By Randi Altman

The world of the editor has changed over the years as a result of new technology, the types of projects they are being asked to cut (looking at you social media) and the various deliverables they must create. Are deadlines still getting tighter and are budgets still getting smaller? The answer is yes, but some editors are adapting to the trends, and companies that make products for editors are helping by making the tools more flexible and efficient so pros can get to where they need to be.

We posed questions to various editors working in TV, short form and indies, who do a variety of jobs, as well as to those making the tools they use on a daily basis. Enjoy.

Cut+Run Editor/Partner Pete Koob

What trends do you see in commercial editing? Good or bad?
I remember 10 years ago a “colleague,” who was an interactive producer at the time, told me rather haughtily that I’d be out of work in a few years when all advertising became interactive and lived online. Nothing could have been further from the truth, of course, and I think editors everywhere have found that the viewer migration from TV to online has yielded an even greater need for content.

The 30-second spot still exists, both online and on TV, but the opportunities for brands to tell more in-depth stories across a wide range of media platforms mean that there’s a much more diverse breadth of work for editors, both in terms of format and style.

For better or worse, we’ve also seen every human being with a phone become their own personal brand manager with a highly cultivated and highly saturated digital presence. I think this development has had a big impact on the types of stories we’re telling in advertising and how we’re telling them. The genre of “docu-style” editing is evolving in a very exciting way as more and more companies are looking to find real people whose personal journeys embody their brands. Some of the most impressive editorial work I see these days is a fusion of styles — music video, fashion, documentary — all being brought to bear on telling these real stories, but doing it in a way that elevates them above the noise of the daily social media feed.

Selecting the subjects in a way that feels authentic — and not just like a brand co-opting someone’s personal struggle — is essential, but when done well, there are some incredibly inspirational and emotional stories to be told. And as a father of a young girl, it’s been great to show my daughter all the empowering stories of women being told right now, especially when they’re done with such a fresh and exciting visual language.

What is it about commercial editing that attracted you and keeps attracting you?
Probably the thing that keeps me most engaged with commercial editing is the variety and volume of projects throughout the year. Cutting commercials means you’re on to the next one before you’ve really finished the last.

The work feels fresh when I’m constantly collaborating with different people every few weeks on a diverse range of projects. Even if I’m cutting with the same directors, agencies or clients, the cast of characters always rotates to some degree, and that keeps me on my toes. Every project has its own unique challenges, and that compels me to constantly find new ways to tell stories. It’s hard for me to get bored with my work when the work is always changing.

Can you talk about challenges specific to short-form editing?
I think the most obvious challenge for the commercial editor is time. Being able to tell a story efficiently and poignantly in a 60-, 30-, 15- or even six-second window reveals the spot editor’s unique talent. Sometimes that time limit can be a blessing, but more often than not, the idea on the page warrants a bigger canvas than the few seconds allotted.

It’s always satisfying to feel as if I’ve found an elegant editorial solution to telling the story in a concise manner, even if that means re-imagining the concept slightly. It’s a true testament to the power of editing and one that is specific to editing commercials.

How have social media campaigns changed the way you edit, if at all?
Social media hasn’t changed the way I edit, but it has certainly changed my involvement in the campaign as a whole. At its worst, the social media component is an afterthought, where editors are asked to just slap together a quick six-second cutdown or reformat a spot to fit into a square framing for Instagram. At its best, the editor is brought into the brainstorming process and has a hand in determining how the footage can be used inventively to disperse the creative into different media slots. One of the biggest assets of an editor on any project is his or her knowledge of the material, and being able to leverage that knowledge to shape the campaign across all platforms is incredibly rewarding.

What system do you edit on, and what else other than editing are you asked to supply?
We edit primarily on Avid Media Composer. I still believe that nothing else can compete when it comes to project sharing, and as a company it allows for the smoothest means of collaboration between offices around the world. That being said, clients continue to expect more and more polish from the offline process, and we are always pushing our capabilities in motion graphics and visual effects in After Effects and color finessing in Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve.

