We always want more, don’t we?
More gadgets, more widgets, more things to own so we can be ‘happier.’
Just as the “pursuit of more” can drive our day to day living, it can also effect our creative output. However, the old adage still remains true:
“Less is more.”
It’s often joked in creative circles that a project, whether it be a billboard advertisement or website, looks great until the client adds twenty things they feel is ‘important.’ Before you know it, the message is lost in all the clutter. From ‘above the fold‘ to a music mix, this happens all the time.
Noise.
That’s what you get.
Lots and lots of noise.
As Christian communicators, we need to be clear. We need to be concise. The last thing we want to do is clutter our message so it becomes incoherent. In fact, I would say that’s what most Christian media has become. We’ve put so much *pop* into it, that’s all you hear.
The Power of Less
In my many years of audio editing, I have found less is more.
For example:
I was editing an audio montage for a radio broadcast introduction. It was a mix of soundbites from various sources, complete with a compelling sound bed.
It was great.
The runtime was about two and half minutes. I usually tried to keep it shorter, as the first segment was only five minutes. What was I going to do? It was three and half minutes before I had removed any peripheral bites, where else was I going to cut?
Normally I would have left it be, but for some reason–maybe I had been served too much coffee from my most awesomest assistant–I decided I wanted to cut it down to just one minute.
First I trimmed and tighten, even more than usual, using overlap and timing techniques I’ve used for years. But that still wasn’t enough.
That’s when it began to hurt.
I started cutting away some of my most favorite parts. I went from a message that had sub-text, to one clear and concise message.
It was one minute long.
It had punch.
It had bite.
It. Was. Awesome.
Lesson Learned
I learned my lesson, a valuable one at that. After more than a decade of audio editing, I had finally learned my lesson. We often think that more takes more work, and less requires less. But the truth of the matter is, less takes more work, and you can see the greater quality in the results.
I wish I could have shown you an example. A before and after. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, right?
Thankfully, the very awesome Chris Ames bumped me a link last week, on this very subject!
Ron Dawson wrote a great post on Capturing the Essence of the Edit, a practical piece on this very subject, complete with examples!
I encourage you to read it from beginning to end and remember this lesson for whatever you’re doing–writing, designing, mixing–whatever it may be, less is more.
[Top image via Ella’s Dad]
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