Nick Trenum is supervising editor at People’s Television, a creative studio based in New York City and Washington, DC. Since joining the team in 2017, he has edited a variety of projects for clients including TED, Meta and Greenpeace.

Nick Trenum

While growing up in Northern Virginia, Trenum was always interested in filmmaking, but it wasn’t until he was enrolled at the Los Angeles Film School that he realized editing was the area that clicked with him the most. “Finding all the ways you can put the pieces together to tell a story has been an addictive process ever since,” he says.

When asked about a special project he has worked on, Trenum points to the documentary film Not Going Quietly, which follows Ady Barkan, whose life is upended when he is diagnosed with ALS. A confrontation with a powerful senator catapults him to national fame and ignites a once-in-a-generation political movement.

Let’s find out more about Trenum…

What is your process? How do you begin on a project?
The hardest thing about being a post supervisor at a company with such a diverse portfolio of content is that no process or workflow fits every project. The first thing is to collect every bit of information you can about the creative plan, the production details, the schedule, etc. Only then can you start forming the post team and workflow. Good communication is the key part of it all.

Not Going Quietly

How did you get involved with Not Going Quietly?
When I got involved, it was before we were totally sure it would become a feature. The idea was that a small team of us would join Ady Barkan on a cross-country tour to film him advocating for health care reform. My role during that time was to ride with the crew and cut videos out of the various rallies and events on the road.

When the project grew into a feature film, the videos I edited during that time were the basis for a lot of the scenes in the film. After that I did some additional editing and oversaw some of the post finishing for the final release.

Can you tell us more about your post team on Not Going Quietly? How did they come together?
The post supervisor on the project was Claudia Tanney, with Kent Bassett as the lead editor. During the final stages of the process, I worked on handling a lot of the quality control and organized some of the finishing by ensuring that our collaborators at Irving Harvey and Red Hook Post had everything they needed to finish the color grade and sound mix.

Not Going Quietly

What gear did you use on this film?
The whole film was cut on Mac computers running mostly Adobe Creative Suite.

What were some of the interesting or unique challenges you faced on the project?
Editing portably — it was a very unique workflow during the cross-country trip in the early production of the film. Basically, we would film for a day and then edit that footage from a moving RV while it drove to the next state, then repeat.

In the Green: the Business of Climate Action

What about the more recent project In the Green: The Business of Climate Action? What made you excited to work on it?
This was an episodic series of videos for TED and Amazon. Each episode features a representative of a large company like Best Buy, Amazon and Johnson Controls and highlights the various ways those organizations have adjusted their processes to be more environmentally conscious.

It was an exciting project because each episode posed a fun challenge: Take an hourlong interview that goes over so many granular details about the company’s operations, and distill it down to a three- or four-minute video that concisely delivers the message to the viewer. At the same time, you have the opportunity to learn about the inner workings of these huge organizations and their plans for the future.

Which gear was used on this project?
Each interview was filmed with a three-camera setup and a minimalist, behind-the-scenes aesthetic. We edited it entirely remotely using Adobe’s Creative Suite.

What was the collaboration on the project like? How did you foster a positive work environment and encourage collaboration among team members?
The episodes were divided up between multiple editors: Katherine Welsh, Jenny Groza and me. Moises Oliveira was our animator and created the dynamic illustrations and title treatments that were instrumental in helping each video visually translate all of the detailed concepts each interviewee discussed.

In the Green: The Business of Climate Action

This made for a highly collaborative project because each editor had the creative challenge of editing their episode to have a unique style and pace that matched their subject’s delivery. At the same time, we each had to make our episodes feel uniform with the other episodes and cohesive as a series.

There was a lot of trading assets and techniques as we all worked on multiple episodes with overlapping timelines. This specific team of editors has collaborated on so many projects before, so constantly communicating and strategizing with one another made it a really positive and educational experience for the entire post team.

What new technology has changed the way you work (looking back over the past few years)?
The most impactful change has been the development of more portable options for editing large projects. The current MacBook Pro with the M1 chip can work reliably without transcoding. It obviously doesn’t replace a powerful workstation with multiple monitors, but it’s pretty amazing that you can now effectively edit while traveling.

In the Green: The Business of Climate Action

Do you think the pandemic helped move the remote-editing process along?
Before 2020, the assumption was that a post team needs to work from one office to collaborate and work efficiently. When we all had to transition into remote work, our whole workflow and approach to collaboration was overhauled. Even now our post team spends as many days working from home as we do from our offices. We adapted pretty quickly.

What are some other projects you’ve worked on?
Greenpeace: Masks Included, Nestlé’s Plastic Monster and Equal Justice Works: Alexis & Rhakiah.

What’s next for you?
As People’s Television continues to expand and produce more and more diverse projects, I look forward to learning from each challenge that comes with that and seeing what new technologies and techniques are around the corner.

In the Green: The Business of Climate Action

Finally, what would you suggest to editors who are just starting out? Any best practices?
The best thing an editor can do when starting out is to consume as much media in as many genres and styles as possible. Old and new films, commercials, all kinds of YouTube or social media content, etc. If you’re editing a documentary, don’t just watch documentaries for inspiration. Watch narrative content too because you end up pulling from all kinds of videos when deciding on pacing or building scenes.

You can also learn a lot from watching things that aren’t necessarily well-made. With editing, there are so many different ways to assemble a story that it’s sometimes more valuable to learn what you shouldn’t do. It’s also incredibly useful to learn as much as you can about motion graphics, audio mixing and color correction across several applications since I think most clients are looking for editors who can cross over into those areas of post.