Georgia Dodson is an editor at PS260, a boutique editorial house in New York, Los Angeles and Boston that specializes in commercials, music videos and feature films. PS260 also has a motion graphics and visual effects department as well as a sound studio.
Born and raised in Appalachia, the now-LA-based Dodson has always been a storyteller. She discovered her love of film editing with Matt Lenski’s short Meaning of Robots, which premiered at Sundance, screened at MoMA’s New Directors/New Films, and shaped her decadelong career in docustyle commercials. As a graduate of the College of William and Mary with a degree in English literature, Dodson’s strength as an editor comes from her background as a writer. She is accustomed to telling succinct stories on tight deadlines.
Let’s find out more about Dodson…
What would surprise people the most about what falls under the title of editor?
As someone who often edits nonfiction content, I become a writer on many projects.
CVS
What’s your favorite part of the job?
I love getting hours of interviews and splicing them together to write a clear narrative. I love it when my timeline is a mess one moment and the next moment, everything suddenly works, and it’s a thing.
I also like going to offices with open floor plans, where people ride scooters and play pingpong.
What’s your least favorite?
Dark rooms, screen time overload and sitting.
What is your most productive time of day and why?
I’m really sharp early in the morning. If I have a big deadline, I’ll get up at 4am or 5am, make a pot of coffee, and start cutting straight away.
If you didn’t have this job, what would you be doing instead?
I’d be a writer and illustrator.
How early did you know this would be your path?
This path has been more of an evolution than a clear-cut decision. I was an English and cultural studies major in college, with a minor in studio art. In the early 2000s, nobody had cell phones, and I had the only digital camera amongst my friend group — it was a whopping 2 megapixels. Making movies wasn’t as accessible as it is now, and I’m not sure I even thought about filmmaking as a real career path until I started taking film theory classes.
I moved to New York from Virginia in 2004 to pursue comedy while waiting tables. After a year or so of struggling (I’m profoundly unfunny!), my roommate, a runner at Final Cut Edit, got me a job there as a receptionist. I then worked as an assistant to many fantastic editors. I learned from them, and here I am today. Even though I never explicitly set out to become a film editor, I’ve realized that this job is the perfect intersection of my writing and visual arts skills.
Madu
Can you name some recent jobs?
In 2022 and 2023, I edited a feature documentary for directors Matt Ogens and Joel Kachi Benson about Anthony Madu, a Nigerian boy who gets into an exclusive ballet school in England. Madu follows him on his journey over his first year abroad. It’s a beautiful coming-of-age story exploring themes of home, identity and belonging, and it will be released by Disney in 2024.
I just locked cut on a three-part documentary series for Netflix that I’m not allowed to talk about, but I can say that it involves pop music and true crime.
My first feature documentary, Underplayed, premiered at TIFF in 2020 and was released on Amazon Prime in 2021. I’m very proud to also share a writing credit on that film with the amazing director, Stacey Lee.
Now I’m hoping to dive back into commercials for a bit.
Are you often asked to do more than edit?
I focus on music and sound design and how they help construct a scene. I worked closely with the directors and the composer of Madu on the score, and several of my temp tracks made it into the final film. I really enjoy promoting more diverse artists that way, too. In one scene, we use a track by Loraine James, an electronic producer from London, diegetically on a radio.
I had also been getting into 1970s Nigerian rock before working on the film. I absolutely love a group called Ofege, so it was fun to place a track of theirs in a scene as well. I did the initial sound design on Madu, and I was over the moon to take it to the next level with Bonnie Wild and her amazing team at Skywalker Sound.
Underplayed
What system do you edit on?
I’m a big fan of Avid, particularly for massive feature projects. For commercials, I use Adobe Premiere to keep my knowledge up to date.
Do you have a favorite plugin or tool that you call on a lot?
My assistant on Madu started calling me “D-Verb Dodson” while we worked on sound design, so I guess that’d be the one.
How did COVID change the way you work – the good and the bad?
From a practical standpoint, it’s great to do your laundry and clean your house while you wait for edit notes, but I mostly miss the personal interaction. Editing is collaborative! I thrive on riffing with my assistants and involving them in the edit. Working with clients satisfies the wannabe comedian in me. A lot of people think of editing as a solitary job, but I think the best moments come from working the room.
What are three pieces of technology you can’t live without?
None of this is editing-related, but my smart speakers, my Roomba vacuum and my Litter-Robot all get me one step closer to my dream of a Pee-wee-level automated home. (RIP Pee-wee.)
This is a high-stress job. What do you do to de-stress from it all?
Books, cats, dirty martinis, Enya.
