If you’re looking for what separates “okay” from “excellent,” you’ll find it between seconds 26 and 35 in French musician Soprano’s smash music video, “Le Coach.”
Did you miss it? Watch the first half-minute again to see if you can guess.
I’ll give you a further clue. It starts at exactly second 28.
Still don’t have any idea what I’m talking about? Okay, I’ll spill.
It’s the clinking of the coach’s whistle.
Watch the video closely, though. The clink doesn’t always happen when the whistle itself is bouncing. In fact, during seconds 1 to 27, the whistle is bouncing with absolutely no sound at all. What does this mean? It means the whistle sound is not coming from the coach’s whistle at all. It is more likely coming from a place like this:
This whistle effect is a tiny, insignificant detail. It likely takes up much less than 1% of the total work done on this music video. As a geek who has now worked in video for several years, I know that a person in a dark room listened to 86 sound effects until they found the perfect one to match the scene. Welcome to the not-so-glamorous world of post-production.
Production itself can be even more meticulous. When the actors and director are on set, they have their own tiny details to attend to. I realized this after leaving my office in Paris last week and stumbling directly onto a film crew hard at work.
I shuffled in to see the setup. In a 15-foot radius around an unmarked white van stood eight people: the camera guy, a guy with an enormous boom microphone, three people who seemed to only be observing the scene, one guy with a black shirt that said “Special Effects Team,” and two actors in full police gear (complete with plastic military-grade weapons) standing by the taillights.
One of the non-actors shouted something. French for “action!” maybe? Whatever the word, it spurred the two actors into a full sprint from the taillights to the passenger side of the vehicle. With his partner behind him ready to cover, Actor One ripped open the door. They both pointed their weapons inside.
Then, nothing else happened.
Nobody looked surprised. The actors relaxed. Mr. Special Effects began talking with the camera operator, who then glanced at the person holding the microphone. Nods all around. They got what they needed.
When average artists are ready to stop, the experts are just getting started.
All this action took less than 10 seconds. They repeated this exact set of events at least twice more. Who knows how long they’d been doing it before I arrived?
This, it seems, is all part of the process. Unwrap any creative work you admire, and you’ll find endless layers of work similar to what I witnessed that day: preparation, action, and verification in millions of tiny pieces.
When average artists are ready to stop, the experts are just getting started. Truthfully, it’s not creative genius so much as it is creative grit. What else could you call that level of dedication?
Seemingly forgettable choices make for unforgettable moments.
Making excellent creative work really isn’t a secret. You do all you think you can do, and then you walk away.
Then, you come back later to add detail after detail, layer after layer, tweak after tweak, and, maybe, sound effect after sound effect.
