The Best Black Friday and Cyber Monday Deals for Film Editors
- Black Friday 2020 Deals for Film Editors
- Post Production Promo Codes and Discounts
- The Best Amazon Black Friday Deals for Film Editors
Black Friday 2020 (November 27th) is approaching quickly with deep discounts on post production services, software and essential gear, already appearing online.
In this post I’ve reached out to all the post production brands I know best, to see if they’re running a deal this year, in order to help save you a few bucks and also support their businesses. We’re all in this together after all!
Some of them have offered me exclusive discounts or details of their deals ahead of time, so be sure to check back regularly over the next week or three to see if new deals are available for the thing you’re after.
For others of them I’m guessing that if they ran a Black Friday deal last year, they may well this year. But because I’ve listed them early on, doesn’t guarantee that they will!
I’ve also culled Amazon’s Black Friday deals to cherry pick the best deals that professionals working in post production would do well to consider.
You can jump down the post to those here:
> CLICK HERE TO JUMP DOWN THE PAGE TO THE BEST BLACK FRIDAY DEALS ON AMAZON <
I’ll update this post as deals become available but a few highlights from last year included:
- Bargains on hard drives
- High quality headphones on sale
- Discounts on Stream Decks
- Sales on high-end keyboards and peripherals
- Blu-Ray and DVD collections at a discount
- Deals on interesting things like Tiles, TVs and electric toothbrushes
If you hear of a great sale (or are running one) hit the comments or the contact form to let me know!
If you’re currently a little strapped for cash at the minute and can’t snap something up right now – fear not – you can still grab some excellent post production freebies and promo codes, all year round, right here.
Black Friday Deals and Discounts for Film Editors
When it comes to some of the best post production software, hardware and online services for film editors, there are plenty of opportunities to save some of your hard earned cash this Black Friday.
I’ll update this list over the next few weeks as more details become available and offer codes appear online but to get us started I’ve based this year’s list on last year’s final Black Friday Deals list, with the assumption that many of the same companies will be running a Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale again this year.
So check back regularly to see what’s new and if your favourite company is running a sale!
MixingLight is running a rare and massive sale on it’s premium annual and monthly colour grading training memberships, with 50% off the first year and then up to 20% off the normal price locked-in for life!
They have only run sales like this three times before, once at the launch in 2013, the 2.0 re-launch in 2017 and earlier this year at the start of the COVID0-19 crisis, so don’t miss out on this opportunity to save some serious cash! The best part is this sale is available for new and existing members.
A premium annual membership would normally cost $244 but you can get it now for just $122, and then save 20% every year on the normal price after that for the lifetime of your subscription.
Mixing Light is also practically giving away it’s extensive standalone professional training courses for DaVinci Resolve 14 and 12.5, offering them with a $100 discount at just $29 each.
That’s nearly 40 hours of expert, in-depth DaVinci Resolve teaching for just $58!
The 14 hour Introduction to DaVinci Resolve 14 Certification Bundle includes two training courses and a documentary short practice project (In The Shadow of Giants) which will give you everything you need to grade your own project and follow along.
In the $29 DaVinci Resolve 12.5 bundle (26 hours) there are three training titles, one of which is called DaVinci Resolve Deep Insights, which covers advanced features not taught in the other courses and is far more focused on how a colorist actually works, than simply understanding the software. I’ve previously reviewed Deep Insights here.
Now you might be wondering why you’d want to bother with these courses if the latest version of DaVinci Resolve is 17?
Well, although a lot of features and UI changes have been added since, the fundamental nuts and bolts of how DaVinci Resolve operates and what you need to understand to work like a colorist, hasn’t changed. So you’ll be able to ‘bring forward’ much of what you’ll learn.
Plus did I mention you’re getting nearly 40 hours of training for less than $60! That’s $1.5 an hour!
Mixing Light are also offering their standalone practice projects at just $29 each too, which includes the 5K RED horror short film, Mother Died, which I’ve previously reviewed here.
Check out all the details of the sale for yourself here.
Masterclass.com – I’m a huge fan of Masterclass.com, and try to use their growing library of experts to learn something new almost every day of the week. You can learn skate boarding from Tony Hawk, magic from Penn and Teller or screenwriting from Aaron Sorkin, directing from Ron Howard or Texas-style BBQ mastery from Aaron Franklin. (Yum!)
This year Masterclass are once again running their Buy One Give One promotion from now until the 30th November.
Don’t miss out on this excellent opportunity to enjoy Masterclass through 2021!
Hedge – Makers of hand’s down my favourite local file transfer and back up solution (Hedge) and the creators of the recently launched PostLab, are running an epic sale with a huge range of options and discounts from 28-58% off.
