I recently had the opportunity to collaborate with the renowned nightclub owner Mark Baker, also known as “The Godfather” of New York nightlife, on his pilot for an eco-warrior docu-series titled “The Wolfman of Bali.” Where I was contracted to cut an 8 to 10-minute teaser or what others may call a “pitch or character reel.” Regardless of what you’d like to call it, this type of work can be challenging, especially if there isn’t a full pilot to reference, which was the case for this project. However, the Bali-based production company Sho Media who shot the segments for the reel provided enough footage to cut a full pilot. So with that said there was a lot of work to be done on my end, starting from scratch scrubbing through three days of camera A & B footage, syncing sound to video, logging and pulling circle takes, cutting multiple segment assemblies, then cutting multiple rough cut versions of the reel, to arrive at a locked picture finally. But these necessary steps are part of the creative process and for me, I find it all very rewarding when it’s all said and done.
The creatives at Sho Media worked closely with Mark and the Producer-Director at Shadow Works Films, Christopher Scott. Christopher provided an outliner script, and shot sheets to co-direct the shoot remotely. This project is just another perfect example of how amazing it is to be a remote video editor today. I’m editing from my home studio in Florida, connected to the other side of the world via cloud editing collaboration tools like Blackmagic’s Cloud, DropBox, and Google Drive. Despite Bali being twelve hours ahead of New York and Florida the creative feedback between the show’s producers was timely and valuable.
The footage I was supplied with was shot on two BlackMagic Design Pocket Cinema cameras and DP Alex Shmakov fully utilized BMD’s 12-bit cine raw codec, which by the way took forever to download! But man the footage looked beautiful, high fives to the film crew in Bali. The Bali crew also provided me with some breathtaking drone footage of rural farms, beautiful lush landscapes, dense cities, and villages on the island of Bali. I also used additional stock footage that I sourced from my Envato account to help punch the natural beauty of the island and fill in some transitional gaps between the segments.
In the end, the total runtime of the final reel ended up close to the 10-minute mark. As an editor it’s hard to showcase this type of work publicly on an editor’s reel, often the concept or story may contain copyrighted materials or is actively being pitched to networks and or distribution companies. With that said check out my vimeo.com/showcase/ short-form editing showcase containing examples of other concept pitch reels, teasers, and trailers.