Award-Winning Productions from Offroad Films rely on Wiredrive from EditShare
When producer Khalil Bachooali founded Offroad Films in 2011, he aimed to build an independent, creative-led production company that merged artistic sensibilities with marketing acumen. And with more than a decade of work in commercials and business films, he’s done just that.
Today, Offroad Films is regarded as a leader in the industry, recognized by multiple awards. That includes four Lions from the Cannes International Festival of Creativity, the most prestigious in the advertising world. And throughout their journey, they’ve relied on Wiredrive every step of the way.
The key to Offroad’s success
The philosophy has always been to start with the client’s brand and the story they need to tell. From that the creative spark appears, developing the way that the story should best be told. Only then will a director be selected who can best translate that story into visual reality. The result is that the company’s passion comes out in films which are effective, purposeful and engaging.
For Offroad Films’ clients, gaining insight into the agency’s past successes and creative expertise becomes an invaluable tool, helping to showcase the agency’s ability to bring their unique stories to life with precision and flair. That needs evidence in terms of previous, similar projects and showreels from the right directors who will realize that treatment.
For this reason, since the foundation of Offroad Films, Wiredrive has been used to present showreels to clients. Over the years it has developed the way it uses the software, and now it has become a central collaborative tool as well as a means of sharing content.
Wiredrive simplifies winning showreels
Wiredrive was developed as the best way to create showreels that have impact. The simple software provides a common store for all business assets, with a powerful organization layer to search, tag and filter the archive. The user defines the parameters in the asset management layer so the tags are appropriate and searches rapidly locate the best content.
In turn, that makes it easy to build and share customized, branded presentations. Each pitch and presentation is tailored for the specific target but can be created in moments. Naturally, the agency’s corporate branding is maintained in every showreel.
Secure distribution is managed through Wiredrive to ensure that it arrives at the right people’s desks. Advanced analytics ensure the user can track the audience to get the right impact.
Developing from the showreel tools, Wiredrive has become a valuable collaboration tool. Workspaces are defined for each project, and all of its assets are managed in one space. Comments and approvals are logged and time-stamped to speed finishing and provide a sign-off trail.
The delivery capabilities mean that remote collaborators are part of the same workflow, sharing work instantly and securely among the project team.
Wiredrive’s indispensable functionality
When Offroad Films was formed in 2011, it urgently needed a way to create directors’ showreels. Wiredrive was tried and proved to be the best tool for the job. Since then, it has relied on it to develop pitch reels and manage the showreel content from the freelance directors it uses on its many projects.
“Showreels were the main reason to bring in Wiredrive,” said Rebecca Maria, Administrative Head at Offroad Films. “Nothing else delivers the same functionality.
“But as time has gone on, use cases have accumulated,” she added.
Today, each new production is allocated a workspace in Wiredrive to act as the hub for all content. As the team grows, with freelance and house staff, they are given access to the project workspace, where they can see progress and track assets.
“Typically, our associate producer is responsible for managing the content,” Rebecca Maria explained. “They will build up material from the first location research all the way to finished contents and share them easily.
“Wiredrive also allows us to quickly share specific content,” she said. “It is also useful to brief freelancers: we can create a ‘showreel’ showing the feel of what we are aiming to achieve in a film, so they know how their particular craft needs to fit in.”
The flexibility of the software means that all stages of the project use Wiredrive to be more efficient. It starts in pre-production, through shooting and post, and on to marketing and distribution. Each project that Offroad undertakes is different, and each team will use Wiredrive in its own way to best keep the team up to speed and deliver the project on time.
When a project is successfully completed, the finished films are added to the Wiredrive archive. There, they are ready to be used in future showreels, winning more creative commissions for striking and effective commercials.
“Showreels were the main reason to bring in Wiredrive, nothing else delivers the same functionality”.
Rebecca Maria, Administrative Head at Offroad Films
When you want to scale your video production capabilities, people first think about buying another camera. But for many teams, the bottleneck isn’t in production; it exists in post-production. However, storage for video assets falls into a strange in-between category for many organizations. It feels like an extension of video production, but camera experts usually aren’t IT experts. Seasoned IT pros are often slow to discover that the needs for video editing are fundamentally different from your typical workgroup.
The experts in the storage needs for video teams often arise from technically-minded video editors and post-production experts. This is because they had to figure out the challenges for themselves and explain the difficulties of post-production to their bosses and the IT staff. That’s my story, at least. Over the past few months, I’ve observed several cases where teams are willing to invest in expensive cameras and lenses but shy away from investing in the necessary post-production infrastructure to truly break the log jams in their workflow.
