DISCLOSURE: This is a sponsored content brought to by Rev. 

The Media & Entertainment industry has been hit hard in 2020. The shift to remote work created a variety of new, and complicated challenges for creators, directors, and producers alike — as if the industry weren’t complex enough already. And while M&E as an industry may not yet be out of the weeds, creative minds have found new ways to keep production moving forward, finding new ways to solve problems and make quality content.


In a time when everyone is forced to interact through a screen, the idea of producing a film can seem downright frightening — and for good reason. Collaboration is often inherent to the process. How can you do that when you aren’t supposed to be within six feet of another person?

Cloud-based technology services can help streamline production and allow creatives to find new ways to collaborate on projects. In particular, speech-to-text services like Rev, which offers searchable, interactive transcripts and 99% accurate captions and subtitles, can free up valuable time, accelerate production, foster collaboration, and drive creativity. 

Less Fat, More Flow

Transcripts can save you significant time during the post-production process. Instead of sifting through hours of footage to find that perfect five-minute clip, you can simply search the transcript for the word or phrase you remember and have the clip within seconds.

Jacob Reed, an award-winning writer, director, and producer who has worked for Jimmy Kimmel Live, Funny or Die, Buzzfeed, and many more, uses Rev in his workflow to save time and help find his story. But it wasn’t always that way.

“For a lot of projects, I didn’t know about Rev, and I would have loved to have it in my workflow,” he said. “Searching and searching for those golden moments, or trying to connect an idea to something, is really time-consuming.”

But when Reed had found himself scouring 5 hours of footage for a fully improvised 10-minute short, a friend tipped him off to Rev, and he was able to quickly find the key moments in his footage and structure the story of the sketch. 

“Rev is a tool that makes it so much faster,” he said.

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Working Together While Apart 

Speech-to-text services can also make it easier to communicate and collaborate remotely with your team members. Right now, you can’t exactly pack people into an edit bay and let them take a look and provide feedback on the footage. But shareable transcripts of all of your footage can help recreate that feeling virtually and even make the process more accessible to everyone.

Reed and his production partners recently entered a documentary short into the Easterseals Disability Film Challenge, and transcripts played a vital role in the process. The team was given five days to ideate and produce a film remotely. After concepting and filming, they only had two days to edit their film — and they had dozens of hours of footage. But with Rev transcripts, Reed and his team were able to compile the text of all of their footage, organize video calls, and edit the footage together. [Note: You can learn more about how Jacob leveraged Rev for his work in thisfull webinar recording!]

“It's a weird time and I would much rather collaborate with everyone in-person, but this was like 85% — maybe even 90% — accurate to the experience of working with people in a room,” Reed said. “What's cool about this process is that everyone can be looking at the transcript at the same time and it makes the collaboration so much more accessible.”

Getting Creative So You Can Be Creative

That accessibility also opens new creative doors. Maybe a team member remembers one little moment that they liked or affected them. You can search for that moment, review it together, and decide where to go with it. Maybe it becomes part of a larger idea. Maybe it accentuates a particularly emotional moment in your story. Transcripts give you the opportunity to find those moments fast, no matter how you decide to use them. 

“We would just live on Zoom with each other,” Reed said. “Everyone would have the Zoom window open and the Rev window open, looking back and forth and helping each other find things.”

“Sometimes you remember something — it's a ten-second moment in hours of footage” Reed said. “Finding that is really hard. And I think having a transcript like this that's searchable and interactive allowed us to be a lot more creative.”

It’s Not Just Transcripts 

Of course, all of that creativity and workflow optimization won’t mean much if your content isn’t accessible to the widest audience possible. Approximately 15% — about 38 million — of American adults report some form of hearing loss. Including captions with your content ensures that a wider audience can understand your story. Furthermore, studies show that about 80 to 90% of consumers watch videos with the sound off. Rev offers bothopen and closed captioning services, depending on your needs.

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Make Your Life Easier with Speech-to-Text

The media and entertainment landscape has changed dramatically in 2020, but creative people are still finding ways to produce great work. By embracing speech-to-text solutions and cloud technology, producers, directors, and distributors can streamline their workflows and drive collaboration without missing a step.

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