The sale runs until Wednesday December 2nd and highlights include:
- Preorder for Mono, aka Hedge for iPad with 58% off.
- Exclusive bundle with Kyno (42% off) (or get Kyno for free with The Full Monty – 44% off)
- Postlab for the first and only time ever with a discount because of Covid – 31% off
- Hedge 10 year license – 33% off
- The Hedge Fund – a non-expiring 50% discount on purchases throughout the year
Check out all the details at Hedge.video and discover even more discounts.
LowePost.com – If there has been one site that has been consistently offering incredibly good value for money it is LowePost.com. During the past year it’s smashed out a superb series of colour grading training videos and insights from industry insiders, all for just $79 a year. That works out to less than $7 a month!
For the next few days they are now offering 15% off and a life-time price lock at that discounted rate, so click through here to sign up and save year after year!
Inside The Edit – Without doubt the best documentary editing course you can take online today is Inside The Edit. I’ve written about it several times and it’s a core part of my (hypothetical) Alternate Film School for Editors.
Once again they are offering a princely 50% off their subscription pricing using the code: BF20
If you’ve missed this deal you can still save 25% on the course, year round with the promo code: JonnyElwyn
LearnColourGrading.com – Alex Jordan who runs a popular YouTube channel on colour grading in DaVinci Resolve usually offers his 10-course in-depth training at rock-bottom prices and this year is no different with a huge $600 discount available until Cyber Monday.
This includes life-time access to the courses and free updates as they amend the teaching to keep track with DaVinci Resolve’s on-going developments. His training also covers every aspect of DaVinci Resolve including editing, grading, compositing in Fusion, using the Fairlight page and much more.
Adobe Creative Cloud – If you’re not yet a subscriber to Adobe’s Creative Cloud suite of apps yet, or are thinking of upgrading, then this is the best time of year to sign up. Until November 27th you can save up to 25% off All-App plans for individuals, 70% off All-App student plans and 25% off team plans.
(Psst. Even if you’re an existing customer and you’ve been on a discounted deal since last year, you just politely ask their live support chat for the new deal or to renew on discounted rate, you may well just get it anyway….)
MZed – Offer an impressive training academy featuring First Man and La La Land editor Tom Cross and DP Shane Hurlbut ASC among many others. Their Black Friday sale runs from November 23rd until November 30th and includes:
- 50% off Tom Cross The Art and Technique of Film Editing Course (normally $249) – 8+ hours!
- Year’s membership to MZed Pro for $199 (save $100) delivering 450 lessons over 36 courses worth $9000, if you bought them individually!
- 65% off all Shane Hurlbut ASC courses
- 50% off all individual courses, including DaVinci Resolve training
Filmmaker U – Although not really an Black Friday sale, Filmmaker U were kind enough to offer my readers the chance to save 10% on each of their excellent new courses with these exclusive discount codes;
- Colorist Eric Whipp = JONNY
- Sound Designer Eugene Gearty = 3UG3NE4J0NNY (the o is a zero)
- Editor Brian Kates = BR14N4J0NNY (the o is a zero).
Check out my review of Mad Max Fury Road colorist Eric Whipp’s Filmmaker U course here.
nuraphone – creators of my favourite headphones (having a personalised EQ for your ears is sonically mind-blowing!) are offering 20% off and free shipping during the Black Friday weekend.
Here’s a link to my super in-depth review of the full size nuraphones. Nuraloop review is in the works!
Master The Workflow – The best feature film assistant editor training course I’ve seen (in-depth review here and 1 year later update review here) ran a Black Friday Deal last year, maybe they will this year?
Either way, if you’re looking to become an Assistant editor working in scripted film and TV, you must check out this course!
Avid Media Composer – Save 20% on new Media Composer one-year licenses using the coupon code: BF2020 until November 29th 2020.
CineColor.io – Filmmaker Noam Kroll is behind these excellent LUT and film grain packs over at CineColor.io that are genuinely worth paying for and I’ve reviewed them here. From now until the 30th November there will be 40% off the Masterpack III and the Film Grain Masterpack collections.
These Masterpacks bundle everything together saving you $112 on the 120 LUT Masterpack III and dropping the normally $97 6K Film Grain Masterpack to just under $60, which includes 8mm, 16mm, 35mm and 65mm organic film grain overlays.
Alternatively you can also buy one get one free on individual LUT packs too. There are also several FREE LUTs which are also worth grabbing too.
Single packs include: Base Grade, Lowlight, Modern Film, Skintone, Finishing, Genre Looks and several others.
