By Alyssa Heater

The world of commercials and TV spots is known for quick timelines and multiple levels of sign-off. Storage plays a big factor in not only backing up media but facilitating collaboration with multiple stakeholders. 

Lost Planet Editorial’s Kenji Yamauchi elaborated on the storage needs for TV spots, referencing the Google DeepMind piece he recently cut for YouTube. 

We also spoke with Cabin’s Andrew Ratzlaff to learn about storage for the recent Capital One holiday spot he cut, which features John Travolta as a suave, dancing Santa Claus. 

Lost Planet Editorial 
Tell me about your experience as an editor. How did your career path lead you to Lost Planet Editorial? 
My path is a little unusual. I didn’t go to film school; I went to advertising school in Sao Paulo. I was pretty good with video, so to help pay for my tuition, I worked in the video department at the university. That’s how I started editing – I would edit classes. I had a week to edit a class; it was the easiest job in the world. 

After graduating, I worked as an in-house editor at an agency. After three or four years, I talked to my boss about my interest in becoming a commercial editor. I was editing commercials at the agency, but it was all rough edits for internal meetings. She suggested that I work at a proper editing house, but at the same time, that agency liked my work and didn’t want me to leave. I said I would work there for another year if I could then move on to a post house in either LA or New York. I provided a list of facilities, and Lost Planet was my first choice. My boss had a connection there and was able to help secure a role for me as an assistant. I had nothing planned. An opportunity appeared, I was open to trying it, and if it didn’t work out, I would come back home. 

Tell me about the workflow for the YouTube Google DeepMind spot. It incorporates concert footage, interviews and even portrait-oriented cellphone clips. How did you balance editing these different types of media together? 
To be honest, it’s nothing new for us. Hank Corwin, the founder and owner of the company, is known for that style. We all learn and grow from him and understand how to pull emotion from any kind of footage. There is no correct type of footage to tell a story. It doesn’t matter if it’s shot on a Super 8, an iPhone or an Alexa; you can mix the different types as long as you make sure they fit and give you the right feel. And our approach to working with storage is very reminiscent of that. 

Tell me about the storage component of your workflow. 
Before the pandemic, our storage was primarily local hard drives. As an assistant, I made countless shuttle drives for editors, and we developed many techniques to ensure everything was up to date. We developed workflows with the editors to ensure things didn’t get locked in between a shuttle drive and our internal server. Then the pandemic threw everything out the window. For at least a year, we were trying to figure it out. All of a sudden, the assistant had to figure out their own computer, the editor’s computer and the server, and they all had to be in sync. At the same time, it couldn’t hinder the editor’s creativity or delay uploads. 

 Local storage is much easier to work with, especially in Avid and Premiere, because footage is uploaded to the server, appears on the screen and is ready to go. But we develop new workflows to set up the right storage for each job. This YouTube job is a perfect example because Lost Planet senior editor Charlie Johnston started the project then had to move on to another job. I was just finishing a job myself, and because we have similar styles, I was able to take over for him. 

 We are set up in that way. We have the local server, a local drive and LucidLink cloud storage, and in the end, we use a combination of all of them depending on the project. If I’m working by myself remotely, I work straight out of LucidLink. If I’m working at the office, I work locally out of the server. But if I’m working remotely out of Avid, I need to work off of a local drive for speed so I can maneuver files. We’ve created a workflow and language between the assistants and editors to ensure things go smoothly and we don’t lose anything in the process. 

 Was security a big factor in determining what solution to use for these workflows? 
 We always account for that, especially for this YouTube/Google DeepMind job because they were announcing a new product. This happens with many of our clients, especially with tech companies like YouTube, Google and Apple. When we work with them, security is very important. Everything is encrypted, watermarked and time-stamped, so it cannot be shared with anyone beyond the team. The main component of security was in the cloud storage because when we’re working locally, either with our hard drive or the local storage in the company, that’s pretty much taken care of. 

 What is the collaboration process with the agency and the different stakeholders? We usually work directly with Google and YouTube. Sometimes there is an agency, but most of the time, we work directly with them. And it’s great working with them because they’re very collaborative. Don’t get me wrong, there are still challenges, but it feels good to work on a project where the client on the other end understands the value in our ideas. Then from there, we can explore other ideas — breaking it apart, putting it together, combining it with something else, elevating it or pulling it back. We can try something wild without getting punished for it, which is the best feeling. It feels like a garage band, in a way, which is very cool. 

