The creative process behind Vice & Showtime shows - with Greg Wright

If you've ever wanted to get behind the creative minds, behind some of the most fantastic documentary and factual content advice and showtime, then you are going to love today's guest. Today's guest is Gregory Wright and he is a supervising producer at Vice New York. We work together on a show, two episodes of a series back in November of 2022. That's how we met and I wanted to get him on the show so that you guys can get a bit of a peek behind the scenes, what goes on, how the stories are created but also how someone can get to work at Vice. We talk about some of the roots into work on some of the projects at Vice and Showtime as an editor. Some of the roles that you can do beyond editing once you feel like you've reached a ceiling and how you can continue the other story time beyond just editing. We also talk about some of the processes of storytelling and we reference project that we worked on but also some other projects that Greg has worked on in the past. So it's kind of a full roundhouse of everything that there is to know about storytelling for Vice, documentaries for Vice TV and for Showtime. So listen up, I think this one is really, informative and Greg is a lovely guy. Greg, hello, welcome and thank you for joining me on the video editing podcast. How are you? I'm well thanks. We're happy to be here, happy to contribute. Great, yeah, really good to have you on. We were chatting a little bit before we started recording because we were catching up. We worked together on a project in November of 2022. I'm not sure how many details I'm allowed to share publicly so I'll leave that over to you. Tell us a little bit more about the project that we were working on together and how we met. Okay, I'd love to. So yes, we can say this is a, we were working on a follow-up season, a second season to a series called Transnational and it's a pretty unique one in that it sought to do a lot of what some of the other investigative and someone news magazine pieces that we do advice. But this one, the goal here was to sort of really understand what the perspective is from the trans community and in doing so, our correspondence identified a handful of different ways and so there was an opportunity to have people immerse themselves into situations in which they can very much relate and empathize and really identify with some of the frustrations that some of the people that they spoke with. It was an interesting challenge because you know that's all well and good, but at the same time this is technically an investigation and technically your correspondent is remaining neutral and is not there to do advocacy. They're there to meet people and share their stories and help put them together in a way that is compelling and interesting and original. And so in the writing process it was a lot of sort of finding that balance because the truth is you know we were able to find people that were interested and excited about the opportunity and going into various handful of cities all over the world and it was sort of like well why wouldn't this be about me? This is you know I'm here for this reason. So that was a nice challenge. That was a fun way to sort of really kind of understand that things can be a little bit different than the kind of straight-laced approach. And so you and I worked together in the post process which is really was my primary role. I wasn't involved in the show's concept or in casting or any of the field work. I came in as a supervising producer to just kind of help with story and work with the producers and the editors and kind of be liaison to the executives just in terms of is the story of working? What does it need? You know sort of being an outside perspective and giving notes along the way. And so you and I had a good time just sort of talking through scenes and looking at stuff when it was very long and could go a couple different ways and we can have a constructive conversation about like okay this scene is probably ultimately a three minute scene. We're looking at a very watchable but 15 minute version you know what is the thread through here. And so yeah and each episode was so wildly different. Different cities, different countries, different characters, different constraints. And that was a good one. I thought. Yeah it was it was really enjoyable. It was five weeks per edit per episode sorry I should say. And it was I have to say one of the better organized you know structured projects that I've worked on. So quite often for you know for anybody who's unaware of sort of the schedules four weeks is not perhaps uncommon and turning around a project like that because it was a TV 30. So although we didn't know that at the beginning we didn't know if it's going to be a TV hour or TV 30. That's right. And so turning around that in four weeks is not uncommon. So we had five weeks and that was that was a leisurely it almost felt leisurely but it's certainly anything but that's right. It varies day to day there's certain days right when you're when you're like oh the scene is working this is great. You know I'll move on to this next thing we're kind of cruising through it and then you realize that you have a rough cut to it at the end of the week and you're like oh my god I haven't even looked at this other material yet so it it kind of adds some flows. Which I think is part of it I think it's part of the deal is that like there's certain scenes that I don't know if they're harder to cut but they I mean plenty of scenes are harder than others but I what I mean is that like certain scenes just kind of require more of your heart and they just by the nature of the material and I think it's harder to move on to another scene even if you're doing it a without a chronology in mind without something that you really feel kind of represents exactly what the piece is trying to do and just use that as the model and then you can kind of move through some of the other scenes maybe quicker knowing that you have that firm footing but sometimes those