Editing in all its many shapes and sizes is simply amazing. I have worked with countless editors whose job description should actually be called “job descriptions.” Editors spend countless hours interpreting endless hours of raw footage and working to transform that footage or recording into wonderful finished programs, testimonials, and worship elements. The skill sets required are intense and diverse, and in my opinion, most editors don’t get the credit they really deserve.
I know, being a live multi-cam director myself, I am the proverbial squirmy 5-year-old who can’t sit still in church—never mind a long edit session. The expression “we’ll fix it in post” rings a lot truer than most of us would readily admit.
What’s in a name?
Video and audio editing have come such a long way over the years, mainly due to tremendous leaps of computing power and portability. What you can accomplish now on a MacBook Pro used to take up several rooms in an edit suite and cost about $750 per hour. Yet, changes in technology are just one part of the picture. Software is a wonderland all its own.
Church Production pulled back the curtain to look a look at the software that three editors are using right now, and why. We focused on Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro, and Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve. While these are not the only editing programs out there, they are some of the most common in church use today. Each has its own rich workflow and tool set, allowing editors to take AV to the next level across all kinds of worship and non-worship programming.
Rhett Owen
Rhett Owen
First up I spoke with Rhett Owen from Hope Community Church in Raleigh, North Carolina. He edits in Premiere Pro but will drop over to Adobe After Effects for graphics and Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve for color grading.
Here’s what Owen had to say …
“I am originally from Florida, now living in Raleigh North Carolina working for Hope Community Church. It is a non-denominational church with around 10,000 attendees across four local campuses, one Haitian International campus, and an online campus and broadcast. For the church, I direct, shoot, and edit, and then fill in where needed.
I use a MacBook Pro and a custom-built PC. I like the MacBook so that I can edit in Premiere where I need to, depending on what my day looks like. The PC I’ll use for graphics work being done in After Effects and 3D in Cinema 4D.
My workflow varies depending on the project, but it typically [involves] organizing all the materials I have. I transcode any footage I need to, like H.264 footage, or I convert to ProRes, especially if it is 4k or drone footage or creating a proxy file for larger multi-cam edits of special performances or services where we could have up to 20 streams of video coming in. There have been bigger music videos where I’ve had 48 different streams of video. One other thing I like about Premiere right now is that no matter what type of footage I throw at it, I can work with it and it gives me the flexibility to do what I like.”
Woody Davis
Woody Davis
Woody Davis is someone I met at last summer's Capture conference in Raleigh, North Carolina. A jack of all trades, Davis was so into his work, engaging conference attendees with humor, a smile, and grace under pressure. I would want him to edit or work with me, especially on a tight timeline. I was glad that I was able to catch up with him for a few minutes. And here’s what he told me.
“I used to work in a church, but now freelance. Even though I am not a full-time editor, I've done it professionally for years. I work in virtual production as an animator, developer, and CG generalist in Unreal Engine. I occasionally use my CG rig for editing. I either cut by myself or work as a producer with another editor. The client usually gets exports later on.
I use SSDs for capture and editing. I capture directly to a dedicated Samsung T5 from my Blackmagic Ursa Mini Pro G2 during recording. I copy over that to another SSD just for editing, and backup to another external HDD. If it's a long interview, a live stream, or a very talkative shoot, I do an automated transcription in Descript. I'll do rough edits there and transfer the results via XML to DaVinci Resolve, where I'll finalize the edit before doing an audio pass in Fairlight and color via the color panel. I have a Puget Systems custom built machine with a 12-core AMD Ryzen [9] 5900X [desktop processor] and an NVIDEO GeForce RTX 3090, [which] I bought.
Here is a list of some of the things I like working with:
Blackmagic Design Resolve:
- Does everything you'd want from a more established editor.
- Extremely fast with my GPU set-up.
- The fastest exporter I have ever used. I can export hour-long videos in just minutes.
- One-time payment (I actually got a free key when I bought my camera).
- Built-in color panels are the industry standard for color work.
- Autosaves at every given edit decision.
- Crashes rarely/infrequently.
Descript:
- Editing is easy—like editing a Word document.