What projects have you worked on recently?
I’ve been working on some bigger campaigns that consist of a larger number of spots. Two campaigns that come to mind are a seven-spot TV campaign for Phillips 76 gas stations and 13 short online films for Subaru. It’s fun to step back and look at how they all fit together, and sometimes you make different decisions about an individual spot based on how it sits in the larger group.

The “Jean and Gene” spots for 76 were particularly fun because it’s the same two characters who you follow across several stories, and it almost feels like a mini TV series exploring their life.

Earlier in the  year I worked on a Conoco campaign, featuring the spots Picnic, First Contact and River, via Carmichael Lynch.

Red Digital Cinema Post and Workflow Specialist Dan Duran

How do you see the line between production and post blurring?
Both post and on set production are evolving with each other. There has always been a fine line between them, but as tech grows and becomes more affordable, you’re seeing tools that previously would have been used only in post bleed onto set.

One of my favorite trends is seeing color-managed workflows on locations. With full color control pipelines being used with calibrated SDR and HDR monitors, a more accurate representation of what the final image will look like is given. I’ve also seen growth in virtual productions where you’re able to see realtime CGI and environments on set directly through camera while shooting.

What are the biggest trends you’ve been facing in product development?
Everyone is always looking for the highest image quality at the best price point. As sensor technology advances, we’re seeing users ask for more and more out of the camera. Higher sensitivity, faster frame rates, more dynamic range and a digital RAW that allows them to effortlessly shape the images into a very specific creative look that they’re trying to achieve for their show. 8K provides a huge canvas to work with, offering flexibility in what they are trying to capture.

Smaller cameras are able to easily adapt into a whole new myriad of support accessories to achieve shots in ways that weren’t always possible. Along with the camera/sensor revolution, Red has seen a lot of new cinema lenses emerge, each adding their own character to the image as it hits the photo sites.

What trends do you see from editors these days. What enables their success?
I’ve seen post production really take advantage of modern tech to help improve and innovate new workflows. Being able to view higher resolution, process footage faster and playback off of a laptop shows how far hardware has come.

We have been working more with partners to help give pros the post tools they need to be more efficient. As an example, Red recently teamed up with Nvidia to not only get realtime full resolution 8K playback on laptops, but also allow for accelerated renders and transcode times much faster than before. Companies collaborating to take advantage of new tech will enable creative success.

AlphaDogs Owner/Editor Terence Curren

What trends do you see in editing? Good or bad.
There is a lot of content being created across a wide range of outlets and formats, from theatrical blockbusters and high-end TV shows all the way down to one-minute videos for Instagram. That’s positive for people desiring to use their editing skills to do a lot of storytelling. The flip side is that with so much content being created, the dollars to pay editors gets stretched much thinner. Barring high-end content creation, the overall pay rates for editors have been going down.

The cost of content capture is a tiny fraction of what it was back in the film days. The good part of that is there is a greater likelihood that the shot you need was actually captured. The downside is that without the extreme expense of shooting associated with film, we’ve lost the disciplines of rehearsing scenes thoroughly, only shooting while the scene is being performed, only printing circled takes, etc. That, combined with reduced post schedules, means for the most part editors just don’t have the time to screen all the footage captured.

The commoditization of the toolsets, (some editing systems are actually free) combined with the plethora of training materials readily available on the Internet and in most schools means that video storytelling is now a skill available to everyone. This means that the next great editors won’t be faced with the barriers to entry that past generations experienced, but it also means that there’s a much larger field of editors to choose from. The rules of supply and demand tell us that increased availability and competition of a service reduces its cost. Traditionally, many editors have been able to make upper-middle-class livings in our industry, and I don’t see as much of that going forward.

To sum it up, it’s a great time to become an editor, as there’s plenty of work and therefore lots of opportunity. But along with that, the days of making a higher-end living as an editor are waning.

What is it about editing that attracted you and keeps attracting you?
I am a storyteller at heart. The position of editor is, in my opinion, matched with the director and writer for responsibility of the structural part of telling the story. The writer has to invent the actual story out of whole cloth. The director has to play traffic cop with a cornucopia of moving pieces under a very tight schedule while trying to maintain the vision of the pieces of the story necessary to deliver the final product. The editor takes all those pieces and gives the final rewrite of the story for the audience to hopefully enjoy.