I found that an efficient post-production shared solution is the best foundation you can give to your team. It lets you keep all your most relevant footage at your fingertips. It provides the ability for quick collaboration between editors and motion graphics designers, and it enables you to scale. So, if you want to lay a foundation for real growth, let’s dig into how digital media production can quickly scale.
Free yourself from the sneakernet
If you’ve ever found yourself grabbing a hard drive off a shelf and passing it in between team members, only to run back over to the shelf to find the right drive, you’ve used the “sneakernet” to manage your projects. This process is fraught with difficulties, and you always have the sinking feeling, “I think I still have that footage.”
A shared storage solution keeps your most relevant assets “online” instead of “offline.” It connects to multiple workstations at the same time as well. This means that as you scale your production capability, editors and motion graphics artists have immediate access to all their work instead of having to hunt down a drive. Additionally, editors can access the same footage simultaneously since the shared storage is accessible to everyone. Finally, you don’t have to worry about wasting space by duplicating the same footage on multiple computers. Freeing yourself from the sneakernet is reason enough to deploy scalable storage like EditShare EFS.
Choose specialized storage
When it becomes evident that a video team needs a server for their footage, inevitably, somebody from IT pulls up a webpage from Dell or HP and starts to calculate the costs. This is the decision moment. If we were in a movie, this moment is the equivalent of the villain’s entrance. I’m serious. If this moment isn’t handled well, a video team can get saddled with an underperforming server solution that is worse than Sneakernet.
Consider the difference between an interstate and a main street downtown. Shared storage for media allows for sustained, smooth playback of raw video files, like an interstate. Normal servers are designed more like the traffic signals of a downtown, allowing for lots of little pieces of data to come and go. But if you have ever been stuck in traffic, looked over to a carpool lane, and seen cars zooming by, you have a good indication of the difference between a normal server and a shared storage solution. Video production storage allows for multiple video files to be played from the server to multiple workstations without interruption, and you can think of these files as big semi-trucks. These trucks need protected lanes to be able to go fast and move without hitting the breaks
If you can help your IT team understand this fundamental distinction in “traffic,” you can turn them into your biggest supporters. Why? Practically speaking, if they master this new area of IT for media, they will become more valuable to their organization, and their career will take on a level of specialization.
So why not optimize a generic server for “interstate highway mode?” Editors not only need the bandwidth for sustained “reads” of data, but they also need to write to project files on the server. Those project files require fast write speeds. If video files are like semi-trucks, project files are like mini coopers. This means that the shared storage solution has to be optimized for two ends of the spectrum, sustained reads and fast writes, while handling the different kinds of traffic going to and from the server. Video files aren’t PDFs.
I believe that if a video team can communicate this metaphor well, it can vault them into new levels of productivity. Video teams and IT teams can then collaborate effectively and understand each other’s needs much better.
Online, Nearline, and Cold Storage
When we talked about sneakernet, we learned about the difference between offline and online data. But what about footage that you need to access occasionally? We call this storage “nearline.” It doesn’t need to be on your high-performance storage, but it doesn’t belong on the shelf.
Active storage
You can save money when building your shared storage solution by identifying a specific capacity for your “online” or “active” storage. You might want this storage to be on SSDs or NVMe drives. These solid-state drives are lightning quick and work exceptionally well with high-resolution 4K, 8K, and VFX files. While this storage is quick, it is also the most expensive. (Some of that cost is offset by the fact that these drives use less power) Remote users can access an EditShare EFS volume with Swift Link, delivering remote performance that used to be available only in-house.
Nearline storage
If your most accessed files live in your online storage, place your infrequently accessed files on your nearline storage. This unit typically uses mechanical spinning disk hard drives. They work together in a configuration to ensure that you won’t lose your data if one, or even two, of them fail. This configuration is called a RAID configuration. A nearline storage unit with a group of hard drives won’t be as fast as your active storage, but it will be cost-effective. And if you have an intense project, you can always move data between your nearline and active storage.
Cold Storage
At a certain point, you can determine that you probably won’t be going back to the original footage for a project. But you don’t want to delete it all. This means your project is ready to move from nearline storage to cold storage. Some organizations may upload footage to the cloud or archive it on LTO tape.
I recently had to pull footage from Google Drive. My former team used Google Drive as cold storage. Man, was this a mistake! When you download large amounts of data from Google Drive it rearranges the folder hierarchy and appends suffixes to the file names. What a headache! I spent hours reconstructing the file structure of the REDCODE RAW files. I had to delete the suffixes that Google Drive appended on hundreds of files.
