From the Arsenal: Your editor cannot read your mind.
Story Of The Day: I was on a call with a video agency owner.
Pure word of mouth has him selling more work than he can take on.
The problem was finding the time to deliver it.
(We’ll call him Bob.)
He creates content for businesses in health and wellness.
A lot of it involves technical explanations, so you need to understand what someone is saying before you can turn it into a video.
And he wanted to do more narrative work.
Brand stories. Mini documentaries.
The kind of projects that give him more creative freedom.
But his calendar was already full of the content he was delivering.
He had tried handing off the editing.
The editors could put clips together. But understanding the material, figuring out what mattered, and shortening it without losing the meaning?
That kept coming back to him.
So the work he wanted to move beyond was taking up the time he needed to move forward.
I get that.
I'm still figuring out parts of that balance myself.
He wasn't trying to stop making videos.
He needed to stop personally editing every one of them.
And you don't have to own a video agency to recognize this.
Maybe you're building a media team inside your business. You know your product, your audience, and what you're trying to say.
But somehow every video still needs you to make sense of it.
You want someone to take over, but you also want them to think about it like you would.
Which is a pretty big thing to expect from a folder of footage.
They can see what you shot.
They cannot see all the decisions you already made in your head.
Why this explanation matters.
What can be cut.
What the audience needs to understand before the next part makes sense.
So one of the things I suggested to Bob was recording himself working through an edit.
(he was thinking the same thing himself)
Not teaching someone how to use the software.
Talking through his decisions.
Why did you choose that take? Why did you remove that sentence? What would someone misunderstand if you cut this part out?
You do these things so often you might not even notice you're doing them.
But the person taking over needs to understand them.
And if you don't edit, you can still walk through a reference video and explain what you're looking for.
Give them something more useful than:
“Make it like this...”
Then comes the uncomfortable part.
Letting them make a different choice.
Because if every cut has to be the exact cut you would have made, you're still editing.
Just through someone else's hands.
That doesn't mean letting the standard drop.
You need to be clear about the objective, what cannot get lost, and where they have room to decide.
They might even find a better way to get there.
(That's part of why you hired them.)
On bigger productions, a director guides how the film should look without personally doing every job that makes it look that way.
(that would be humanely impossible)
Your team needs room to work like that too.
Set the direction.
Give them the context.
Then come back with feedback that helps the piece land.
They might not get it on the first try.
But if the work is getting closer, the revisions are getting smaller, and you're getting time back...
That's what we're building toward.
Takeaways: Handing over footage is not the same as handing over the context to make good decisions.
How to Apply It Today:
- Explain Your Thinking: Record yourself talking through an edit, or walk through a reference video. Explain the decisions, not the buttons. Put the objective and the context they need into a simple brief.
- Set The Boundaries: Show examples of what fits and what doesn't. Give them a short checklist of what the video must accomplish, what needs to stay, and where they have room to make their own calls.
- Hire For The Actual Work: If the job involves understanding technical explanations, say that in the job post. Attract someone who wants to do that work, then onboard them with your walkthroughs, references, and a small first assignment.
Pro tip: Before asking for a revision, ask yourself: does this miss the objective, or is it just different from how I thought about it?
As promised: dialing in your video workflows 1% at a time.
That’s what we do inside the Arsenal.
If you're struggling with video... we should talk.
Explain your decisions.
-David
P.S. We're doing another live workshop this September: 30 minutes on running video inside your business, followed by a full hour of Q&A. If getting your editor to understand your standards is the part you're stuck on, bring that question. You can sign up here.
David Yang
Co-Founder & CCO
DenimStitch Creative
7486 La Jolla Blvd #1012, La Jolla, CA 92037
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