major scenes you know take a little more time just to kind of get the identity straight there. Yeah Hannah how would you describe I made excuse me how would you describe a major scene I would say I made yeah yeah totally um I mean there's a couple different ways a major scene I think there's maybe like I'm there's a straightforward version of course which is that let's say it was a big event and you had three or four cameras and you're kind of rolling sound on each one and maybe you're following several characters in one space and it's a let's say a you know a culmination working on campaign trail films you know that final election night is always such a huge edit to try and connect everything make it feel like the momentum is moving at the right pace with respect to how things went but you also have to speed it up and you also have to include sort of the parallel universe of what the media is saying about it and so on and so forth um so that's that's maybe a major scene you know sort of by on paper but I think the scene that can maybe be more major is a scene where you're correspondent who is out there to meet some people and kind of report on something has something change for them or or clearly they've learned something along the way or there's a piece of information that they've learned either that's central to the story or just something profound from a character and it's maybe more that when I say major it's maybe more that it becomes sort of maybe the soul of the story that sure you could be who'd have gotten into the scene needing to get through a very dense piece of VO 60 seconds of VO that requires a ton of data and archives. and sound ups and requires a lot of elbow grease to make those work and your next transition is going to be into montaging two days of material and you have to go through and find just the right moments that spell it out without a feeling rushed. Those are heavily time-consuming, but that scene in the middle where you realize you're looking at something that defines why you did the piece and in a way that isn't like, well of course we're here to talk about this melting polar ice cap, here we are at the ice cap. Obviously this is the reason we're here, but more that you've met a character that and sort of tertiary characters that are central to the story, but ones whose words are really kind of putting the empathy where you need it to be, and there's just no way to rush those. There's no way to sort of hit up your producer to pull different bites, there's no way to farm out B-roll selection to an A-E when you really feel like you need to go through it yourself. So I've, I've, can recall many instances where I've sort of emerged at the end of a day, happy with a scene, but really kind of aware of how much time that took, and it, but you have to trust there was a reason why you did that, that you weren't just spinning your wheel, I mean if you were spinning your wheels, but that was the road, I'll be at a scenic route to get to the point where that thing can then be your centerpiece and you can kind of move forward into, you know, a little more of the workman style pieces that would go around it. Yeah, that's really well put. I love how you described the main scenes as the soul of the film, and it does feel like that, you know, you have the, the soul, the scenes that are the soul, the, you know, pertain to the why of the film, and then the connecting dots. Yes, and those are the smaller scenes, they connect the dots, and I love how you described it. And you don't always know what it's going to be, I mean I think there's of course plenty of moments where it's quite clear that you're going into something big and your characters is published or well known or is something like that, but often it's not the scenes you expect that someone performed a certain way that they really put things in a perspective in a way that the piece needs, and sometimes you really have to go back to find that stuff, but yeah, it is sort of the soul searching. We can call it maybe. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it kind of relates back to an earlier point you mentioned about story thread, and that's it. It's something that I teach within the Young Spice Pro Training about storytelling, but having a story thread that kind of threads every little piece, every idea together, and it's something that not a lot of people seem to when they come into documentary editing, seem to understand the concept of, how would you describe a story thread? Well, I would say there's a couple different ways, but I think the maybe the simplest way to for me, the simplest way to kind of understand that is that thinking of all of your pieces, no matter what they are, as a process or a path or a term that's commonly heard on Showtime show that I work on is the journey. What is the journey here? It's one thing to say from like a news magazine style approach. It's one thing to say, like, okay, we're going to be, in this part of the world, this part of the world, we're going to meet this expert. We're going to get some veritay in this other part of the world, and each of these things satisfy a somewhat holistic understanding of this story that you might not know about, or maybe you've heard of. Here's why we're going to tell you why it's important, but it's, those can be disparate, and you can write all the VO in the world you want to say, now we're going here because we need to. Now we're going to go talk to the smart dude because why wouldn't you do that? And it's it, yeah, that works, but it doesn't really represent a journey. And there are certain pieces that the journey is easier to find, and then there are other ones where it's really tricky to find. A lot of science stories are tricky because you're doing just that. It's you're reporting on the research that's being done, and you have to sort of make some connections on your own. So you have to sort of think of ways that your correspondent can be immersed in the environment in a way that they will learn something at one location and use what they've