A much better approach to cold storage would have been to use LTO tape with a solution like Editshare ARK. This approach does take your files offline, but it also keeps track of those LTO tapes so you can know what is online, what is offline, and where to find what you need.
Specialized hardware calls for specialized software
Having a place to put your data doesn’t necessarily mean people can easily find what they need. Many teams use their senior editor’s brain as an “index” for project files. A much better solution is to have software do that for you. A media asset manager is an application that organizes your footage and lets anyone find what they need without Slacking the senior editor again. Editshare FLOW works with your shared storage to keep track of all your assets. Those could be online or offline. It will track data in your active, nearline, and cold storage. EditShare FLOW becomes the brain for your entire post-production operation.
Editors want to spend time in their NLE, not in the media asset manager. Editors want to edit. That’s why integration with editing apps (Known as NLEs, non-linear editing applications) is critical. EditShare provides panels in both Adobe Premiere Pro and Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve. These panels allow you to spend more time in your NLE so that you aren’t leaving your native environment. If you use a different NLE, EditShare is still perfectly compatible with any NLE (but Premiere and Resolve getting in-app panels sure is nice).
Integrate your workflow from pitch to prep to post
Post-production can feel like its own little world. It doesn’t have to be that. EditShare EFS now integrates with MediaSilo. An integration resulting in an end-to-end workflow. When you are shooting, Atomos recorders will deliver your footage right to the cloud via MediaSilo when you are shooting. Then your project can go through post on EFS and then get securely delivered to outside stakeholders via MediaSilo. This is an unprecedented level of integration and security from script to screen.
Conclusion
Deploying an EditShare EFS shared storage solution will revolutionize your post-production workflow, solve problems for your team, and deliver the foundation for scale. Reach out to an EditShare rep today to learn more.
In my favorite opening to any filmmaking book, Edward Dmytryk, in his classic On Editing, tells this story:
It was the early 1930s. A very important guest, Baron Rothschild, was being given Paramount’s version of the Grand Tour. One of his stops was my cutting room, where I was asked to say a few words by way of defining my craft.
I was young and enthusiastic. Some twenty minutes later, as I paused for breath, the Baron smiled.
“It would appear,” he said, “that film editing is the art of filmmaking.”
I agreed, trying to ignore the twinkle in his eyes. Of course, I was then a film editor. A few years later, when I became a director, I would have probably changed my pitch-but not too much.
After working on nearly every part of the filmmaking process, I must say that “editing is making the movie.” Everything up to that is assembling the raw materials. But if filmmaking is akin to building a house, it is in the edit bay where the film is built.
Fundamental Editing Techniques
After over a decade of experience editing everything from 15-second social videos to narrative shows and feature-length documentaries, I wanted to write this article on the fundamentals of editing. The marketplace is full of jobs for “video editors,” but so many editors have never had the opportunity to study their craft in-depth. Many rely on graphic transitions and social trends without ever mastering the art of the invisible cut.
But if there’s one thing I know about editors, it’s that they love to learn. So this article attempts to lay a foundation for the fundamentals so that you can go beyond editing by feel and have a deep knowledge about why a cut is working.
#1 Cutting on action
The most basic technique of editing is cutting on action. An actor starts a motion in one frame, like lunging with a sword in a medium shot at :38, and a cut is made. The action is completed in the next shot which is a close up.
This technique works well because the viewer anticipates the action will be completed in the next shot. The edit can feel stunted and stagey if your cuts happen before or after the action. When you cut on action, the sequence will feel fluid, and the cut will be “invisible.”
A great book on this subject is The Invisible Cut, by Bobbie O’Steen. Sometimes you have large movements like the thrust of a word. Other times, you have to take advantage of more subtle movements like the turn of a head or shifting of an eyeline.
#2 J and L cuts
The concept of cutting on action can even be extended to audio. To smooth out a cut, you can have the audio of an incoming clip begin just before the video does. This produces a “J” cut. The incoming audio gives the viewer a little heads-up that they should expect to see a speaker in the next clip.
Think about a dialogue scene. If you were standing in a group with two other people having a conversation and one person was speaking, your attention would be on the speaker. If the other person spoke up, you’d hear their voice and then turn your head. This is a natural “J” cut, where you hear the audio before adjusting your view of the scene.
When editing an interview with two angles, cutting between them at the very tail end of the sentence can be helpful rather than waiting for the speaker to complete their final word to cut away.