As with writing, there are plenty of rules to guide an editor through the process. Those rules, combined with experience, make the basic job almost mechanical much of the time. But there is a magic thing that happens when the muse strikes and I am inspired to piece shots together in some way that just perfectly speaks to the audience. Being such an important part of the storytelling process is uniquely rewarding for a storyteller like me.

Can you talk about challenges specific to short-form editing versus long-form?
Long-form editing is a test of your ability to maintain a fresh perspective of your story to keep the pacing correct. If you’ve been editing a project for weeks or months at a time, you know the story and all the pieces inside out. That can make it difficult to realize you might be giving too much information or not enough to the audience. Probably the most important skill for long form is the ability to watch a cut you’ve been working on for a long time and see it as a first-time viewer. I don’t know how others handle it, but for me there is a mental process that just blanks out the past when I want to take a critical fresh viewing.

Short form brings the challenge of being ruthless. You need to eliminate every frame of unnecessary material without sacrificing the message. While the editors don’t need to keep their focus for weeks or months, they have the challenge of getting as much information into that short time as possible without overwhelming the audience. It’s a lot like sprinting versus running a marathon. It exercises a different creative muscle that also enjoys an immediate reward.

I can’t say I prefer either one over the other, but I would be bored if I didn’t get to do both over time, as they bring different disciplines and rewards.

How have social media campaigns changed the way you edit, if at all? Can you talk about the variety of deliverables and how that affects things?
Well, there is the horrible vertical framing trend, but that appears to be waning, thankfully. Seriously, though, the Instagram “one minute” limit forces us all to become commercial editors. Trying to tell the story in as short a timeframe as possible, knowing it will probably be viewed on a phone in a bright and noisy environment is a new challenge for seasoned editors.

There is a big difference between having a captive audience in a theater or at home in front of the TV and having a scattered audience whose attention you are trying to hold exclusively amid all the distractions. This seems to require more overt attention-grabbing tricks, and it’s unfortunate that storytelling has come to this point.

As for deliverables, they are constantly evolving, which means each project can bring all new requirements. We really have to work backward from the deliverables now. In other words, one of our first questions now is, “Where is this going?” That way we can plan the appropriate workflows from the start.

What system do you edit on and what else other than editing are you asked to supply?
I primarily edit on Media Composer, as it’s the industry standard in my world. As an editor, I can learn any tool to use. I have cut with Premiere and FCP. It’s knowing where to make the edit that is far more important than how to make the edit.

When I started editing in the film days, we just cut picture and dialogue. There were other editors for sound beyond the basic location-recorded sound. There were labs from which you ordered something as simple as a dissolve or a fade to black. There were color timers at the film lab who handled the look of the film. There were negative cutters that conformed the final master. There were VFX houses that handled anything that wasn’t actually shot.

Now, every editor has all the tools at hand to do all those tasks themselves. While this is helpful in keeping costs down and not slowing the process, it requires editors to be a jack-of-all-trades. However, what typically follows that term is “and master of none.”

One of the main advantages of separate people handling different parts of the process is that they could become really good at their particular art. Experience is the best teacher, and you learn more doing the same thing every day than occasionally doing it. I’ve met a few editors over the years that truly are masters in multiple skills, but they are few and far between.

Using myself as an example, if the client wants some creatively designed show open, I am not the best person for that. Can I create something? Yes. Can I use After Effects? Yes, to a minor degree. Am I the best person for that job? No. It is not what I have trained myself to do over my career. There is a different skill set involved in deciding where to make a cut versus how to create a heavily layered, graphically designed show open. If that is what I had dedicated my career to doing, then I would probably be really good at it, but I wouldn’t be as good at knowing where to make the edit.