- I can read faster than people can speak, so I can understand content at a glance.
- It's easy to export subclips.
- Frequent developer updates with in-app installation.
Editing can be very time-intensive and there are always a lot of little things to get done to create professional results. But some of the most industry standard software used for editing these days is just layered on top of extremely old software builds, and haven't scaled well to modern use. Much of it doesn’t run well but it depends on your platform. I downloaded an application which is, broadly speaking, the most popular editing platform in the world and I could not even get it to function on my 2021 Windows machine. While it's possible some of my hardware is too new, or I was missing certain drivers or something, this really shouldn't be a problem on a high-powered machine. (I got it from an integrator, so the program should just run.)
I'd highly recommend finding out what's on the developer's list of suggested computer hardware before building or buying an editing computer.”
Bill Wyramon
Bill Wryamon
Rounding out our editing highlight reel, I had a great exchange of ideas with Bill Wyramon, video production director. Here’s what he shared.
“I have been in video production for quite a while and it was all completely orchestrated by God. I began as a pilot, flying freight, rock bands, and sports teams. But I've been doing some sort of video production since high school, when I would stack two VCRs together and edit home videos.
I'm a self-taught videographer and motion graphics artist. My wife and I have been at The Summit Church in Kernersville, North Caroline, for nearly 22 years and I've been creating videos for them, either on a volunteer basis or on staff, for that entire time. In 2010 church leadership decided they wanted to create a video production department and asked me to lead it. I've been on staff creating video content and broadcasting our services since then.
We currently have three people on staff in the video production department, two full-time and one part-time. We produce videos not only for use in our weekly services, but also in supporting the ministries within the church. In that regard, we create title packages, life-change stories, promotional materials for family ministries, small group curriculum, and pre-service welcome videos.
Each of us currently edits on iMac Pros using Final Cut Pro as our primary editing software, coupled with Adobe After Effects for motion graphics. We occasionally will dabble in Blender if we need to create basic 3D objects or text. All three of us use 12TB G-RAID external hard drives in a RAID 1 configuration for all our projects, with Focusrite Scarlett 2i2s for our audio interfaces. These systems are a few years old now, and we're in the process of drastically changing our workflow. We're moving to 2021 MacBook Pros and a 128TB QNAP NAS so we can move to network editing. We'll be using BenQ PD2705U video production monitors. I'm super excited for that move.
We tend to operate very similarly to a post production house. It's always been my goal that no matter who worked with us in the video production department, they would gain experience that they could then take with them to other production houses or live production environments. With that in mind, we ask ministry leads to turn in creative briefs for each video project they'd like us to work on.”
Wyramon wrapped up with some great words of wisdom that I had to share. Basically, there are so many tips, but these I had to share:
1. Get fast. Be faithful in learning keyboard shortcuts and become proficient in your editing software. If you struggle in finding the tools within the software to do what you need it to, it slows you down so much. What could take a few hours can suddenly take days.
2. Be detailed, but don't overthink the edit. Make your choice, drop it in, and move on. Make small tweaks for pacing but try to avoid making frame-by-frame tweaks; they can drastically increase the amount of time you spend on a project. Time adds up in editing. Minutes spent agonizing over minor tweaks will add hours to the project.
3. Master your craft. Understand what does and doesn't work in editing. Watch and learn what others do. Pick your favorite show or movie and mimic the edits to see how it works. Read. Watch YouTube videos on what does and doesn't work. Get a mentor. Ask for feedback from an editor who's farther along in their career than you are. If you're proficient in the software, move fast in the edit, and master the craft of editing, you'll create great content that moves people closer to God, spark emotion, and potentially be able to create more content. Also, if you're on staff and getting paid to edit video, it's your responsibility to be proficient in the software and make smart decisions on how much time you're spending on a project.
Final thoughts
These guys have showcased a mix between technical editing skill sets and creativity. And one really can’t work without the other, can they? The key is to be very good at what you do, but always be learning and understanding how all the elements of a video production come together. Working with great editors like these guys, and learning to master the craft in your own style, will most certainly take your project to the next level.