The reverse of the J cut is the “L” cut. Sometimes, you want to cut away to some footage before the speaker finishes their line. This is especially helpful if the talent makes a funny expression or if you need to cut the line mid-sentence. An L cut can also do a good job of setting up the next scene or visual.
#3 Match Cut
Match cuts use a similarity between two shots to connect them. Match cuts are often planned in pre-production, but sometimes you can discover them in editing as well. This video by StudioBinder does an excellent job of showcasing many different kinds of match cuts. One of the most famous match cuts is in 2001: A Space Odyssey, where a bone is tossed into the air, and then the film cuts to a space station that is similar in shape.
Another match cut focuses on the audio. Music or a sound effect from one shot may continue into another, and it takes on a new meaning in that new context.
Motion match cuts take advantage of cutting on action (Technique #1) to connect two shots so that the action seems continuous, but the incoming clip takes place in a different location or is completed by a different character. Edgar Wright uses this technique in his films.
#4 Eye Trace
If you are watching an interview, your eyes are typically focused on the eyes of the subject. If you cut away to something else, your focus will start in the place where the subject’s eyes were. If the main subject of the new shot is in another part of the frame, your eyes take a moment to hunt around the screen for what they should pay attention to. This can result in a “jump cut,” If the incoming clip has the main subject in the same place on screen as the outgoing clip, you will have taken advantage of “eye trace.” Take a look at this video from Jay Lippman, who shows different ways to employ eye trace to produce smooth cuts.
As you can see, eye trace is an effective tool for combining cutting on action and match cuts. When you start layering techniques as an editor, you can really separate yourself from the pack. These kinds of edits are fun to watch and keep viewers engaged.
Eye trace is especially useful when you need to insert a cut into an interview that was shot on a single camera. If you punch from a medium angle to a close up you can line up the subject’s nearest eye in the same spot on screen. If you punch in over 30% it will not look like jump cut. You can hide the cut even more by doing it on a word, combining eye trace and an audio match cut.
If you punch in on an interview, it is helpful if the camera’s resolution is higher than the resolution for the final deliverable. For instance, shooting 4k for a 1080p deliverable. Or shooting 8K for a 4k deliverable. This will prevent a drop in quality in the final piece.
#5 Cutting on Blinks
Every editor should read Walter Murch’s classic book, “In the Blink of an Eye.” In this book, Murch (Editor for Apocalypse Now, The Godfather III, Particle Fever) dives into his philosophy of editing. And while you should read the book, I can summarize it by saying, cut on the frame just before someone blinks. Don’t cut while they are blinking, and don’t cut after the blink. This is because blinks seem to coincide with the completion of thoughts.
Murch theorizes that editing works precisely because people blink. We are producing little “cuts” all the time.
YouTube Channel This Guy Edits demonstrates the technique of cutting on blinks.
Murch has also pointed out that the audience will often synchronize their blinks with the blinks of actors. Using this method causes the edit, the actors, and the audience to all sync up to the same rhythm.
Conclusion
These five fundamental techniques are important for every editor to master. As you can see in the examples, they flow into one another and build on each other. Sometimes, you edit by feel and end up in a “happy accident” of a nice cut. But videos rely on dozens of cuts, and you’ll be more effective if you know why each cut is working or not. This knowledge becomes even more important if you are sitting side-by-side (or over a remote connection) with a director.
A director can ask for a cut and then wonder out loud why it isn’t working. When you have a working vocabulary of visual grammar, you’ll be able to instantly identify when a cut works and why it is awkward. This skill set can flow backward into more effective directing, storyboarding, and even screenwriting.
When you know the craft of editing, not just using an NLE, you become an incredibly valuable contributor at every step of the filmmaking process. You’ll be able to write for the edit, storyboard for the edit, direct for the edit, and shoot for the edit. And of course, you’ll be an absolute pro at the edit.
In high-end film and TV production, where valuable media assets are the lifeblood of every project, security control is a top concern for everyone involved. As technology workflows evolve, including review and approval processes, the risks associated with handling and transferring media also evolve.
Companies, such as VOD suppliers, invest heavily in theater productions or TV programs. They aim to ensure their content remains secure and does not end up on the dark web before they can monetize it. They seek a return on their investment. Implementing strong security measures has become essential for conducting business in this industry.
Security solutions for media production
At the forefront of security solutions for media production is EditShare’s EFS (EditShare File System), complemented by its Risk Auditing layer, which provides real-time tracking of every file from inception through to delivery. It records an audit of every time someone touches, moves, copies or modifies a file. It’s like the big brother watching over your facility.