What projects have gone through the studio recently?
We work on a lot of projects at AlphaDogs. The bulk of our work is on modest-budget features, documentaries and unscripted TV shows. A recent example is a documentary on World War I fighter pilots called The Lafayette Escadrille and an action-thriller starring Eric Roberts and Mickey Rourke, called Night Walk.

Unfortunately for me I have become so focused on running the company that I haven’t been personally working on the creative side as much as I would like. While keeping a post house running in the current business climate is its own challenge, I don’t particularly find it as rewarding as “being in the chair.”

That feeling is offset by looking back at all the careers I have helped launch through our internship program and by offering entry-level employment. I’ve also tried hard to help editors over the years through venues like online user groups and, of course, our own Editors’ Lounge events and videos. So I guess that even running a post house can be rewarding in its own way.

Luma Touch Co-Founder/Lead Designer Terri Morgan

Have there been any talks among NLE providers about an open timeline? Being able to go between Avid, Resolve or Adobe with one file like an AAF or XML?
Because every edit system uses its own editing paradigms (think Premiere versus FCP X), creating an open exchange is challenging. However, there is an interesting effort by Pixar (https://github.com/PixarAnimationStudios/OpenTimelineIO) that includes adapters for the wide range of structural differences of some editors. There are also efforts for standards in effects and color correction. The core editing functionality in LumaFusion is built to allow easy conversion in and out to different formats, so adapting to new standards will not be challenging in most cases.

With AI becoming a popular idea and term, at what point does it stop? Is there a line where AI won’t go?
Looking at AI strictly as it relates to video editing, we can see that its power is incrementally increasing, and automatically generated movies are getting better. But while a neural network might be able to put together a coherent story, and even mimic a series of edits to match a professional style, it will still be cookie-cutter in nature, rather than being an artistic individual endeavor.

What we understand from our customers — and from our own experience — is that people get profound joy from being the storyteller or the moviemaker. And we understand that automatic editing does not provide the creative/ownership satisfaction that you get from crafting your own movie. You only have to make one automatic movie to learn this fact.

It is also clear that movie viewers feel a lack of connection or even annoyance when watching an automatically generated movie. You get the same feeling when you pay for parking at an automated machine, and the machine says, “Thank you, have a nice day.”

Here is a question from one of our readers: There are many advancements in technology coming in NLEs. Are those updates coming too fast and at an undesirable cost?
It is a constant challenge to maintain quality while improving a product. We use software practices like Agile, engage in usability tests and employ testing as robust as possible to minimize the effects of any changes in LumaFusion.

In the case of LumaFusion, we are consistently adding new features that support more powerful mobile video editing and features that support the growing and changing world around us. In fact, if we stopped developing so rapidly, the app would simply stop working with the latest operating system or wouldn’t be able to deliver solutions for the latest trends and workflows.

To put it all in perspective, I like to remind myself of the amount of effort it took to edit video 20 years ago compared to how much more efficient and fun it is to edit a video now. It gives me reason to forgive the constant changes in technology and software, and reason to embrace new workflows and methodologies.

Will we ever be at a point where an offline/online workflow will be completely gone?
Years ago, the difference in image quality provided a clear separation between offline and online. But today, online is differentiated by the ability to edit with dozens of tracks, specialized workflows, specific codecs, high-end effects and color. Even more importantly, online editing typically uses the specialized skills that a professional editor brings to a project.

Since you can now edit a complex timeline with six tracks of 4K video with audio and another six tracks of audio, basic color correction and multilayered titles straight from an iPad, for many projects you might find it unnecessary to move to an online situation. But there will always be times that you need more advanced features or the skills of a professional editor. Since not everybody wants to understand the complex world of post production, it is our challenge at Luma Touch to make more of these high-end features available without greatly limiting who can successfully use the product.

What are the trends you’re seeing in customer base from high-end post facility vs. independent editor/contractor?
High-end post facilities tend to have stationary workstations that employ skilled editor/operators. The professionals that find LumaFusion to be a valuable tool in their bag are often those who are responsible for the entire production and post production, including independent producers, journalists and high-end professionals who want the flexibility of starting to edit while on location or while traveling.

