London based freelance agency video editor
Working as a freelancer I am frequently booked as an agency video editor to edit a wide range of promotional films and marketing videos. In this case study, I explain the process of a recent commission.
Commissioned to edit fourteen online promotional videos
Gravity Thinking, a London based creative agency, recently commissioned me to edit fourteen 1 to 2 minute YouTube promotional trailers for one of their clients Grosvenor Casinos. The Gravity Thinking team had filmed a series of pieces to camera (PTC’s) on a Canon C300 with British reality TV star Mark Wright. In addition, some additional slow motion and cutaway images had been filmed on both the C300 and Sony FS700.
Managing the media
As the footage had been filmed on a C300 I first had to transcode that media into Avid friendly DNx media. Transcoding the footage would enable me to easily scrub up and down the edit timeline making for a smoother editing process. The one-day shoot took around 3 hours to transcode.
Working with the DoP
My role as a video editor on this project was to work with the Director of Photography (DoP) and edit together the best takes for each scripted sequence. The best cutaway shots and slow-motion footage were then edited in to help illustrate the story and cover the audio edits. Working with the DoP for the first day and then the Gravity Thinking producer and creative team for the remainder of the edit I edited together the best of the video footage and recorded sound and also edited in a music bed. Getting sign-off from them on the preferred music track from the final client took a little time as is normal for this type of creative project.
High-end colour grade
After sign-off from the Gravity Thinking team, the edits were exported as H264 .mov files and sent to the client. After a series of minor edit changes, all fourteen promotional videos were fully signed off. The next stage was to prepare the edits for a high-end grade at The Mill which had been booked to grade this project.
I made a duplicate of all the edits and then built a long timeline sequence that included each short film edit. I then made a duplicate of this timeline and lifted out all the textual elements from the edited timeline. Sending the grade a text free timeline would enable the grader to colour grade the video image more easily. I exported this long test free sequence as a ProRes444 file and sent it to The Mill.
Agency video editor delivery
Once the grade had been completed The Mill sent me back a graded ProRes444 file. I then brought this sequence into the Avid edit and then edited that graded sequence back under the existing sequence textual elements. I was able to complete the final stage of this edit at my post-production base in Vauxhall, as everything had already been signed-off. Each film was then separately exported as a YouTube H.264 1920×1080 file and delivered to the client. All fourteen films featuring Mark Wright can be viewed on the Grosvenor Casinos YouTube channel. If you would like my help as an agency video editor please get in touch.