learned even though it's, you know, we know why they're there and we know what the data can show, but the story at least needs to reflect that now we're going to this other location because she has been able to share this with the audience. She's been up to learn this and express it in a way that the audience can understand. And now and because of that and only because of that are we motivated to go to the next thing. So I feel like the thread is kind of that invisible line that is it's almost like a it's like a oversized sort of loose rubber band that you're kind of slowly pulling top and and all these sort of disparate elements sort of snap into place. And I think on a molecular level there's a structure to it and it's kind of your responsibility and sometimes it takes a long time to find it but to find the sort of contiguous nature that actually exists that's actually natural for these things. You're not forcing anything, you're just sort of finding the natural evolution within the context of these characters and how they relate. And a thread is easier to find let's say in a point A to point B story. You know we did a piece for Showtime I guess it was 2021 about the Darian gap and you know this is very very notorious smuggling route where pilgrims and immigrants that are paying high up to coyotes to get them across this very treacherous stretch of jungle and they'll come from all over the sort of southern hemisphere even if this stretch that ends in Panama is seems quite out of the way but you get to cross a lot of territory without a lot of a lot of border control but of course the threat level then to do that is very very high and that is clearly a point A to point B story. We're meeting the characters that are all about almost ready to go waiting for the right moment then they go and then we went around to the other side by no means could we put could we send our teams through the entire Darian gap there were sections that they were able to do but that's a risk assessment that is an easy one to say we're not going to do but insurance nightmare it's an insurance nightmare it's I know there's not there isn't a policy out there to cover that and then you're at the other side and you meeting the characters and sort of debriefing but so that you know you're going to do that you know it's going to start in some way or another with this entrance and this exit the the challenges for that one were how to balance the flow of information up to that point we had different interviews with with with border patrol and people in the military their sort of drug enforcement Colombian drug enforcement teams that were kind of patrolling the area and so we met with them and it's kind of a question of who do you start with do you start with the people that are trying to stop people from crossing or do you start with the people that are trying to cross and then you meet the people that are trying to stop them and so it there isn't a straight answer on that one that's really just building scenes rough and moving them around a lot um so I think that the the thread sometimes you have to work backwards and sort of say well we know at least this much that we by no means would be going to this scene without doing this other one first unless we're unless you're doing something funky unless you're saying we're going to do this out of sequence and we're going to intentionally confuse the audience as a narrative tool that's a whole different story but if we're talking about a let's say something that's news oriented and despite whatever flare you'll use to kind of tell the story at the end of the day it's a point eight point B then you can kind of build your things your scenes that you are at least pretty confident in the beginning that create a good bond and then you add another bond and create the sort of covalent stretch where there's a relationship and so that thread starts to emerge and I think it's really just for me it's always been like you're sort of playing with low intensity magnets and there's always some opposition and suddenly when you find two that hit you say like okay That's firm footing at the end of the week We might rip this thing up and sometimes the only way to to really understand your story is to force yourself to Restructure, but when you find that one bond you can then say like okay What would what would at least make sense to follow that or lead it then you've got a few more bonds and suddenly you've got your Your your string So to me that's always the thread is like what what is the how are we threading through these events? Sure, there's this huge protest and there's a lot of different characters there. We want to meet a Lot of them we want to get a good cross-section of what has brought people out this day for this protest If we're doing a politics piece and we know we got to sit down with the person that's either being rallied for or against So what is the thread though in that big crowd? What is what is the the takeaway? That's the most relevant for showing this story that's gonna unfold as it comes down And yeah, I've found that that there's no not a lot of silver bullets and finding the threat. It's it's Strangler Anyone I heard other things you just got to figure out in the edit That's right Yeah, and it's a it's a muscle that Can be trained I think rather than like you say it's no silver bullets. It's just a muscle with practice You are able to see the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle and where they belong Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right it it is There's there's just no There's no substitute for experience like that And it can come in a lot of different ways I think I think people can be kind of first in storytelling and very in touch with documentaries that they've liked and Then have reached them and if you're willing to sort of unpack academically, you know for yourself. Why did this work for me? What why was this? What How was I able to feel the way I felt If it's a very straightforward Story, let's say where someone's emotions are laid out and