Our Editing Workflow
Here at Cairns Film, Greg Cairns is our lead editor with assistant editor Alara Jones. Our video production services include all stages of the video production process- including editing. This can be anything from photo editing in Lightroom, making thumbnails in Photoshop, to video editing and color grading in Davinci Resolve. We love collaborating with each other and our clients to produce something polished and ready to help you reach your goals.
Either Greg or I can now edit the project, sometimes both of us do. We discuss what the client is looking for, and any ideas we have before starting the edit. Ultimately we have to decide how we can best use our video editing services to fulfill the clients’ needs. We discuss length, any specifics the client asked for, music, style, structure, narrative, and when it needs to be completed, and then we dive in.
The first draft is always far from perfect, so we keep at it and help each other reach a draft that is shareable with the client. After we adjust color and clean up the audio, we use Vimeo to upload the video so that the client can watch, and add notes to specific parts of the video about changes they want made or parts they like and want to keep as is. Finally, when the client is happy, we export the video using the best settings for whatever platform it is going to live on.
From here, if you’ve been working with our social media coordinator, Emily, she can post the video/pictures wherever you need. She can even make a website for you if you are just starting something. If not, we give the video file to you and you can do as you wish!
So how do we do it? Our office is equipped with a shared hard drive system allowing us all to access the same files from our separate computers. As the assistant editor, Greg usually hands me the memory cards after shooting, which I offload the footage from, into organized folders on this shared hard drive. I next make a new project file in Davinci Resolve, and import all of the footage and other media. From here I can make proxy files (lower resolution versions of the footage that make editing faster), which concludes the set-up process.
While this is our general video editing workflow, we can adjust to your needs. Maybe you don’t need an entire video edited, but have a large amount of photos that need organizing/editing- we provide those editing services as well. If you need thumbnails made to go along with the videos we make for your YouTube channel, we can use Photoshop to put those together for you too. Our video and photo editing services cover just about anything you need edited.
Video editing is more than basic skill and knowing what tools do what in the different programs we use. Getting the rhythm right, thinking about the narrative you are telling, and how an audience will react to the techniques you use are all just as important. It takes time and practice to develop an eye for editing, and Greg Cairns has that eye. His decisions always push the video to be a better product than whatever you had in your mind when you came to us. Not only does he work with you, he also adds his own touch into every project to bring in aspects you didn’t even know you needed (without diverging from the clients needs). He put together this workflow that we use, and is constantly thinking of ways to improve it. If you want to work with people who will put everything they have into your project, Cairns Film is the place to go. Each project is important to us- as we like to say, we are only as good as our last project.
