The Best Post Production Presentations from NAB 2018

If you didn’t make it to NAB 2018 in person this year, you can catch up on some of the best presentations that have appeared online, in this quick round up.

There are talks on everything from accelerated dailies workflows, documentary editing and even using DaVinci Resolve Fusion from the editor of Red Sparrow.

I’ll be updating this post as more talks from NAB 2018 become available to check back often!

Michael Cioni – 8K and Beyond

If LightIron CEO and Co-Founder Michael Cioni gives a presentation, I want to hear it.

In this 40 minute presentation, Michael describes how we have arrived at 8K capture that can now be piped all the way through to 8K playback (in FCPX and DaVinci Resolve) and distribution.

The whole talk is well worth listening to if you want a glimpse of the future in the industry and how technology has evolved, right on schedule, over the past 18 years.

Michael also shared some sage wisdom for anyone who has ever given a talk, put some thoughts ‘out-there’ or tried to move into new ground all whilst doing so in public and on the internet.

For more from Michael check out his recent TEDx talk on ‘Ideas that create chain reactions’ or some of his ideas on FCPX in his previous workflow round up.

Steve Audette Documentary Editing Masterclass

Documentary editor Steve Audette gave this presentation at the Avid Media Composer booth, which is jam-packed with a ton of insider details on what it takes to cut an episode of Frontline.

I’ve previously interviewed Steve about the craft, creativity and politics of being a documentary editor on an award-winning TV show, here.

For a whole lot more about editing documentaries and insights from Steve check out these previous posts:

• Tips on Editing Documentaries in Avid
• A Documentary Editing Masterclass
• How to Edit a Documentary – An Inside View
• Inside a Professional Edit Suite
• An Exemplary Lecture on Editing Documentaries

DaVinci Resolve 15 with Fusion inside

Colorist and author Alexis Van Hurkman shares his favourite new features from across all parts of DaVinci Resolve 15, including the Edit, Fairlight, Color and Fusion pages.

If you want to get a sense of the most useful new features in this massive update to the software, this is the presentation to watch!

If you want to dive a lot deeper into what’s new in DaVinci Resolve 15 check out this detailed post.

Red Sparrow editor Alan Edward Bell delivered a presentation at the Blackmagic Design booth on day one of NAB 2018. He starts his presentation here, but sadly there’s no audio until here, which misses out on the first 3 minutes of his opening remarks.

In the rest of the video you get a really interesting breakdown of how Alan expands his skillset as an editor through his knowledge of Fusion Studio, to complete some temp (and final!) visual effects in the film.

These include giving Jennifer Lawrence a black-eye, blending split-screens with a grid-warper and a whole lot more.

If you want to learn a ton more about Fusion, which has just been rolled into DaVinci Resolve 15, check out this huge round up of tutorials and tips.

The Craft of Film Editing with Steve Hullfish

Steve Hullfish, author of The Art of The Cut and film editor interviewer at large for ProVideoCoalition.com’s Art of the Cut web series share what he’s learned from talking to 150 of the world’s best editors. All condensed into 15 minutes!

An entertaining and inspiring talk!

Be confident but leave your ego at home. Bad ideas can lead to good ideas. Be careful not to let your ego get in the way of that process. Deciding what stays and goes needs to be (an inclusive) process.

Check out my full review of Steve’s brilliant book based on the initial series of interviews.

In this hour long conversation at the Las Vegas Supermeet at NAB 2018, Steve Hullfish interviews Dylan Tichenor ACE about his approach to film editing in front of a live audience.

It’s a great chat from a super talented and experienced editor, which is well worth taking the time to absorb. They also show excerpts from Dylan’s work and discuss them specifically too.

Dylan’s filmography is pretty epic so I thought I’d list the majority of it here, although it’s nicely encapsulated in an opening montage by Trevor Horton, which plays at the start of the talk.

Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Unbreakable, The Royal Tenenbaums, Brokeback Mountain, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, There Will Be Blood, Whip It, The Town, Lawless, Zero Dark Thirty, Phantom Thread.

https://vimeo.com/265113906

Here is the intro video that was edited by Trevor Horton for the presentation.

Comparing NLE’s and the State of the Industry in 2018

In this lively discussion featuring four working editors, who all cut on different kinds of shows and use different kinds of applications, you can take a deep dive into the state of the industry and it’s perspective on the various NLE’s.

The panel is moderated by Lumaforge’s Sam Mestman and features:

Monica Daniel is Assistant Editor for narrative television shows like Preacher, Supergirl, Colony, and Altered Carbon. While she mostly uses Avid Media Composer at work, discover why she sometimes uses Premiere Pro for personal work.

Scott Simmons is a corporate, commercial, and music video editor in Nashville, TN. Scott alternates between Adobe Premiere Pro CC, Final Cut Pro X, Avid Media Composer, and DaVinci Resolve depending on the job.

Vince Masciale is a feature film director in Los Angeles. He formerly was a documentary and reality editor. In fact, he was the first full-time editor for TMZ. Find out why Vince switches between Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro CC from project to project.

Tony Gallardo is an editor from San Antonio, TX. He largely uses Final Cut Pro X, DaVinci Resolve, and Blackmagic Fusion in tandem.