they're very relevant to you Okay, you know, you're gonna you're gonna react that's that's for sure, but if there's more to it What was the process maybe like ask yourself what the process was and then yeah, just the experience of Trying again and again and again. I mean I think the best the best experience you can have is knowing that at the end of the day You can undo things and you sometimes really have to And use the use language to help convince yourself of that like Let's just do this for today. Let's just try this for right now and see how it goes and Sometimes I I'm in an edit right now and we were torn Each of us in our own ways and genuinely about between the producer and the editor and then I'm the senior producer on it about How how much of a cold open are we going to do? You know, I think cold opens and in many cases are mission critical you really You don't want to have to ask that of a viewer that they're gonna start the story Without some of this important background but other times cold opens when you have the option to not do them. Let's say They they feel like good overused or they feel You know, there's this idea that let's just start cold and slowly build up the information and let's give the viewer the benefit of the doubt and treat them like an adult instead of spoon feeding them with this trailer But it it I think at the end of the day you have to really look at If someone has the ability to volunteer to be so disadvantaged to like that to the story and really let it be a slow burn and So we were trying to decide this and the only way we were really able to figure it out was to move a couple scenes around Yeah, we were just sort of discussing how this first act would go and we landed in a version that was feeling pretty good The open aside and so we said let's try moving a couple of these chunks around We said to the editor don't spend more than an hour on it Rough, you know music cues are just gonna die on the vine just like Put it up and moving around just for perspective and it it worked it really gave us this sort of It proved certain things needed to be a certain way and it proved how little a couple scenes were actually pulling in terms of we thought there was The belief was that there was a lot more information Coming out of these scenes, but it was pretty muted and so it that restructure helped us appreciate What needed to be where so I it's tough when you're in a when you're in a lightning-fast edit. It doesn't feel like There's time to experiment But that's sort of a dirty word. It's it's not not so much an experiment as it is the the fucking process The pressure mounts the closer the every time you you Experiment you try something new and it doesn't work and the pressure gets even higher the deadlines close So and then you start yeah, the panic sets in and you start double guessing yourself and then going Yeah, maybe we should go for the safe option Right, but but quite often it's better just to keep plowing forward and Ignore the safe option for now. That's that's plan that that's plan Z Yeah, that's right. We you know you've got it if you need it. Yeah, exactly Tell tell us a little bit more about your role advice and How you got to where you are now and also you are an editor and if that wasn't something that we covered already You are primarily an editor and a storyteller so tell us a little bit more about your journey and your history as an editor as well sure So I After school I went to school in the the Northeast in the US and I moved to New York pretty much right away And I was in a film program not a film school but a film program and Everyone kind of scatters after that a lot of people go to New York club people go to LA What are you gonna do? Are you gonna go shoot? Are you writing? Are you trying to direct? Are you? Are you going to post and At the time I was working for it was a branch of the New York Times. This was in 2000 And it was called the It was the electronic media branch of the New York Times and my T television and it's what later turned into their web content and so on But they were cook co-producing with the formerly known as the learning channel now TLC And discovery all that stuff that turned into A&E doing these What were called medical reality dramas so kind of really early days of reality TV But they were shooting 250 plus hours in the field after a nine-week embed at a various ER So there's one show called trauma life in the yard another called paramedics And it was a something like an 11 week at it But when that footage came back it was rolling you had AES that were immediately Transcribing everything logging everything getting adjusted in the system It was a really tight machine to sort of flip over that much material So I was working at that place as a post supervisor or I should say a in the post apartment not a supervisor at all obviously I went there to be an AE and I had a really interesting interview with Someone that was doing intake and he said you know what? You can you can be an AE here and you're gonna learn a lot But it's a really tough grind and you might learn just as much in the post production department and the truth is He just wanted to hire someone he liked to help him Be an IT guy at it worked But so from the start it I liked it though. I liked working with people and I liked solving problems and I learned how to build avid And then I ended up sort of under the table subcontracting Helping people build avids when they buy all the pieces independently from being aged that set them up in their apartment and stuff like that And then kind of quickly realized that that I haven't been making I've really just sort of been in a very fulfilling position, but It's I sort of had to check in a little bit and as chance would have it I Ended up in Seattle for a year My girlfriend at the time accepted a teaching position at her old school and so I went out there with the goal of Trying to figure out a way to cut and it's unlikely because that's not New York or LA It's not as much an industry city, but I ended up finding someone