Noam also has several filmmaking training courses on his academy site which is also offering 40% off the five hour colour grading training course, which I’ve previously reviewed here. And I’ve embedded a free sample lesson above.
Use the discount code: JE40 to save 40% on the colour grading course. It’s worth noting however that if you buy any two of the courses on the site, Noam will send you his latest release, Filmmaking Autonomy, How to Beat the Gatekeepers course for free too!
DivergentMedia – Are offering 40% off EditReady and 40% off one year of ScopeBox with the coupon code: “zeroIREfriday“. The sale runs from now until December 7th 2020.
Although Scopebox looks like a subscription you can actually cancel anytime and keep your existing version forever, you just won’t get updates and support. Learn more about EditReady 2 here.
FilmConvert – Makers of popular grading plugin Filmconvert Nitrate and the new Cinematch camera matching system, are offering between 30-60% off their products from Monday 23rd to Monday 30th November 2020.
If you’re interested in cinematch – which helps you match two different cameras using clever sensor-referencing math – you can save 40% during the sale bringing a single Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve plugin down to $149 (saving $110) or save $170 on the bundle at $219.
If you have an existing film convert plugin license you can upgrade to Nitrate for only $59.
Ripple Training – Use the promo code happy-40 to get 40% off everything you put in your cart (excluding bundles and FX Factory plugins) from now until December 3rd, from one of Apple’s recommended training partners.
Ripple Training produce some of the easiest to follow learning available today, with one of the best online training platforms and you’d be wise to check out their:
- Blackmagic Design certified DaVinci Resolve Training
- DaVinci Resolve Fusion Warp Speed
- Final Cut Pro Core Training
Telestream – Are offering 20% off all of their software products including the incredibly useful screen-recording app, ScreenFlow. There is also 20% off Wirecast if you’re handling live-streaming.
FxFactory – Storehouse of some of the best NLE based plugins around are dropping all their prices by 20% until December 1st, including popular plugins like Nodes 3, Mosaic and Crumble Pop audio clean up filters.
MotionVFX – Are giving you the chance to save 30% on their entire product range with the discount code “black30” from now until Cyber Monday. Some of their most popular products for FCPX include mFilmLook and mFlare2 – which I’ve reviewed here.
iZotope – makers of many an editor’s favourite RX Suite of audio repair and rescue plugins are offering some massive discounts on their product line, including over $1,211 off their Holiday bundle deal.
iZotope’s RX Elements is available for only $29 ($100 off) too and an idea entry level purchase.
Accusonus – Not to be out done, Accusonu’s highly recommended and recently updated ERA5 suite of 13 powerful and easy to use audio repair plugins are 40% off until 29/11/20.
JayAreTV – Justin Robinson, AKA excellent DaVinci Resolve Fusion YouTuber, JayAreTV, is offering 30% off his growing collection of time-saving motion design templates, transitions and infographics.
PixelTools – For Black Friday only you can get 40% off their over 120 DaVinci Resolve PowerGrades and utility presets with the coupon code: BLKPIXEL40.
sideshowfx – Creators of thousands of custom icons and pre-built profiles for devices such as the Stream Deck, Loupedeck and Touch Portal are offering 25% off during their Black Friday to Cyber Monday sale.
Check out my detailed post on setting up a Stream Deck for editing and grading to learn more about sideshowfx’s unique products.
Assimilate – Makers of dailies to delivery powerhouse software SCRATCH, are offering 30-50% off licenses to SCRATCH, SCRATCH VR and Play Pro until December 31st.
Digital Rebellion – Makers of the endlessly useful Post Haste, CinePlay, Pro Maintenance Tools and Pro Media Tools are offering 30% off their desktop products and also on the self-hosted Kollaborate Server until Cyber Monday (Nov 30th 2020.)
Jon adds “we are very close to releasing our rewrite of QT Edit for AV Foundation, so if people are waiting for that, it’s going to be better for them to pick up Pro Media Tools during the sale.“
Time in Pixels – Creator of Nobe OmniScope, Nobe Display and Nobe Color Remap and False Color plugins is offering 15-40% until November 29th. Click through to find the correct coupon code for the plugin you’re after.
CreativeLive – Are offering 50% off their ‘Creator Pass’ which gives you access to over 1500+ on demand classes for only $149/year. They are also offering their top software classes for under $29, while some classes are down to as little as $11!
Lutify.me – Are offering 30% off their 232 Professional 3D LUT pack until the end of November, using the promo code BF202030OFF.
EditorsKeys.com – is offering 20% of their entire product range, including their excellent video editing keyboards and removable keyboard shortcut skins, which I’ve previously reviewed here.