Editor’s Lounge PreNAB Panel

Each year for the past 15 years, the Editor’s Lounge hosts a pre-NAB panel in which you can enjoy a buffet style discussion of the state of the industry, technology, politics and creativity in 2018.

The panel is moderated Linda Rosen and features Key Code Media’s Director of Technology Michael Kammes, feature film editor Kathryn Himoff, Senior VP of Post at Bunim/Murray Productions Mark Raudonis and Alpha Dog’s founder Terence Curren.

It’s worth jumping over to YouTube to access topic specific time-stamps in the YouTube description which include:

• 07:50 – Expectations for NAB 2018: AI
• 09:21 – Expectations for NAB 2018: Truly remote editing
• 18:32 – Thumbs up or down: 3D, 4K, 8K

The panel continues in part 2, which includes audience questions and wider industry topics. Jump here for the topic list with time-stamped links, which include:

• 10:54 – What’s Avid’s future?
• 14:39 – How to manage compatibility of mixed versions of Adobe software?
• 20:42 – Non-linear vs. linear editing: revisualization techniques?

Adobe Premiere Pro at NAB

Editor Tyler Nelson and Assistant Editor Billy Peake, part of Fincher’s editorial team behind the Netflix’s original series Mindhunter, shared some really interesting insights into how they were able to supercharge their post workflow in Adobe Premiere Pro using a new bespoke codebook app called Dispatch, that will be available from PIX soon.

The duo showcase just how the powerful the use, and exchange, of metadata during production and post is at speeding things up. Watch this if you want to find a faster way to get from dailies to creative editorial!

If you want to learn a lot more about Mindhunter‘s post production process, check out this post.

If you want to learn more about being an Assistant Film Editor check out this previous post.

Cutting Atlanta in Adobe Premiere Pro

Donald Glover’s hit show Atlanta get’s the Adobe marketing treatment in this short film inside the free-wheeling ‘trap-house’ edit suites of the show, and their use of Premiere Pro.

In this informal conversation Atlanta editors Isaac Hagy and Kyle Reiter discuss how they came to be working on the show, how Premiere Pro helps them edit each episode in 5-6 days (for their first cut) and their journey’s into the industry.

I’m pretty sure this wasn’t filmed at NAB, but it fits in with the theme of this post!

Karl Soule, Strategic Development Manager, is part of Adobe’s ‘Hollywood workflow team’, helping make Premiere Pro and other apps more accessible at the highest levels of production in features and broadcast TV.

Karl talks through the entire post process from dailies to turn overs to other departments. It’s a pretty detailed look at various parts of this process.

This promo video works as a ‘best of’ Premiere Pro’s feature film credentials.

Making the Most of Adobe Premiere’s New Features

Editor Jeff Greenberg shares his top 5 features in Adobe Premiere Pro, which weren’t all introduced in the latest update, but his accessible presentation serves as a decent introduction to things that Premiere editors should be making the most of including:

• improved colour grading tools
• auto-ducking and improvements to the Essential Sound Panel
• MOGRT files and VR editing

NAB After Effects Presentations

Video Copilot’s Andrew Kramer, possibly the most famous After Effects tutorial creator, delivered a characteristically funny and inspiring talk at the Adobe Booth. In the first part of the talk he describes the work he did on the FilmRiot short film, Sentinel.

Here is the making of short film too.

If you’ve not seen Andrew’s much more personal presentation from AE World back in 2014, you’re missing out on a real treat. Watch it and be inspired!

To celebrate 25 years of Adobe After Effects (which is pretty crazy if you think about it!) Adobe held this interesting livestream interview with freelance motion graphics artist Robyn Haddow and visual effects supervisor and director Fred Raimondi at Digital Domain.

It’s interesting to hear them discuss their creative processes, industry anecdotes and some of the development and new features of After Effects along the way too.

Final Cut Pro NAB 2018 Presentations

These presentations are from LumaForge’s Faster, Together booth – and a whole lot more are coming online – featuring various post production professionals sharing how they use FCPX and other apps to do innovative things.

In this first talk scripted TV editor Josh Beal describes why he loves to use FCPX when he can, instead of the dominant and entrenched Avid Media Composer.

Josh’s main point is that if you want to succeed in the future, and not just make incremental improvements in your abilities as an editor (or in the features of your chosen NLE) you need to be open to new things.

If you’re an editor working in FCPX then you’ll likely already know who Steve Martin is and the great training Ripple Training.com offers. In this fast-paced presentation titled Working Faster and Smarter, Steve shares his all-time favourite tips and tricks in FCPX. Well worth a watch!

In this measured and tip filled presentation from editor Chris Fenwick you can learn why he chooses to use After Effects with FCPX rather than Apple’s Motion.

One of these reasons and something I didn’t know is that different type faces will render slightly differently in different applications. The secret sauce to Chris’s FCPX and After Effects workflow is just the good ol’ Finder. Well worth 15 minutes of your time!

To paraphrase Chris: ‘The reason I use After Effects is that I want ‘layout confidence’ – that I can look a client in the eye and say ‘this is right’ because I’m using the exact same file and app that you are.’