that shot this documentary I Convolved originally because I agreed to do some B camera for it was about two guys two friends that were trying to run around Mount Rainier in a single shot 95 mile trail. They ran through the entire night And so it was pretty interesting footage. There was five teams that would we'd hike up, get the shot, hike back down, drive to another part of the mountain, hike up, get the shot, and then all these interviews and so on. And the cost of living was pretty low back then. And so I befriended the director and he said, "Why don't you cut the film?" And I said, "That's going to be the biggest mistake you've ever made." And he said, "You're going to do it for free, so I don't know much to lose." So I did it. I cut it. Maybe the days were short. They were probably six hour days with a lunch that he paid for. My girlfriend was fully employed, so we could make it work. And then I got night work at Safe Coast Stadium, selling hot dogs and beer, which was the best job I've ever had, by the way, is outside of all this. So when I moved back to New York, it was really great. And so we just, he didn't want to cut it. He just needed one. He wanted the objectivity. And it was, it was not a super complicated edit. There was no graphics. There was no background information. We had a handful of interviews that we threaded throughout, but it was an A to B story. It was them starting and them finishing. And so it wasn't hard to sort of say, "I'm going to do these building blocks." Now we've got all the interviews transcribed. We're watching them all through. We kind of know the general vibe. They are going to help us with the TikTok because there was some drama about who made it and who didn't. And then it was sort of filling in, finding those, like we talked about, those sort of central scenes that have the soul and kind of looking for those afterwards. And so I moved back to New York a year later and I was able to get work cutting for broadcast. And this was mostly reality TV, the kind of stuff that was a really good challenge. But not something that I myself was interested in. It wasn't even a guilty pleasure. I have never really responded. But a lot of the stuff I was doing was sort of kind of home improvement and cooking shows and things like that. And I then got an offer at MTV to work on a show called Made, which it's for editors in New York made as sort of like the law and order version. Like everyone's worked on a maid at some point in their career. And it was a real boot camp show. Similar to the other ones I was talking about it, they would hang out with this high school kid for somewhere between eight and 10 weeks, shooting constantly, constantly, constantly, constantly rolling. And then it was probably somewhere between an eight and 10 week at it for a broadcast hour. And that one, I mean those were music cues that were changing every 15 to 20 seconds. To tons of needing to create humor, comic timing, pulling out the music, bringing it back in, wintery meetings are caustic, wintery meetings and sear. Where is this person from? They're from the south. We're using too much 20 music. We got to strip out half the country tracks. And so it was really, it was fierce. But in a weird way, I credit that. And from there I started working on feature docs. So there was a step down in pay obviously, because it was working with friends and friends of friends, but it was very rewarding work. And so from that point forward, it was working for public broadcasting. And I did some work for CNN with Alex Gibney's company, Frontline. And that landed me advice as an editor on the HBO weekly series in 2016. It was great fit. Really liked everyone I worked with. It's gone along really well with the EPs of the show. And I then ended up working on some of the longer form pieces. That was the time when advice was trying some longer form stuff for advice news tonight, also on HBO. And then maybe some longer pieces that would be on HBO. And I ended up doing a couple campaign trail stories that involve having a couple different edit rooms. And it was just the same old stuff for me. But then the EP at the time approached me and said, have you ever thought about doing supervising producing or as a senior producer? And I said, no, not at all. And he said, I think it could be great at it. And I said, are you who are you talking to right now? I'm not like I'm not I'm an editor. And he's like, you wrote, you know, you wrote all the copy for that last episode. You ran two different edit rooms, you know. And to me, it was just sort of the job. I like writing. I don't know that it's very good. It requires a lot of brush up. But I enjoy, you know, as you're sort of getting through a scene and you know, something needs to be written and you just need to get on to the next one. You'll just drop down on a card blah, blah, blah. We need to say now I'm doing this. And I always liked writing a little more and kind of adding a little more and so on. And so I he said, you know, we want you to do this as an editor too. And not just because you'll keep an edit room and there'll be certain pieces that will require additional editing that that you can't kind of communicate through notes and you'll need to take scenes and kind of do them on your own terms. And we want that sort of thought process. So and that was for shorter form pieces originally. That was when Vice News the night was doing a lot of short packages. Another thing I had very little experience with. And so that was a great learning opportunity to just sort of get that information out and and do it in a way that you know, makes the reporting very clear. But V&T at the time was finding that their stories were feeling a little stale or they were no matter how strong the reporting was and how critical stories were. The kind of creative circle and V&T was feeling like they've just had a lot of similarity to kind of other news pieces. So I think that's they made a couple changes including hiring me to kind of think about things from more of a documentary perspective and try