What are the biggest trends you’ve been seeing in product development?
In general, moving away from lengthy periods of development without user feedback. Moving toward getting feedback from users early and often is an Agile-based practice that really makes a difference in product development and greatly increases the joy that our team gets from developing LumaFusion. There’s nothing more satisfying than talking to real users and responding to their needs.

New development tools, languages and technologies are always welcome. At WWDC this year, Apple announced it would make it easier for third-party developers to port their iOS apps over to the desktop with Project Catalyst. This will likely be a viable option for LumaFusion.

You come from a high-end editing background, with deep experience editing at the workstation level. When you decided to branch off and do something on your own, why did you choose mobile?
Mobile offered a solution to some of the longest running wishes in professional video editing: to be liberated from the confines of an edit suite, to be able to start editing on location, to have a closer relationship to the production of the story in order to avoid the “fix it in post” mentality, and to take your editing suite with you anywhere.

It was only after starting to develop for mobile that we fully understood one of the most appealing benefits. Editing on an iPad or iPhone encourages experimentation, not only because you have your system with you when you have a good idea, but also because you experience a more direct relationship to your media when using the touch interface; it feels more natural and immersive. And experimentation equals creativity. From my own experience I know that the more you edit, the better you get at it. These are benefits that everyone can enjoy whether they are a professional or a novice.

Hecho Studios Editor Grant Lewis

What trends do you see in commercial editing? Good or bad.
Commercials are trending away from traditional, large-budget cinematic pieces to smaller, faster, budget-conscious ones. You’re starting to see it now more and more as big brands shy away from big commercial spectacles and pivot toward a more direct reflection of the culture itself.

Last year’s #CODNation work for the latest installment of the Call of Duty franchise exemplifies this by forgoing a traditional live-action cinematic trailer in favor of larger number of game-capture, meme-like films. This pivot away from more dialogue-driven narrative structures is changing what we think of as a commercial. For better or worse, I see commercial editing leaning more into the fast-paced, campy nature of meme culture.

What is it about commercial editing that attracted you and keeps attracting you?
What excites me most about commercial editing is that it runs the gamut of the editorial genre. Sometimes commercials are a music video; sometimes they are dramatic anthems; other times they are simple comedy sketches. Commercials have the flexibility to exist as a multitude of narrative genres, and that’s what keeps me attracted to commercial editing.

Can you talk about challenges specific to short form versus long form?
The most challenging thing about short-form editing is finding time for breath. In a 30-second piece, where do you find a moment of pause? There’s always so much information being packed into smaller timeframes; the real challenge is editing at a sprint, but still having it feel dynamic and articulate.

How have social media campaigns changed the way you edit, if at all? Can you talk about the variety of deliverables and how that affects things?
All campaigns will either live on social media or have specific social components now. I think the biggest thing that has changed is being tasked with telling a compelling narrative in 10 or even five or six seconds. Now, the 60-second and 90-second anthem film has to be able to work in six seconds as well. It is challenging to boil concepts down to just a few seconds and still maintain a sense of story.

All the deliverable aspect ratios editors are asked to make now is also a blossoming challenge. Unless a campaign is strictly shot for social, the DP probably shot for a traditional 16×9 framing. That means the editor is tasked with reframing all social content to work in all the different deliverable formats. This makes the editor act almost as the DP for social in the post process. Shorter deliverables and a multitude of aspect ratios have just become another layer to editing and demand a whole new editorial lens to view and process the project through.

What system do you edit on and what else other than editing are you asked to supply?
I currently cut in Adobe Premiere Pro. I’m often asked to supply graphics and motion graphic elements for offline cuts as well. That means being comfortable with the whole Adobe suite of tools, including Photoshop and After Effects. From type setting to motion tracking, editors are now asked to be well-versed in all tangential aspects of editorial.

What projects have you worked on recently?
I cut the launch film for Razer’s new Respawn energy drink. I also cut Toms Shoes’ most recent campaign, “Stand For Tomorrow.”