That’s awesome — you have some creative freedom to explore. Anything else you would like to touch on? 
Never underestimate the power of how storage can help or hinder your process. We had problems with that years ago. Planning the right storage is like making sure you’re getting the right tires for your car. 

Cabin Editing Company 

Tell me about your experience as an editor. You have worked in both film and episodic, but it seems like the TV spot world is your bread and butter. 
I have been doing spots for almost 15 years now. I started as an assistant in Boulder, Colorado, and now I’m cutting in LA, where I have been for around 10 years. I bounced around in New York for a bit too. I kind of fell into what I’m doing. When I went to film school, someone said, “Hey, you’re pretty good at this.” And I said, “I am? Okay. Well, I guess I’ll keep doing it.” So I’ve been working and making my way with it over the years.  

From your perspective as an editor, tell me about the typical workflow on a TV spot from preproduction to shooting to post to delivery. 
As an offline editor, it’s very simple. Raw media is huge now; you have terabytes of it after a shoot, but when we’re doing offline editorial, it’s all transcoded into small files. You go from terabytes and terabytes to maybe a couple hundred gigs that fit onto a drive smaller than your phone. If I’m working remotely, I’m using a tiny hard drive plugged into my laptop, and I can do the whole thing from there. When we’re working at an actual post house, we have a much larger storage device to handle all of the different edits happening simultaneously. And that’s basic shared storage that any facility probably has, but it allows us to handle countless projects at the exact same time. For me as an individual, it’s really simple: I get my drive, I do my edits and then I send an EDL out to the finishing house; they deal with the massive amounts of storage and media from there. 

What is the collaboration process like? Or are you primarily working solo in editorial?  
I pride myself on being collaborative. It takes a whole team to make any spot, whether it’s a 15, a 30, a 60, a 90… whatever. I don’t think one person alone can say “This is what it’s going to be.” It takes a lot of minds and a lot of thoughts. For the Capital One spot, I worked closely with Bryan Buckley. He’s been doing this much longer than I have, so it was great to talk to him and get his point of view as the story unfolded. Once Bryan and I were happy with something, we’d take it to the agency and go through that process again with them to explore, shape the edit and figure out exactly what was going to make it the best for their needs. Everybody worked together to make it the best that we could.  

What storage system do you use to support this workflow? Is the same solution used for every project that goes through Cabin, or does it vary per project?  
When we’re in the office, we use Facilis, which is a common shared storage. I don’t have a ton of knowledge on the actual inner workings, but it works great.  

For the Capital One piece, what was the timeline? How quickly did you have to turn it around? 
I was on the project for about two weeks, but the whole project itself went on for five weeks. Once we got everything into a good spot, an assistant would come in and tweak little things here and there, try a different take or try different music. This job seemed comfortable in terms of the amount of time that we had upfront before we had to share anything with the agency. It was a long schedule in terms of finishing because there were a ton of VFX with the city skyline and all of the magic. I’ve had projects where they give me a day or two with the footage, and then the agency wants to walk in and review everything, which is a lot harder because I don’t have the time to really get to know the footage and develop a point of view. Capital One and GSD&M were great in allowing us the time to make the best commercial it could be.  

The spot has John Travolta dressed as Santa Claus, disco dancing and making references back to Saturday Night Fever. How did this content influence your process?  
The fact that this project is an homage to Saturday Night Fever gave us a blueprint to work from. We were not trying to reinvent the wheel, but we wanted to match some of the shots. We wanted it to have the same vibe and be lovable and humorous. I think that makes the project a little easier to do because we have the stepping stones. For this project, the process was streamlined, and it was all just about rhythm and pacing.  

Is there anything else you’d like to touch on? 
I was really thrilled with how it all turned out. I thought the VFX were amazing, and it was a pleasure to work with Bryan Buckley. I had worked with Capital One on a Taylor Swift spot last year, which was another big VFX project. It was overall a great experience. 

Alyssa Heater is a writer and marketer in the entertainment industry. When not writing, you can find her front row at heavy metal shows or remodeling her cabin in the San Gabriel Mountains.