and take some risks. And then I was a supervising producer on a that we had a Hulu series which were broadcast hours. And then I had been on Showtime since that started a few years ago in that same role. So I'm as a senior I'll oversee a project or a segment. Sometimes they the pitches completely good to go and comes right at a rock and it gets greenlit and they go out in the field and certain teams know exactly how they work together and who their contacts are and they just kind of come back with the footage. And so your job then is just working very directly with the editor and the correspondent to look at stuff and find that story thread. Other times if someone's come to you needing help develop a pitch you're doing research and talking it through and figuring out what goes into a story and seeing how much this has been covered before and getting a pitch shaped up. So it's a lot of different hats but the core of it is in editor's brain almost seeing yourself as a second editor. But by way of watching something back knowing exactly what went into it, what the goals were of the scene, what the reality is of the footage that was shot, the timeline that we have to do it, and an objective look at what is actually the strongest stuff in here that supports the story. And that's a lot to throw on one editor on a really intense timeline. So the story seniors are there to just to just kind of really be there and talk it through and maybe do the writing if the correspondent is back in the field and doesn't have the time to. And so now the work is those pieces for showtime but also all work on a series like Transnational where you and I met or a couple broadcast hours and I'm working right now for Vice News tonight. But I'll kind of, I'll come up with all sort of the similar goals I would say. So that's the whole story there. Yeah, great. It's really interesting because I think for a lot of editors, perhaps not the majority and the majority love editing and the process of editing and can't see themselves really doing anything else other than that. But there certainly is this kind of unspoken of ceiling as an editor where you work your way through the ranks, you become a better and better storyteller, you work on bigger and better projects and not necessarily a budget. There definitely is a kind of ceiling when it comes to budget and the durations of projects and your day rate, there comes a point where if you put it any higher, you're not going to get hired. So there comes a point I think where some editors are kind of thinking, what's next? and wondering what's the next step up from here? How do I take my skill set? Where do I go from here? How would you say your role as a supervising producer, compliments your love for editing? Do you recommend it to a lot of editors or do you think it's kind of a niche thing that maybe only a few would actually enjoy? The first thing I'd say is the reason I enjoy it is because it solves some of the frustrations that I was feeling editing. And the ceiling that I was feeling in editing was a little bit of the limitations of the role, I should say. I didn't like doing notes that came from people that I didn't think understood the story. So when the offer came to sort of change things up a little bit, as I was sort of saying somewhat jokingly, but quite honestly, like, intimidated by the prospect of it about the responsibility, the truth is that it was, it was really responding to something that I felt I needed based on my personal ceilings. The one thing that I have been able to consistently do without doing it consciously, my kind of feet have sort of followed the heart, but not the brain is put myself in environments where there's room for growth. Or where you're working with people that just give a shit about working with good people. I would say if you are seeking a kind of more of a leadership role and add a company where there's a lot of different rooms running, it could be a good suggestion to people in management to say like, I'm gonna keep editing, but also, I'm willing to take on some more responsibility. I can't do two jobs, so I'll be cutting less, but I could be across some projects. And I also think lead editing, sometimes that's, certain places have that, that's a good way to sort of explore what it's like to cut scenes, but also sort of be the gatekeeper and be collecting scenes as they come through and building them out and kind of really having your head around it, that's a lead editing job that has multiple rooms, is can often be the best of both worlds. No matter how shit the economy is and how dubious it looks, you gotta move around and find the stuff you like. You got three kids at home and you gotta sweet ass gig, line cutting for ESPN, do it, get your bobble heads, put your kids' pictures on the walls, lock the door, never move and just cherish your weekends. That's totally cool, like get that fucking paper and do that. But if you are less interested in that and are more interested in finding something you really like, I say move around, keep moving, keep finding stuff. - Yeah, it's an interesting thread that, from the people that you speak of and clicking yourself who have video editing experience, but it's not just kind of throw away amount of experience, it really is a bed, a concrete bed of knowledge on which everything else is built. And I think it was interesting when you said, "Let's wake up in a world tomorrow that's completely different." And having, if that will the case, having that experience as an editor and a storyteller, just having that knowledge as a storyteller, it really is a strong foundation for so many skills. And that could translate even into sales, being able to tell stories in order to sell. So having that is really just an such a versatile and incredible and powerful skill that I think, no matter how you feel, if you're not feeling comfortable where you are as an editor or strong, those skillsets are incredibly useful, no matter where you decide to go. - You're here. - So I would love to, you've mentioned so many different projects