Keeping this auditing trail on its own dedicated drive is important, and that’s exactly what EFS provides. However auditing is only one layer of the security approach that facilities need to take.
Ensure the security of your media
Let’s delve into what you should be aware of to ensure the safety of your media production workflow.
Access management and control: The first line of defense in cybersecurity is access management and control. Managing who or what can access your organization’s media assets is crucial. With unauthorized access often being the starting point of security breaches, effective access control strategies form the bedrock of a secure system.
Make sure you facility has a SIEM platform, controlling people’s access to the facility and craft editing and comms rooms
Control who has access to your media assets by implementing strict user authentication and authorization protocols such as AD and SSO
Utilize role-based access control to assign specific permissions based on job roles and responsibilities in the production process.
Regularly review and update access privileges to ensure only authorized individuals have access to the valuable content content.
Auditing and Monitoring: Having a powerful auditing and monitoring system is an easy way to identify weaknesses in your workflow. And if a breach does occur, detailed access logs can serve as crucial evidence during forensic investigations. They can unravel an attacker’s path, providing invaluable insights that can help fortify the security infrastructure.
Leverage EditShare’s EFS auditing layer to track every interaction with your media files in real-time.
Monitor user activities, file modifications, and access attempts to identify and mitigate security threats.
Generate comprehensive audit logs and reports for compliance purposes and forensic analysis.
Visible and Forensic Watermarking: Video piracy costs companies billions of dollars a year. Visible and forensic watermarking acts as a fingerprint for your media so that if the worst happens, you can trace it back to the leak and minimize the damage. Take advantage of the most effective theft-deterrent measures using MediaSilo and Screeners’ tamper-resistant, user-specific SafeStream™ watermarks.
Deter piracy and trace leaks through visible watermarks, including custom text, graphic elements and invisible forensic watermarks.
Create and share watermark templates for an entire team or user group to unify your security efforts.
Expand brand identity marketing and keep reviewers mindful of who is making the content with logo watermarking.
Malware Ransomware: Ransomware attacks have risen by 13% in the last five years, costing nearly $1.85 million per incident. Statistics predict a ransomware attack every two seconds by 2031.
Work collaboratively with Ransomware or Malware software platforms such as Falcon Crowdstrike
Data Backup and Disaster Recovery: Professionals in the media and entertainment industry invest countless hours and resources in producing intellectual property. Without a robust backup strategy, these creations are at risk of loss or corruption. A powerful backup and disaster recovery solution provides the means to protect, preserve, and recover critical media assets.
Establish backup and disaster recovery mechanisms to protect against data loss or corruption. This is where clients should deploy a HA cluster similar to EFS 450
Regularly backup your media files to secure off-site locations or AWS cloud storage platforms Via the EditShare Flex Sync Node
Test your backup and recovery procedures regularly to ensure they are effective in restoring data in the event of a disaster.
Employee Training and Awareness: A highly trained team is an underrated security strategy. Awareness training can significantly decrease human errors, which are a leading cause of data breaches. Training, simulations, and testing train new and safer employee behaviors, reducing the likelihood of human errors.
The best defense is a good offense
Threat assessments are a standard IT security practice for a reason. A thorough threat assessment helps identify gaps in your security posture before hackers do. Regular, ongoing assessments and vulnerability scans help ensure your current measures are effective while helping you make more informed choices around security, expense and performance.
Thanks to the Motion Picture Association’s Trusted Partner Network (TPN), those in the media and entertainment space can easily obtain a third-party assessment that evaluates your system. TPN evaluates your system to ensure you’re up to date on cybersecurity best practices and requirements.
In conclusion
By implementing these security measures and using EditShare’s EFS auditing layer for real-time tracking and monitoring, you can significantly enhance the security of your media production workflow. Remember, protecting sensitive data and your valuable media assets is not just a priority—it’s a necessity when dealing with today’s media conglomerates.
Alex Leafer, Director of Production for the New York Islanders, joins us to discuss how EditShare storage and FLOW asset management support their content production, pre-game presentations and social media presence. From capturing those exhilarating moments on the field to delivering compelling highlights, our hosts will guide you through innovative strategies and best practices tailored to streamline your sports video production process. This webinar will be a game-changer in maximizing efficiency and enhancing the quality of your sports content.
Dynamic workflows designed by Tyrell will support major commissions
Boston, MA, June 12, 2024 – EditShare, the technology leader that enables storytellers to create and manage collaborative workflows at every stage from storyboard to screen, has implemented another EFS storage network at leading UK entertainment production company Whisper. The system was designed and implemented in conjunction with EditShare’s partner Tyrell.