EditShare Head of Marketing Lee Griffin

What are the biggest trends you’ve been seeing in product development?
We see the need to produce more video content — and produce it faster than ever before — for social media channels. This means producing video in non-broadcast standards/formats and, more specifically, producing square video. To accommodate, editing tools need to offer user-defined options for manipulating size and aspect ratio.

What changes have you seen in terms of the way editors work and use your tools?
There are two distinct changes: One, productions are working with editors regardless of their location. Two, there is a wider level of participation in the content creation process.

In the past, the editor was physically located at the facility and was responsible for assembling, editing and finishing projects. However, with the growing demand for content production, directors and producers need options to tap into a much larger pool of talent, regardless of their location.

EditShare AirFlow and Flow Story enable editors to work remotely from any location. So today, we frequently see editors who use our Flow editorial tools working in different states and even on different continents.

With AI becoming a popular idea and term, at what point does it stop?
I think AI is quite exciting for the industry, and we do see its potential to significantly advance productions. However, AI is still in its infancy with regards to the content creation market. So from our point of view, the road to AI and its limits are yet to be defined. But we do have our own roadmap strategy for AI and will showcase some offerings integrated within our collaborative solutions at IBC 2019.

Will we ever be at a point where an offline/online workflow will be completely gone?
It depends on the production. Offline/online workflows are here to stay in the higher-end production environment. However, for fast turnaround productions, such as news, sports and programs (for example, soap operas and reality TV), there is no need for offline/online workflows.

What are the trends you’re seeing in customer base from high-end post facility vs, independent editor. How is that informing your decisions on products and pricing?
With the increase in the number of productions thanks to OTTs, high-end post facilities are tapping into independent editors more and more to manage the workload. Often the independent editor is remote, requiring the facility to have a media management foundation that can facilitate collaboration beyond the facility walls.

So we are seeing a fundamental shift in how facilities are structuring their media operations to support remote collaborations. The ability to expand and contract — with the same level of security they have within the facility — is paramount in architecting their “next-generation” infrastructure.

What do you see as untapped potential customer bases that didn’t exist 10 to 20 years ago, and how do you plan on attracting and nurturing them? What new markets are you seeing.
We are seeing major growth beyond the borders of the media and entertainment industry in many markets. From banks to real estate agencies to insurance companies, video has become one of the main ways for them to communicate to their media-savvy clientele.

While EditShare solutions were initially designed to support traditional broadcast deliverables, we have evolved them to accommodate these new customers. And today, these customers want simplicity coupled with speed. Our development methodology puts this at the forefront of our core products.

Puget Systems Senior Labs Technician Matt Bach

Have there been any talks between NLE providers about an open timeline. Essentially being able to go between Avid, Resolve, or Adobe with one file like an AAF or XML?
I have not heard anything on this topic from any developers, so keep in mind that this is pure conjecture, but the pessimistic side of me doesn’t see an “open timeline” being something that will happen anytime soon.

If you look at what many of the NLE developers are doing, they are moving more and more toward a pipeline that is completely contained within their ecosystem. Adobe has been pushing Dynamic Link in recent years in order to make it easier to move between Premiere Pro and After Effects. Blackmagic is going even a step further by integrating editing, color, VFX and audio all within DaVinci Resolve.

These examples are both great advancements that can really improve your workflow efficiency, but they are being done in order to keep the user within their specific ecosystem. As great as an open timeline would be, it seems to be counter to what Adobe, Blackmagic, and others are actively pursuing. We can still hold out hope, however!

With AI becoming a popular idea and term, at what point does it stop?
There are definitely limitations to what AI is capable of, but that line is moving year by year. For the foreseeable future, AI is going to take on a lot of the tedious tasks like tagging of footage, content-aware fill, shot matching, image enhancement and other similar tasks. These are all perfect use cases for artificial intelligence, and many (like content-aware fill) are already being implemented in the software we have available right now.

The creative side is where AI is going to take the longest time to become useful. I’m not sure if there is a point where AI will stop from a technical standpoint, but I personally believe that even if AI was perfect, there is value in the fact that an actual person made something. That may mean that the masses of videos that get published will be made by AI (or perhaps simply AI-assisted), but just like furniture, food, or even workstations, there will always be a market for high-quality items crafted by human hands.

