Content Creation

Editors work behind the scenes, powering the film's trustworthiness as an artistic work. We are silent partners, like ghostwriters. We help the director discover the film they didn't know they had. 

The best Editors in the world are the trust engines of a film or a content project. We are devoted to the ideas of honesty and integrity. We evaluate the content for reliability, for artistic integrity, for sincerity of the truth. Directors know this. They hire an editor to get the film done ahead of schedule, but also for helping to define the film's truth - its place in the universe. 

This is what grows an editor's career-long partnership with a director. 

I'm one of the fastest editors out there. You've heard how Clint Eastwood is famous for getting a performance in one take? It's like that. I can usually nail an edit in one pass. 

It's one of the reasons I'm hired so frequently and have so many long-term relationships with directors. I can envision a scene in its finished form better than most editors. Thus, my edit process is not burdened by constant revisions, notes, and babysitting.

Media Composer vs Premiere vs Resolve... That argument is long dead. Today, it’s about applying the right app to the right workflow and need. 

Examples: 

• If you're directing an independent film, you can use any. It's your choice. 
• If you have a multi-camera television program, you use Media Composer because its multi-cam tools are simply better. 
• If you have a long format series (with or without team-based editors) you use Media Composer, simply because the transcoded media, compounding over time, doesn't grow to a point where it chokes the system. 
• If you have a heavy need for After Effects, you can use any, but Resolve and Media Composer will need a more classic VFX workflow, whereas Premiere has a much smoother interoperability directly to & from After Effects. 
• Premiere has the best tools for sending finished edits to multiple social media formats. 
• Resolve is the best at directly manipulating raw media files on your hard drives and colorizing them. 

In fact, hybrid workflows are probably the best. Meaning, when I need to be fastest, I usually advise Media Composer for the script-based edit and the majority of the project, Resolve for the color, and Premiere for the deployment of the marketing and social media clips towards the end of the edit.

I'm very passionate about this, so please listen up.

One of the many additional crafts that has crept into an editor's job duties over the years is animation. Job listings now demand After Effects work. Like other editors, I have learned to do this quite well, in order to service a bare-bones necessity. However... 

If the opportunity exists to pay the experts in these individual crafts, then please do so. If a job post for an editor mentions After Effects in it, then that company is contributing to the unemployment rate of struggling After Effects professionals. 

Example: There are a growing number of non-profit organizations trying to help people with autism find work. Quite often, that work is in the field of animation. Check out https://exceptional-minds.org/ and other similar organizations.

Please allow these groups to help the next generation of animators. We must ask editors to do less After Effects work. This goes for sound mixing and graphics creation as well. Please pay these professionals for their craft. Fair wages for fair work.

Yes, that's "green" as in eco-friendly. 

There are a number of ways that video editors can reduce their own carbon footprint. It starts with energy consumption. 

• Use Energy Star products
• Only use apps that you can control their power consumption. Example: If you are allowed to choose between Adobe Premiere and Avid Media Composer on a project, and both would work fine editorially, then choose Media Composer because its specific transcode ability allows for more single-stream container/codec handling. Thus, computer fans spin-up less frequently, using less power.
• Engage in high-impact reduction practices, like actively monitoring your usage of cores vs RAM vs GPU load on each task.
• Engage in basic best practices such as power settings in your OS, choosing black screens over screen savers.