Whisper is highly regarded for its sports, live and entertainment coverage, including some of the largest events globally. Having recently secured commissions for multiple new documentary series, it has added an extensive new storage network and access facilities.
Gareth Steven, Head of Post Production, Whisper
“We already have two EditShare storage nodes that we rely on, and which have proven extremely reliable over a number of years,” said Gareth Steven, head of post production at Whisper. “This new project calls for content to be created and managed over an extended period of time, with large production teams accessing and editing the content simultaneously. EditShare and Tyrell showed us that the scalability and workflow functionality metour requirements perfectly.”
The new installation sees three EditShare EFS-300 storage systems, each with 256 TB capacity, which are seen by users as a single namespace for simplicity and security in operation. The storage network is freely and continuously expandable to provide capacities exceeding a petabyte if required.
“Content security was also a key requirement for Whisper,” said Simon Wocka, account manager at Tyrell. “Media storage is like a bank vault: the assets it contains are priceless and must be protected above all else. Security is a core part of the EditShare architecture, providing the best protection at every stage without compromising operational ease and flexibility.
“EditShare also allows access directly within the key post tools that will be used on these shows,” he continued. “Artists using Adobe Premiere Pro or Blackmagic DaVinci can use EditShare integrations within their software environment, allowing them to access content directly. They don’t need to change workstations or learn new commands and structures – it removes barriers and makes workflows much simpler.”
Tara Montfort, co-founder and EVP Business Development at EditShare, added, “We are delighted to support Whisper’s new projects. Our scalable storage solutions and intuitive workflow tools are designed to meet the complex needs of production teams, ensuring they can collaborate seamlessly and focus on what they do best – creating compelling content.”
The new storage network was installed in February 2024 and is already supporting the latest documentary productions at Whisper.
EditShare is an Emmy Award-winning technology leader, supporting storytellers through collaborative media workflows across on-premise, cloud and hybrid architectures. The market-leading open software solutions and robust APIs improve workflow collaboration, third-party integrations and content sharing across the entire production chain. Designed specifically for media applications, the high performance line-up provides shared storage, archiving and backup, and intelligent media asset management.
Through a merger with Shift Media, EditShare now also integrates tools for content review and distribution, the creation of customised and branded pitch reels, and secure preview of high-value pre-release content.
About Tyrell
For 24 years Tyrell has been providing video, audio, graphics and storage solutions to the Irish and UK broadcast, post, production, corporate and education markets. In this time, we have become the leading provider of technology and service solutions both on-premise and in the cloud. Tyrell has an excellent understanding of the fast pace and unique pressures facing the media and entertainment industry; developing solutions for complex workflows. Allowing our clients to concentrate on the creative process and business development. From our two locations we offer a comprehensive range of professional services from consultancy to system design and integration, technical support and maintenance.
The variety of editing that goes on at a broadcaster would amaze you. There are promos, documentaries, news stories, specials and more. Some projects take weeks, and some projects take hours. The technical infrastructure is imposing, but it’s also mobile. Add to that a changing landscape of viewers’ tastes, outside consultants and inside pressures.
To get an inside look at the world of broadcast video editing, we interviewed Gregg Ginnell, former senior editor and post-production supervisor at the CBS affiliate Kiro 7 in Seattle, WA. He’s had a career spanning more than two decades and was keen to share his insights.
Meet a broadcast editor
“I worked in broadcast for a large number of years. I did a lot of documentaries. I did a lot of promotion. I didn’t do a lot of news,” relates Grinnell. “I did do news for a couple of years after leaving Kiro when I worked for Al Jazeera America. That was a completely different news experience.” When an interview opens with that breath of experience, you know that you are going to get some interesting insights into the world of video editing for broadcast.
Video editing for film, corporate and broadcast is all storytelling. But Gregg pointed out that there’s a vast difference between a “three-and-a-half minute story” and a “six-shot” news segment. While working at Kiro, the work got split up between team members who were good with quickly putting together a series of shots and moving on and those who spent days crafting a story.
He related a story of a colleague comparing the cutting of short segments to “making sandwiches.” That kind of edit had to be put together quickly to meet deadlines. Gregg focused on pieces that involved interviews and promotional spots for the station.
Film vs broadcast editing
I asked Gregg what the biggest difference was in the mindset of an editor working on a film vs. one working in broadcasting. His reply was, “Consultants.”
