On our first episode, we hang out with Sven Pape, host of This Guy Edits, to check out his new editing bungalow and bay, the gear he uses to edit and chat about workflow and collaboration. Next on “What’s In Your Bay.”
Michael
On this episode of “What’s in your Bay” we’re talking to this guy, Sven Pape, indie doc and feature editor and nearly a million subscribers on YouTube. Oh, no… it’s half a million.
Sven
Half a million…
Michael
Half million.
Sven
But I won’t stop until it’s a million.
Michael
Today, we’ll sit down with Sven Pape. We’ll check out his new editing bungalow and bay, the gear he uses to edit and have a chat about workflow and collaboration. Next on, “What’s In Your Bay.”
Sven
Well, come on in. This is the actual office right here.
Michael
This is a brand new building, right?
Sven
Brand new. This is going to be where the assistant editor station is right here. And then I’ll be over there. Well, I actually am. I’m going with a laptop. This is a decision I made about, I don’t know, six years ago. I had a Hackintosh, actually, before that.
Sven
It’s actually pretty straightforward. It’s just a MacBook Pro. At some point, I decided I don’t need a desktop anymore because I need to be able to edit on the fly when I’m, like, traveling, when I’m on location. I also have the iPad connected to it in the teleprompter, and I do Zoom streams sometimes while I’m showing stuff to edit to students, and I run all the drives.
Sven
I have about five or six LaCie drives, and it’s about 16 to 20 terabytes per box. And I basically, I mean, I run a feature on one of those, and then I have a backup or I have my entire YouTube library of like 100 plus episodes that I’ve created on there and backed up. I only really recently started to do a full backup of everything, and a week later, one of these died.
Sven
So I got lucky because that would have been thousands and thousands of dollars worth of video. Instead of that, I would have lost. So if they do the system of three, right, so two locally and then one off-site just in case the building burns down, you still have the ability to be up and running.
Michael
So I see a ton of monitors on your desk. And these aren’t just regular 16:9 monitors. These are ultrawide.
Sven
And I have them just because the timeline is long, and I want to be able to see as much of the timeline as I can. I love this. That’s the Monogram Creative Console, which really helps me with editing to just stay more in the flow state and be able to like, cut as fast as I want to without having to worry about, like, where do I put tracks and manage media, that kind of stuff.
Sven
I have two Rodes. This is the N-11. I love this mic. This is my favorite video mic. And it’s actually not that expensive. It’s, like, 150, 200 bucks, and it just has a super clean, fat sound. And then this is also a Rode. But that’s just for Zoom because I do a lot of Zoom calls with students or I have live stream office hours.
Sven
And to be able to sound good and look at it’s really important to just sort of up the production value, then it feels more professional.
Michael
I’m glad you mentioned Zoom because I can imagine that having a good camera to be on Zoom with your students is important. So what kind of optics do we have there?
Sven
There’s the Sony ZV-1, which is really a specialized camera for vloggers. So it’s like auto everything. And I love that. It gives me a good look, and I don’t have to worry about sound or anything. If for any reason I lose connection here, it immediately switches over to that camera, and it’ll be fine. And then behind that, I have a GH-2, too, which is a very old camera.
Sven
It’s about ten years old. It’s actually the one that Martin Scorsese tested first when he was like, Should I shoot film or should I shoot digital? And so he tested all kinds of cameras, and this was the one he picked as being the has the most character. So I’m going to stick with that for quite a while.
Michael
I think I understand this desk is also a transformer, right?
Sven
So it has this retrofit here where it can be a standing desk. And I actually like to, I got to make sure that I don’t break anything here, but I can theoretically, I’m not going to bring it up all the way just about here. And I love to do all my work while I’m standing because then I can sort of move to the sound, to almost dance to the editing when I do the sound.
Michael
Was that a little bit of Walter Murch?
Sven
It’s a little bit of a Walter Murch thing when I’m cutting and want to do a lot of the heavy lifting, which is like selecting shots and really thinking hard about how I’m going to, like, structurally build something. I’d rather sit down for that. And they also do this, which is great, like when I’m standing and then I want to have my laptop right here.
Michael
Is that some of your swag? “Just Edit.”
Sven
Just that is. Yes.
Michael
Some of your merch.
Sven
Merch. Get a little bit in trouble with Nike with that. I’m still selling it.
Sven
So what’s really nice about having this new office is I actually have a bathroom here as well, so they don’t have to come into the main house. We can have a coffee; we can sit down here. And there’s also an option where the director can sleep here overnight if we have a long session because this can be pulled out to become a bedroom.
Sven
And this is something that I really noticed when I was working in my other bay. It’s like, okay, how do I make sure that the director can be comfortable? Because it’s going to take a couple of days to get through and edit. And so any amenity that I can throw at them is another option for them to entice them to hire me.
Michael
I see you have an assistant editing station. Is this to do just to string out, or what do you typically task an assistant editor to do here?
Sven
Well, I try to get them as involved as possible, so whenever there’s time, I want them to cut. Being able to work together closely in this environment is really, really important. And then they can also stand if they want to.
Michael
Yeah. I see you have a standing desk here.
Sven
At any point, decide I want to be cutting on this system right here, and I can be standing. This TV can come out and swivel. So if it’s like if I have a director right over here, I can just pull it more like this. I’ll be watching it over here. The director will be watching it over there, and we can be communicating.
Sven
I am starting to write a screenplay, and I actually, I know this is like a trend right now to be writing on typewriters, but I actually find it quite enjoyable. And it also makes me be very focused when I put it on the page because I can’t delete. So I have to commit. I have to commit to the scene.