that you've worked on over the years. Do you have a favorite springs to mind, one that you're most proud of? - Yeah, actually, I would say my favorite project, was a feature doc I did, it was called Radio Unnameable. I got to it because this two good friends of mine, this husband and wife, filmmaking team, Paul Lovelace and Jessica Wilson. So they were researching this guy called, he passed away a couple of years ago, unfortunately, but Bob Fass, who is sort of the, one of the central figures towards in free form radio. So he's New York DJ for WBAI, early '60s, and he was on the air until his passing. WBAI became this sort of, it was one of these lesser known New York cultural institutions, but there still wasn't enough archival or source material in the world to entirely cover a film about radio, where the gems of the piece were just playing back these moments. And so they got maybe eight or nine different small grants to make the film. So a thousand bucks here, a thousand bucks there, kind of thing, including an interesting grant from anthology film archives that let us fair use a ton of kind of period specific super eight footage from that time. And so one of the scenes that I really enjoyed cutting, it was a sort of an unfortunate subject matter, but there was a caller who called in, there was a late night, you know, it's a late night call and show people calling from all over, it's connecting people on the air. And someone called in who had just taken a bag full of pills and was attempting suicide. And he called in to sort of talk about it as he was sort of drifting. And so Bob's role was to sort of keep him on the air and try to keep him animated while, you know, trying to get people to trace the call and see if they could help this guy. I had to use all this footage from, we had a lot of footage from like a night carnival scene at Coney Island, where it's just home videos that someone had shot and just kind of played with it and put it together in a way that felt like it was reminiscent of something nostalgic, something that you could look back on something that was advertised, something that was, something that was there, something that was a goal, but also something you could overlook. And so finding a way to listen to this character's on air, he was saved by the way, they were able to get to him. - Amazing. - Oh. - And yeah. But it was, that was, that for me was the soul. That was the soul of that film was taking the time to really figure out how to be an audience member who could listen, but also have something that can maybe evoke imagery that's abstract enough that they can think for themselves, but not have it just be random. - Yeah, sounds amazing. Sounds like a masterclass in cutting without having the footage necessary. So before we wrap up, I kind of wanted to ask you a couple of questions for anyone listening who is thinking I would really love to work on some vice documentaries. Tell me what you look for in an editor. - Good question. Well, there's, so, starting with the obvious stuff, you know, certain experience can speak for itself, but you can't always rely on that. You don't know exactly the terms of how something was put together or how many other editors there were. So it's a good place to start. But when interviewing people, there's a handful of things. The truth is like getting along with someone and realizing that they're affable and down to talk and our good conversationalists really goes a long way. That's something I've heard when I was starting out, 'cause I was sort of wondering why I was getting jobs. I didn't have the CV I felt to reflect what a company might be looking for and people would say like, you're easy to talk to and you're fun to talk to and I would say, "Well, but that doesn't make me good. That doesn't make me, that doesn't, I mean, sure, but that sort of sounds like you're saying, "I'm bad at the other stuff." But at least you mean well, and sound pathetic, but it's the opposite, 'cause the truth is, This is so fucking collaborative, no matter how much of a monastery you go into, no matter how much you sort of block out and just work, there has to be this really solid communication and ability to be mobile and ability to be scrappy and so on. Chemistry is no small thing. I would rather take someone that can appreciate the process and appreciate what we're trying to do and that is willing to try things over someone that has done that same story ten times and is a veteran and doesn't really want to chat through what another way to do it might be. And their version is going to be great, but I would rather the person that is kind of more game to sort of figure it out. But in terms of sort of mean potatoes, I would say it's an ability to be able to evaluate a scene and the second part of that is not get too overwhelmed by what it all means. I think a good editor one that works well for the projects that we're doing is someone that is working quickly sort of based on what the goals are for the scene, let's say, how we think it's going to perform, subject to change, but it's just can kind of, and with varying degrees of support from the producer or an AE, whatever the case may be, can kind of end up with something that is working and say, I feel like the scene, I mean this is rough as shit, but what's in there makes sense. I'm going to move on to the next thing. And I'm just going to start sort of turning the soil and moving through it. You know, certain times you're maybe working with a group that at the end of the first week wants to see an assembly of the entire first act kind of thing. In which case, you know, you have to do that. That's the job. But if you have the ability or the project allows for you to kind of get to know the material better and move through it, it's great working with people that are able to go for an ugly rough cut, but one that sort of reflects, you know, what we're trying to do. And I think just the ability to see that and say, and also push back and say, like, that's great, but you've only got one side of the story who's, who, you