At some point during your edit, you might find it useful to know (at a glance) in which bins the clips on your sequence live. This can be advantageous if you are editing a multi-faceted non-fiction video and you want to keep the various topics of your story organized. In my work at St. Jude I am often editing patient stories, and those stories are usually divided up into different sections.

Every project is different of course, but you might consider creating separate bins for the separate scenes in your story to keep your footage organized. Then, with this simple trick, you can color code your sequence to see exactly which clips are from which bin. 

Shooting exteriors can be tricky because sunlight is constantly changing, and it can be difficult to control the light falling onto your scene if you aren't prepared. It would be nice to have access to a grip truck with shiny boards, silks, butterflies, and HMI’s, but you won't always have the budget to afford them. However, even without a wide array of lighting control accessories, you can still capture some great exteriors with a few basic tips:

I often switch between Avid Media Composer and either After Effects or Premiere Pro when editing. My system is equipped with a Blackmagic video card that pushes a signal out to my client monitor. When I leave Avid and switch over to After Effects or Premiere Pro, my client monitor will change over as well, displaying what is in the program monitor of either After Effects or Premiere. However, more often than not, when I switch back to Avid, my client monitor is still blank.

When I first started using Avid, I didn't know what was going on. I tried closing out of Premiere or After Effects. I tried closing and then re-opening my Avid sequences bin. I tried closing and restarting Avid. I couldn't seem to find the solution, until another Avid user told me about this little toggle switch, located at the top of the sequence window. 

The life of a freelancer is a life of on-the-job-training. It will be (especially early on) a career of trial-and-error that will guarantee you moments of success, failure, and near-misses. But it's through those experiences that the freelancer gains valuable knowledge that will help to improve one's craft and one's business acumen. 

I was a freelance video producer & director for over 10 years, and in that time I learned quite a bit about networking, developing business, maintaining client relationships, marketing, and so on. My biggest lessons were learned after I completed a project. I would look back and dissect it, analyzing what worked, what didn't, and what I needed to do to make sure the next project was even more efficient. 

Here are the 3 things I learned to include in every contract before starting a project. These are by no means the only things I learned, but I think these items are essential to include in every video production contract.