I think the main thing to keep in mind with AI is that it is just a tool. Moving from black and white to color, or from film to digital, was something that at the time, people thought was going to destroy the industry. In reality, however, they ended up being a huge boon. Yes, AI will change how some jobs are approached — and may even eliminate some job roles entirely —but in the end, a computer is never going to be as creative and inventive as a real person.

There are many advancements in technology coming in NLEs seemingly daily, are those updates coming too fast and at an undesirable cost?
I agree that this is a problem right now, but it isn’t limited to just NLEs. We see the same thing all the time in other industries, and it even occurs on the hardware side where a new product will be launched simply because they could, not because there is an actual need for it.

The best thing you can do as an end-user is to provide feedback to the companies about what you actually want. Don’t just sit on those bugs, report them! Want a feature? Most companies have a feature request forum that you can post on.

In the end, these companies are doing what they believe will bring them the most users. If they think a flashy new feature will do it, that is what they will spend money on. But if they see a demand for less flashy, but more useful, improvements, they will make that a priority.

Will we ever be at a point where an offline/online workflow will be completely gone?
Unless we hit some point where camera technology stops advancing, I don’t think offline editing is ever going to fully go away. It is amazing what modern workstations can handle from a pure processing standpoint, but even if the systems themselves could handle online editing, you also need to have the storage infrastructure that can keep up. With the move from HD to 4K, and now to 8K, that is a lot of moving parts that need to come together in order to eliminate offline editing entirely.

With that said, I do feel like offline editing is going to be used less and less. We are starting to hit the point that people feel their footage is higher quality than they need without having to be on the bleeding edge. We can edit 4K ProRes or even Red RAW footage pretty easily with the technology that is currently available, and for most people that is more than enough for what they are going to need for the foreseeable future.

What are the trends you’re seeing in customer base from high-end post facility vs. independent editor, and how is that informing your decisions on products and pricing?
From a workstation side, there really is not too much of a difference beyond the fact that high-end post facilities tend to have larger budgets that allow them to get higher-end machines. Technology is becoming so accessible that even hobbyist YouTubers often end up getting workstations from us that are very similar to what high-end professionals use.

The biggest differences typically revolves not around the pure power or performance of the system itself, but rather how it interfaces with the other tools the editor is using. Things like whether the system has 10GB (or fiber) networking, or whether they need a video monitoring card in order to connect to a color calibrated display, are often what sets them apart.

What are the biggest trends you’ve been seeing in product development?
In general, the two big things that have come up over and over in recent years are GPU acceleration and artificial intelligence. GPU acceleration is a pretty straight-forward advancement that lets software developers get a lot more performance out of a system for tasks like color correction, noise reduction and other tasks that are very well suited for running on a GPU.

Artificial intelligence is a completely different beast. We do quite a bit of work with people that are on the forefront of AI and machine learning, and it is going to have a large impact on post production in the near future. It has been a topic at conferences like NAB for several years, but with platforms like Adobe Sensei starting to take off, it is going to become more important

However, I do feel that AI is going to be more of an enabling technology rather than one that replaces jobs. Yes, people are using AI to do crazy things like cut trailers without any human input, but I don’t think that is going to be the primary use of it anytime in the near future. It is going to be things like assisting with shot matching, tagging of footage, noise reduction, and image enhancement that is going to be where it is truly useful.

What do you see as untapped potential customer bases that didn’t exist 10-20 years ago, and how do you plan on attracting and nurturing them? What new markets are you seeing?
I don’t know if there are any customer bases that are completely untapped, but I do believe that there is going to be more overlap between industries in the next few years. One example is how much realtime raytracing has improved recently, which is spurring the use of video game engines in film. This has been done for previsualization for quite a while, but the quality is getting so good that there are some films already out that include footage straight from the game engine.

For us on the workstation side, we regularly work with customers doing post and customers who are game developers, so we already have the skills and technical knowledge to make this work. The biggest challenge is really on the communication side. Both groups have their own set of jargon and general language, so we often find ourselves having to be the “translator” when a post house is looking at integrating realtime visualization in their workflow.

