while writing to a producer who was seeking advice in their field. Writing it out, I felt it immediately becoming dated, like a timer at 0:00, blinking ad nauseam. However, as I hit send, I realized that my anxiety around giving advice was completely related to my thinking around the advice-industrial complex––believing that advice is fired in stone, when in fact it's dampened clay.
I think back to the times in which I'm engaged in conversations with loved ones when I'm emotionally in need of their support. I think back to our follow up conversations, and the realization of their supposedly repetitive advice but, upon closer listen, delivered with a slight deviation. The deviation of lived experience and new influences, the water sprinkled on the drying clay to be ever so slightly remolded.
Below is the wet clay of advice I shared with that producer, in hopes that looking back, it won't be a cup as I expected, but perhaps a vase.
What's been the biggest factor that has helped you be successful in your career?
Being adaptable with the skillsets––so realizing what is needed in the market, and finding a way to provide something that no one else but myself can provide. In my case, I have a background in conceptual arts and graphic design, so I realized that my strengths are ideation, building systems (either stories, production, or both) and a fluency in sound design and music production. Realizing earlier in my career that emulating other people’s paths hinders my own growth was huge.
Are there any expectations you had about this career path that you have found differed from reality, in both a good or bad way?
When I moved into audio production is a career path, I expected it to be this complete shift in thinking from working in design for client services, but in reality it’s quite similar. Depending on the project, your client is either the production partner, the listener, or both. Working in audio production, particularly in podcasts, is more about your skills as a communicator of ideas and boundaries, and less about how you manipulate waveforms. Being able to know the chain of inspirations to explain your thinking is a greater skill than knowing Pro Tools shortcuts.
What skills are the most crucial to succeeding as a Senior Producer?
Being able to foresee production bottlenecks, building systems that externalize thought processes, and essentially creating a safe playground for producers and editors to roughhouse their ideas within.
What skillsets make an applicant stand out for you?
The best thing is when a someone can describe a problem that came their way, describe the boundaries they had to work within, and map out the solution created within that boundary. It reminds me a lot of assignments in art school, in which we had to create a piece within a certain parameter (e.g. make a homage to abstract expressionism, in two weeks, within this spacial requirement). It’s the perfect measure of craft and complexity.
What books, podcasts, or other forms of media/art have helped you develop and grow in your work?
I’m always drawn to artworks/media in which the process is the work itself. Adrian Piper’s 1971 work Food for the Spiritis one, Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing is another, Love is the message, the message is death by Arthur Jafa is another, and Big Numbers on Here Be Monsters transformed me.