I didn’t expect that answer. He explained that every 12-18 months, a consultant would be brought into the station to give their perspective on trends in broadcast and how to gain market share. Each time, there was a different person, but they were all from the same firm. Sometimes their guidance would directly contradict each other or go back and forth between recommending a trend, advising against it, and then recommending it again.
Gregg shared that the advice of one consultant was to focus on the local news talent for their promo spots. So they went out and shot footage and tied that in with graphics to create a personal connection between the talent and the audience. Eighteen months later, another consultant from the same firm came in. This person advised that they need to drop the focus on talent and emphasize the news itself. Gregg’s team went to work on the new direction and crafted a whole new set of promos.
A year or so went by, and, you guessed it, the next consultant from the firm said to highlight the talent. At this point, Gregg’s team showed them the promo package from the prior campaign and simply asked, “Like this?”
Running decisions through the lens of outside consultants also led to feedback around everything from how many shots should be in a story to the content of the promotional packages. This dynamic leads to a balancing act for broadcast editors between their instincts on telling a story and outside feedback based on market research.
For instance, a story might go off for review, and the feedback would come back as “We love this story, but your shot count is too low.” Gregg recalled thinking, “Well, actually, it has just the right number of shots.” But at the end of the day, you do your best work and try to balance those competing interests.
This is in contrast to the work that Gregg did for the broadcaster Al-Jazeera America. In his experience, they deferred to the editor to determine the dynamics of the edit, even if it meant a piece was a few seconds longer than initially planned.
Editing three-and-a-half-minute packages that took the editor’s lead feels more like a documentary filmmaker’s approach than working in a typical newsroom.
Grinnell made an interesting comparison between documentary and news editors, saying, “I love news editors. I can’t do their job. I’m a little too frenetic. But I know news editors who became documentary editors. I don’t know any documentary editors who became news editors.”
It appears that once you’ve had a chance to tell long form stories, you just keep coming back for more.
Promo Editing
Gregg spent much of his time crafting “promos.” These spots air during commercial breaks and promote the news programming of the local station.
A lot more effort goes into editing promos than your evening news stories. This demonstrates the broad spectrum of talent that needs to be brought to the table at your local broadcaster. Some editors need to be fast. Gregg mentioned an editor who cut 62 packages in eight hours!
On the flip side, Gregg would spend half a day dialing in the color grade for a single promo spot. The message, visuals, motion graphics and sound would all be coordinated to reinforce the brand message for that season.
That difference in editing jobs perfectly illustrates Gregg’s comparison of editing a documentary vs a last-minute promo. He went on to describe it, “If I’m working on a documentary, I’m working directly with the producer, and we’re working every day together, and we are creating it from whole cloth. And that is a completely different experience than how [if] somebody comes in and drops a script down and going, [and says] ‘we got to promote this thing and we got to do it in the next two hours.’ And those are all really different, almost different jobs.”
Learning to shoot helps you edit better
As an editor, you are always looking to grow your storytelling skills. Gregg related, “I’ve always told everybody that I didn’t become a good editor until I became a better shooter. Go out and have to shoot your own stuff, and [when] you get back into the bay, there’s no one else you can blame.”
Many shooters who started off as editors develop strong skills as interviewers. “Where you’re sitting there listening and you go,” Gregg recounted, “Oh, my story’s changing now! There’s nothing I love more than editing in my head.”
You can see from Gregg’s career how the disciplines of editing, shooting and interviewing all work together in the head of the filmmaker to produce a better story. It’s a good reminder that in this age of specialization, there’s still value in combining the skills of a generalist with an area of specialization.
Working remotely
Working remotely was a shock to many industries, but post-production had already laid in place much of the infrastructure to go remote. This preparation allowed editors to remote into their AVID workstations from home and crank out edits. Google docs, Slack and Zoom provided other means for collaboration. Broadcasters all over the world also began to use advanced tools like MediaSilo.com for review/approval, tracking versions and managing assets. These tools combined to really remake the landscape of post-production.
Gregg shared about a campaign he edited for an app that focused on the footwear market. The shooters were in NYC, the graphic designer was in Utah, motion graphics were in California, and he was editing from Seattle. With the proliferation of mobile video capture and distributed teams, we’re going to see more and more of this kind of collaboration.
But along with the ability to work from anywhere comes the importance of security. MediaSilo helps broadcasters secure their assets with SafeStream technology. SafeStream enables visible watermarks and invisible forensic watermarking so that you can track any leaks back to their source.