Sven
So we’re actually using a typewriter, like in the morning for an hour, which is actually really helpful to get things done. This is one of the old YouTube plaques that you get for 100,000 subscribers, and I got one of the last ones before they changed to like, it’s more of a mirror-looking thing. And so I’m really glad to get this one.
Sven
And I hope with my other YouTube channel eventually, I will get the new one. This is the phone, and it actually works. I can call the company Film Supply whenever I need a shot. Just call us direct.
Michael
It’s like the “Bat Phone.” You can pick it up and hit the button.
Sven
And supposedly, it’s 24×7. I haven’t tried it, but supposedly I can get somebody at night.
Michael
After the tour, it’s time to sit down with Sven and talk about editing and collaboration. So the first thing I want to point out is that normally when you walk into a higher-end editing bay, you’re seeing Avid Media Composer or Adobe Premiere Pro. But I noticed a familiar icon here. What? What’s that?
Sven
Yeah, I’m still loving Final Cut X. It’s my go-to system. It’s so intuitive. I love the magnetic timeline. I love the fact that I don’t have to think about media management at all or track management. And I can stay more focused in the storytelling, less clicking per cut. That’s what I love about it.
Michael
So when you are working with directors for a lot of the indie projects you’re working on or documentaries do, do they normally request and say, we want you to edit in this software application? And then is there a discussion, or is it this is what I’m working in or nothing at all?
Sven
It really, it depends on the project. So I cut a documentary, and it was already set up in Premiere, and I hadn’t cut in Premiere at all. I told him, that’s fine. Like, I didn’t argue the fact. I’m like, It’s going to take me two weeks to figure it out, but you’re hiring me for the storytelling.
Michael
A core tenet of Shift Media is collaboration. We make tools that enable folks to collaborate. So to that end, what kind of tools are you using to collaborate with people, whether they’re, you know, in the same office or in the same facility or on the other side of the world?
Sven
Well, first of all, I have a pool of about five editors that I work with on various projects at the same time. And what I usually do is I get the media organized here, and I send it over Dropbox to them.
Michael
Are you creating proxies of everything, or are you cutting with the camera originals?
Sven
I’ll try to do the high-res if I can. Sometimes we’ve done proxies, too, and it has worked, but it always creates a little bit more friction. I give the footage to them, I give them direction, and they start cutting. They are then going to start sending me cuts where I can give timecode-based feedback on them online. At some point, we’re going to start sharing examples where I tried to bring the project back alive.
Sven
We constantly update each other’s additional media that we created, and eventually, I will do the final pass on everything before it goes out. And it’s always pushing my editors just a little bit more than what their ability is. I try to get them as close as possible to the finished project, but it doesn’t quite work out because, in YouTube, you have a lot of, like, beginning aspiring editors that are, like, excited to build content.
Sven
So there’s a lot of training, coaching and directing involved online as well. And that happens usually through Discord, Zoom. But those sessions in the room are what really make a difference in terms of just fine-tuning polishing. So usually I have these milestone events where I have a director, and I have a director that’s in Germany, and he shoots, he sends the stuff over here, I’ll send cuts back.
Sven
Eventually, he will fly over for like a milestone or we’re getting ready to do a screener for festival or the producer or whatever. And then we’ll spend a couple of days on the cut together just walking through all the minutia of just massaging it.
Michael
As we’ve spoken about, collaboration involves working with people in the same room or all across the world and in different departments. I’m going to bring up a few job titles, folks who work on the same projects you do. And I want to hear your one piece of advice for those people. So let’s start at the beginning. Let’s start with aspiring editors.
Sven
Actually, edit every day, like there are a lot of aspiring editors who want a cut, and it’s so easy to find something to cut. And if you really want to learn to become good at it, you need to be cutting practically every day because you got to get those 10,000 hours.
Michael
What one tidbit of wisdom would you give assistant editors?
Sven
So many things. But I would tell them to never make excuses when it comes to their misgivings or things that they didn’t deliver. Instead, be very cautious about what you promise. Always under-promise and overdeliver, that makes the relationships so much better.
Michael
And what about directors?
Sven
Other than “get out?” I would say, “hold off.” There’s a lot of work in progress, and it’s very important for the directors to be part of that process. And I tend to really want to show them a cut at various levels, but I don’t necessarily want to be already thinking about the details until we figure out the big picture.
Sven
That’s an end goal that you’re trying to reach with a feature, and it’s going to take a long time to get there. So having patience on both sides to let things suck for a while so that you can get all the other things lined up so you can make the right decisions about how you’re going to change the details. It’s really important. And that patience for a new director is often very hard.
Michael
So, in addition to production, post-production, teaching, and YouTube, what are you doing to keep yourself sane?
Sven
Well, I have a balanced life. I have other passions that maybe combine my interests in filmmaking with something that I’m really, really obsessed about right now. Well, keeps me sane as well as to really not stress about popping out content constantly and just let it happen. Like, if a good idea for a piece of content comes, I’ll make a video.
Sven
I don’t feel obligated to make a video just to make a video.
Michael
Is there anything else you would like folks to know?
Sven
I’m a little bit in the transition phase in the sense that I’m a traditional filmmaker, but I’m also a YouTuber and it’s a very interesting spot to be in the sense that I can use what I’ve learned traditionally as a filmmaker and apply it to social media. And I think a lot of filmmakers have kind of a blind spot when it comes to social media.
Sven
They look down upon it, or they don’t see quite how it’s going to benefit them to get involved. And I think there’re so many ways how it would benefit you. First of all, you can make better content than many other people as a filmmaker because you have the skills. And secondly, you can suddenly own things that you create. A lot of filmmakers work for hire when you are a creator.
Sven
Most of the stuff you create, you own. So you can license it, you can sell it, you can do whatever you want with it. Owning the content becomes even more important.
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