NewBlueFX – Are offering 40% off all their single products and 20% off their annual ‘TotalFX 360’ subscriptions from now until Cyber Monday.
ActionVFX.com – Creators of action orientated VFX elements including explosions, fire, smoke, gun effects, debris and impacts and blood and gore are offering a mighty 55% off (first 24 hours only) and introducing some new collections during their Black Friday sale, which runs from November 26th to December 4th.
All the details in the video above. They even have 17 free VFX elements – including explosions, burn marks and bullet hits for free!
Boom Library – Is a massive (1000+GB!) sound effects library comprised of over 42,000 wav files. You can buy the whole thing outright for $5,699 (at 50% off from over $11k!) or more affordably, get 3-for-2 on their 91 individual sound effects collections until November 30th.
LensDistortion – Are offering $200 off their new annual Catalyst membership (sale price $199 for the first year) which gives you access to every single product and music track on their site, worth over $3000. Individual products are down to $99 or $69 too. Sale runs until Cyber Monday.
A Sound Effect – up to 79% off 100s of popular sound effects libraries, plugins and virtual instruments.
SohoEditors – Providers of premium classroom, live online and video on demand post production training, Soho Editors are offering a massive 50% off all their courses from Black Friday through to November 30th 2020. Check out the extensive list of courses here.
Loupedeck – Makers of these really interesting new creative controllers the Loupedeck CT and Loupedeck + are offering 10% off and travel case bundles too, this includes free worldwide shipping!
Color.Training – Headed up by expert colorist Dado Valentic, are offering 50% off their training courses with the discount code CTBF20 until November 30th.
Rampant Design Tools – Always have a big Black Friday sale and this year is no different, with 60% off all their individual products and bigger savings on their bundles, like $1250 off their Ultimate Essentials bundle which contains their entire library in one hard-drive. The sale will run until the end of 2020.
MisterHorse – Creators of the newly released Animation Composer 3, are dropping 25% from their huge library of After Effects presets, transitions, motion graphics and more. The sale runs until December 4th.
Color Grading Central – Are offering a huge 50% off their training academy, Cinema Grade plugins and LUT packs until the end of Cyber Monday.
Lightworks – Save up to 50% on Lightworks Pro licenses during Black Friday.
fxphd.com – Only have one sale a year and this is it! From Black Friday through to Cyber Monday they are offering a life-time 30% off their monthly subscriptions, 30% off single DaVinci Resolve courses and between 20-25% off Resolve Mega Packs – where new customers will get a free upgrades to colorist Warren Eagles DaVinci Resolve 17 training when it is released early next year.
ThriftShop – Colorist Benoit Cote is offering a massive 85% (normally $69.99) off his ‘Used PowerGrades’ collection over on his colorist’s ‘thriftshop’. There’s some really interesting looking PowerGrades to work with and at only $9.99 for over 100 Powergrades, it’s steal!
Last year’s other Black Friday post production brands included:
Cyber Monday Post Production Sales
Some post production companies prefer to avoid the crush of Black Friday itself and prefer to offer their deals after the weekend on ‘Cyber Monday’ – this year the 30th of November.
Last year this included GreyscaleGorilla and AE Scripts.
I’ll update this section of the post in due course!
The Best Black Friday Deals on Amazon for Film Editors
Amazon always go big during the ‘Black Friday’ sales season – which somehow they stretch out for weeks on end – so keep an eye out for limited time deals, offers leading up to Black Friday and past Cyber Monday.
Amazon have opened up their Black Friday Week Deals already, many of which are time or stock limited so check back frequently.
These links should all geo-locate and attempt to find the same deals in your local Amazon store so click through to see if the same deal is available to you.
I’ll keep updating this list with the best deals I spot on Amazon in the next week or so, although some of them might be time or supply limited, if you’re reading this a bit later on.
If you’re not yet an Amazon Prime subscriber I would personally highly recommend it!
Not only will you get early access to some of the best deals during the sales, but you’ll get free shipping year round, access to Amazon Prime Video for shows like Mr. Robot and Homecoming (along with a zillion others) and their Prime Music service which has a strong catalogue of original soundtracks to listen to. To name just two benefits.
You can sign up for a 30-day free trial here.
Save $70 (47%) on an Amazon Fire HD 10 with a 1080p screen and 32GB of space, and turn it into a portable training library by downloading tons of tutorials onto it like this.
The Best Amazon Black Friday Deals for Post Production Professionals 2020
I’ve reviewed a lot of gear for film editors over the years from headphones to hard drives to editing peripherals – you can find quick links to them all right here.