Conclusion
Getting to know this legendary Seattle broadcast editor, Gregg Grinnell, was an honor. He has a passion for editing that is still burning strong after decades in the business.
Grinnell’s experiences remind us that being an editor is an act of service. Sometimes, you serve a client, a consultant, or a director, but you always serve the story.
It’s inspiring to see how even though consultants come and go and technology changes, the need for crafting compelling stories only increases. It causes us to ask ourselves, “How will I adapt to a shifting landscape? What core skills can I continue to develop that will remain relevant no matter what the future holds?” Those questions will help editors remain sharp and stay in demand in this ever-changing landscape.
Building For The Future
Azimuth, a full service editing, post-production, finishing and delivery facility, has a new home, purpose built from the ground up, on Eagle Street in Holborn in the heart of Central London. With the changing demands of modern broadcast – particularly the need to deliver in 4K HDR and with Dolby Atmos Home Entertainment audio – Azimuth have designed and built a modern, flexible, and adaptable post house to fulfill these requirements incorporating the latest in post technology and workflow methodologies. Systems integration was carried out by technology experts, Altered Images.
Re-Imagining Azimuth
Operations Director, Yives Reed describes the challenge that led to the new, re-imagined Azimuth being built: “post pandemic, OR Media (parent production company) had lots of projects coming through with multiple specialist factual and documentary series. As they were getting closer to post production, it was obvious that the Azimuth as was, was not set up to accommodate either the volume or the 4K HDR deliverables required so the time was right for a reset.
High-End Television Post Workflows
At the heart of Azimuth’s technology vision was the need to fully support a range of high-end television post workflows. To achieve this, they knew they needed a robust server and media management system that could securely handle multiple streams of high-bandwidth data, including 4K and even 8K RAW files, and effortlessly distribute these with real time playback wherever and whenever required within the facility.
Head of Technical Operations, Steve Oak describes the new picture finishing set up at Azimuth. “The bulk of the work going through the facility is 4K HDR and Dolby Atmos for IMF delivery. If that high bandwidth work sets your benchmark, it helps to make some pioneering decisions with our hardware. Between two Resolve Grades and three Online, three Colour Assist stations and two QC rooms we are reading and writing huge amounts of data at the same time. Alongside native workflows in Resolve, we’ve got Baselight and Flame Open EXR and uncompressed workflows with its own demanding requirements. In Resolve we’re working with multi-layered sequences, including uncompressed RAW, all supported by the 40 Gb/s network input from each of the Editshare SSD arrays.”
Oak continues, “we are bricks and mortar within a Central London location and despite our cloud presence, the bulk of our services are hosted here. When you go back to the shell of a building, you have the chance to shape it in the way that you think it should be going forward. We wanted flexibility with what we put into place now and how it might be different in six or twelve months’ time which is not how most post houses work.”
The Need For Flexibility
“With Editshare, we have a petabyte of spinning disk and 200 terabytes of SSD between which we can move workspaces seamlessly while carrying on working. Importantly, Editshare is NLE agnostic allowing our customers to work the way they want to work with media plug-ins and workspaces for Media Composer, Resolve and Premiere Pro respectively.
“At Azimuth, we bring the native material into a Resolve conform to effectively create a re-link environment. We get a lot of XAVC at 300 and 450 Mb/s, RED, Canon XF, Sony X-OCN and ProRes RAW. In Final Post it means that we can have quite large workspaces and we can be pulling a huge amount of bandwidth per client.
Better Workflows
“An Editshare media asset management system sits on top for media encoding and cloud integration where you can work within an intuitive web GUI, all of which is tied into a server giving us better performance for our dollar than any other we reviewed. Investing in Editshare was a no-brainer.”
Reed concurs, “ Editshare gives us performance storage with a lot of useful tools to support a fully modern workflow and an agnostic approach to applications. It’s flexible and has a strong track record.”
Oak is consistently looking towards what’s next and was additionally impressed by Editshare’s M&E-centric approach, increasing use of automation and roadmap, “Editshare’s acquisition and integration of MediaSilo reflects the vendor’s approach. You can set up watch folders through your FLOW environment so you can export a cut and it will transcode and upload it to MediaSilo, and anyone within that group will get a notification that it’s been uploaded. It can scan our MediaSilo cloud storage through a Storage DNA MAM, that sits on top of our whole environment, and bring those assets back down again and deep archive on LTO on completion of a project. Editshare offers us better workflows with less human time and more automation.”
“Editshare gives us performance storage with a lot of useful tools to support a fully modern workflow and an agnostic approach to applications.”