know, how are we going to get through that? And I'm like, well, I don't know. We didn't really think about that. It's like, well, if you don't have anyone that can do that, then just we have to write that in V.O. And dropping a hard that says V.O. TK, someone that's going to offer a counterpoint before we move on, you know? So editors that are able to sort of see the big picture are great, but not get frustrated by the big picture. So sometimes you'll be working in someone and say, I don't really understand the whole way you have it structured. I'm going to say, like, well, we're not, it's just going to be seen to seen. We're not going to be doing heavy intercutting. So no matter where this character lands, we still want them to speak about this, this one thing. I'm like, yeah, I don't really see how it flows from here to there. It's like, well, I appreciate that, but let's just cut the scene. Let's just get it roughed out and then we'll move on from there. So I think the ability to kind of move through it and sort of trust the process, even if it seems a little wonky, that's pretty helpful. And not getting hung up maybe on perfecting and fine tuning stuff in the very beginning. And if you've gotten executive that says, I want to see the opening scene, like it's kind of luck, then it's like, OK, cool. We're going to get those music cues. We're going to nail it. We're going to sell it to you. If it isn't the case like that, someone that isn't afraid to really dive in and try things and not necessarily worry too much about how that affects five scenes down the road, that's a big one. Yeah. So you're saying that a portfolio really will only get you so far, the key traits are someone who is collaborative and is able to work on their own as well and able to push forward with their own ideas. Yeah. And maybe another one to add to that is someone that's willing to ask for help and to, I think there can be, for some, there can be this sort of prevailing notion that if I'm asking someone to look at something, it's because I haven't figured it out. Or it's because I'd rather just solve this on my own and come to you with something. I want the reward. I want the sort of pat on the back. I want the cold star. But for me, speaking as a supervising, as a story producer, it's never too early to show me stuff. The edits that I think flourish the best are when my G chat is blowing up all day because they're like, can you come in or can I send you this link? Can we share screens? I don't, you know, and you just, you solve so much on the fly like that. Yeah, yeah. Really great advice. So for someone who is perhaps in a junior position or, you know, intermediate position, do you have a kind of a recommended or a standard practice way to move through the industry towards cutting documentaries for vice? We have someone who's considered one of our best editors because he's able to kind of see the story very early and kind of help get things done in a way where I look at his cuts and I'm like, yeah, I can see it in there. I can definitely see it in there. He was a junior editor when he started here and was sort of a finishing editor where the piece would be done, but he would work with one of the story supervisors and they would ask for some frames here and some frames there and so on and so forth. And he did that for several years and just by way of being here and being a good person and a diligent finishing editor, he was given the opportunity to cut some scenes and cut them well and now he's one of our most reliable editors. I think kind of just getting in the door however you are is one way to do it. And the other thing is I would say take work that you think you like. It's tough to stay busy and it's tough to pay the bills, but I found when I was in reality TV, I didn't have my compass oriented. I wasn't sort of looking a certain way. I was just doing the work, doing the work and you sort of forget that time is moving forward and you are steering it, whether you know it or not. And so I would say look for the pieces that you want to do, look for the places that are making the work you want to do and go knock on their door. You know, and take the job if you can, if you can swing a job where the wages are less than you'd like, but you know it's going to be a good experience or have a reason to believe it's going to be a good experience. You'll never miss that money that you didn't make. Yeah. Cutting that thing that you don't like. Yeah. That's a beautiful sound bite to finish on. You'll never miss the money that you missed out on if you follow opportunities rather than just money. I think that's incredibly true. And certainly the most valuable jobs that I've worked on that has been the case. So I fully agree. Yeah, it's just water in the bridge like you sort of, it's just never even a question. You know, if you just, and that's the other jobs, the ones that pay well that you do in order to work on the lesser pay more rewarding jobs anyway. And you know, that's just, that's powerful of course, really. That is just, that's the way the industry works. And there's no, there's no shame in that at all. So I couldn't agree. Right. Thank you, Greg, so much for joining us today. And for your incredible insight, it's been a pleasure. Same for me. Thank you. That was quite a full interview. We covered a lot of ground in that. And I feel like even I learned some things. It was really nice to kind of get to the root thinking about some of the concepts. Behind storytelling and filmmaking, a factual filmmaking. We spoke about story thread as well. And some of the concepts that you can learn within the storytelling for documentaries, course within unspiced pro. So if you are looking to understand a little bit more about storytelling, then head to unspiced.com for the sash pro. You can sign up there. And you can see the training as well if you have. to unspriced.com/training. You can see all the different courses that you can get access to. Thank you so much for joining me and Greg and hopefully I'll see you next week. Thanks. Bye bye.