This exact scenario is also likely to happen with VR/AR as well.

Lucky Post Editor Marc Stone

What trends do you see in commercial editing?
I’m seeing an increase in client awareness of the mobility of editing. It’s freeing knowing you can take the craft with you as needed, and for clients, it can save the ever-precious commodity of time. Mobility means we can be an even greater resource to our clients with a flexible approach.

I love editing at Lucky Post, but I’m happy to edit anywhere I am needed — be it on set or on location. I especially welcome it if it means you can have face-to-face interaction with the agency team or the project’s director.

What is it about commercial editing that attracted you and keeps attracting you?
The fact that I can work on many projects throughout the year, with a variety of genres, is really appealing. Cars, comedy, emotional PSAs — each has a unique creative challenge, and I welcome the opportunity to experience different styles and creative teams. I also love putting visuals together with music, and that’s a big part of what I do in 30-or 60-second… or even in a two-minute branded piece. That just wouldn’t be possible, to the same extent, in features or television.

Can you talk about challenges specific to short-form editing?
The biggest challenge is telling a story in 30 seconds. To communicate emotion and a sense of character and get people to care, all within a very short period of time. People outside of our industry are often surprised to hear that editors take hours and hours of footage and hone it down to a minute or less. The key is to make each moment count and to help make the piece something special.

How has social media campaigns changed the way you edit, if at all?
It hasn’t changed the way I edit, but it does allow some flexibility. Length isn’t constrained in the same way as broadcast, and you can conceive of things in a different way in part because of the engagement approach and goals. Social campaigns allow agencies to be more experimental with ideas, which can lead to some bold and exciting projects.

What system do you edit on, and what else other than editing are you asked to supply?
For years I worked on Avid Media Composer, and at Lucky Post I work in Adobe Premiere. As part of my editing process, I often weave sound design and music into the offline so I can feel if the edit is truly working. What I also like to do, when the opportunity presents, is to be able to meet with the agency creatives before the shoot to discuss style and mood ahead of time.

What projects have you worked on recently?
Over the last six months, I have worked on projects for Tazo, Ram and GameStop, and I am about to start a PSA for the Salvation Army. It gets back to the variety I spoke about earlier and the opportunity to work on interesting projects with great people.

Billboard Video Post Supervisor/Editor Zack Wolder

What trends do you see in editing? Good or bad.I’m noticing a lot of glitch transitions and RGB splits being used. Much flashier edits, probably for social content to quickly grab the viewers attention.

Can you talk about challenges specific to short-form editing versus long-form?
With short-form editing, the main goal is to squeeze the most amount of useful information into a short period of time while not overloading the viewer. How do you fit an hour-long conversation into a three-minute clip while hitting all the important talking points and not overloading the viewer? With long-form editing, the goal is to keep viewers’ attention over a long period of time while always surprising them with new and exciting info.

What is it about editing that attracted you and keeps attracting you?
I loved the fact that I could manipulate time. That hooked me right away. The fact that I could take a moment that lasts only a few seconds and drag it out for a few minutes was incredible.

Can you talk about the variety of deliverables for social media and how that affects things?
Social media formats have made me think differently about framing a shot or designing logos. Almost all the videos I create start in the standard 16×9 framing but will eventually be delivered as a vertical. All graphics and transitions I build need to easily work in a vertical frame. Working in a 4K space and shooting in 4K helps tremendously.

What system do you edit on, and what else other than editing are you asked to supply?
I edit in Adobe Premiere Pro. I’m constantly asked to supply design ideas and mockups for logos and branding and then to animate those ideas.

What projects have you worked on recently?
Recently, I edited a video that featured Rainn Wilson — who played Dwight Schrute on The Office — quizzing singer Billie Eilish, who is a big-time fan of the show.

Main Image: AlphaDogs editor Herrianne Catolos

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Randi Altman is the founder and editor-in-chief of postPerspective. She has been covering production and post production for more than 20 years.