Teenage Mutant Ninja Video Editor!
Have you ever encountered this newborn species?
Well... I did!
To give you the back story:
I recently started working on a new project, creating the trailer for an upcoming documentary, that is still in production.
This job has some interesting challenges to offer.
Filmmaking is taking place in a dozen cities all over the world. Two editors are working remotely on it already, more than five terabytes of footage need to be downloaded, transcoded into proxies, and linked with the hi-res master files, and the project itself should be available for review by other team members, this means it should be setup from the beginning directly on the cloud.
The amount of footage and the complexity of the folder structure were intimidating.
But I love the story, and the filmmaker, so I committed to overcoming my fears and going for it!
For more than twenty years working on trailers for broadcast TV, I was never expected to create proxies, work in offline mode, conform XML sequences, or work remotely, but now I need to do all the above, and probably more.
Last weekend, I had the pleasure of being visited in my edit bay by one of the other two editors involved in the project, who was on his way to another country and decided to make a few-week stop in Greece!
He offered to assist me with some organizational and media management tasks, and I couldn't say no to this offer.
As he sat by me and we opened up the project, I realized I was about to experience a next-generation video editor.
He is not only a polite and smart young kid, but also:
- Superbright and Intelligent
- Extremely Focused
- Knows to Code
- Types Superfast
- Remembers Everything
- Visualise and Create his Workflows
- Adapts to working on new software easily
- Learn new shortcuts immediately
- Use AI fluently
- Study my moves and use them instantly
- Never stops on a problem until he
- Finds Solutions
I know much of the above comes from his youth, but I also see him as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Video Editor!
[Which of the four characters could he be, based on these personality traits and skills?
Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello, or Michelangelo?]
For every task you work on, especially a task this complex, you need three things:
- Passion
- Tools
- Skills
As for Passion, I have plenty!
As for Tools, I have DaVinci Resolve!
As for Skills... I need more of that!
The new era of video editing requires older editors like me to stand tall, study the trends, and learn new skills to stay productive, and relevant and ride the next wave successfully.
I am happy though that, at least, I am not supposed to learn ninjutsu!!!
-Yannis
