When In Doubt, Show Them The Truth

I work as a video editor at my university. We basically help people to make their videos whether they are for learning purposes or to show what different courses you can take.

A guy from the university’s library filmed a tutorial with us. I was tasked to cut the video and do whatever it would take to make it suitable for the website. It took me about thirty hours of work — usually, it only takes about nine — because in every sentence, he either stuttered so hard that you could barely understand anything or every second word was an “um” or “ah.”

When I finally finished, he wrote an email to tell us that it was outrageous that he was only visible on screen for about a minute out of the six-minute video. We tried to explain that it was not possible to cut out all his talking mistakes and show him on screen the whole time but he didn’t believe us. He wrote something like, “I am the best speaker, and if there is a problem, it is your fault, not mine.”

We showed him a video where all his mistakes were not cut out. He never answered. He just accepted the first video in silence and has never been seen again.