Big TV and Home Cinema Deals
- Up to 40% off Sony 4K LED TV’s including 55″, 65″, 75″ and 85″
- Up to 51% off Sony sound bars, subwoofer’s and floor standing speakers
- Save $700 on Samsung 75″ QLED Q70T 4K HRD TV
- Up to 30% off Samsung 50-85″ QLED 4K TVs
- Save £110 on Anker Nebula Capsule Max 100″ portable projector
- Save £160 on Anker Nebula Capsule
- Save $100 on Sony UBP-X800M2 4K Blu Ray Player
Headphones
- Up to 39% off Bose headphones, speakers and ‘Frames’ (sunglasses with open ear headphones)
- Save $70 on Bose SoundLink II over-ear wireless headphones
- Save $100 with 33% off popular Bose QuietComfort 35II headphones
- Save $40 on high-end Bose 700 Noise Cancelling Wireless Headphones
- Save £80 on Sennheiser HD 599 Special Edition Headphones
- Save £60 on Sennheiser HD 450BT Wireless ANC headphones
- Save up to 55% on Sennheiser in-ear and over-ear headphones
- Save $150 (43%) on Sennheiser 550-II wireless ANC headphones
Read my popular post on what to look for in a pair of headphones for all-day film editing here.
Cheap hard drives and fast SSD video editing storage
- Save $55 on Samsung T7 SSD 2TB USB 3.2 ($40 on 1TB)
- Save $150 (21%) on Samsung X5 2TB SSD with Thunderbolt 3
- All the Samsung SSD Deals in one place with 20% off
- WD 12TB My Book USB 3.0 Desktop drive for only $200
- G-Tech G-Drive 10TB (USB 3.0) for $264
- Save £60 (35%) on G-Tech 4TB ArmorATD USB-C, Thunderbolt 3
- Save £69 on WD 4TB Wireless Passport Pro (with built-in SD card reader)
- 24% off Lacie Rugged 2TB USB 3.0 drives
- Save £57 on Crucial X8 1TB USB 3.2 (C) SSD
- Save $55 on SanDisk 500GB SSD USB-C 3.2
- Up to 30% off Seagate, Lacie and Synology drives and cards
- Up to 40% of WD drives and Sandisk data cards
Blu-Ray and 4K Collections
- 61% off Jurassic World 5-Movie Collection (inc hours of bonus content!)
- Save 47% ($47) on Battlestar Galactica: The Complete Series
- 20% off John Wick Chapters 1-3
- Back To The Future Trilogy for only $14.99
- Steven Spielberg Directors Collection (Jaws, ET, Jurassic Park, Duel, etc.)
- Half price Blu-Ray Steelbook editions: War of the Worlds, Arrival, MI:6 Fallout etc.)
- Save 22% on Bad Boys Three movie Blu-ray collection
Mice, Keyboards and Editing Peripherals
- 52% (£41) off Logitech MX Master Wireless Ergonomic Mouse
- Save 24% on Razer BlackWidow (2019) Full-size Mechanical Keyboard
- Save 21% (£37) on Wacom Intuos Medium Wireless tablet (Berry pink!)
- Save $20 on Small Wacom Intuos Wired tablet
- Save 20% on Redragon K552 Mechanical RGB LED Keyboard
- Up to 57% of ROCCAT programmable gaming mice
- Half price! Save 50% on Logitech G610 Orion Backlit Mechanical Gaming Keyboard
- Save 50% ($40) on Logitech G502 Hero Programmable Gaming Mouse
- Save up to 40% on Razer products including Razer Naga Trinity mouse
- Save 10% on Elgato Stream Deck 15 Key version
- Save 15% on Redragon M602 RGB Wired Gaming Mouse
Check out my review of the best mice for film editing here.
Other Interesting Things
These deals caught my eye, make of them what you will!
- Save up to 50% on trendy Herschel laptop backpacks
- $5 off TP-Link 5 port Gigabit Ethernet Switch
- Save 24% on 7-in-2 USB-C Hub adaptor for Macbook Pros
- Save $2 on nonda USB-C to USB adaptor
- Save $50 on GoPro Hero7 with protective housing
- Save £25 on Kodak Smile Instant Print Digital Camera
- Up to 26% off Post-It Sticky Notes – for when you’re Walter Murching your timeline!
- Save up to 28% on Tile bluetooth trackers (for keeping tabs on your gear on set!)
- Save 14% on 4K HDMI Switch with 2 inputs and 1 output
- Save 15% on blue-light blocking clip on book light – Best book light I’ve ever owned!
- For Fun – 16 colour motion detected toilet bowl light