Concerts, caverns, paintings and portraits of people on the fringes of society. The projects that comprised my 2017 workload spanned a spectrum of subjects, content and creative & technical challenges. In other words - just another year for any freelance video editor.
I had the chance to collaborate with old friends and make new ones. I also stretched my skills not only as an editor, but as a manager and a team leader. It's important to improve my craft with every project and each passing year, and I think I learned a lot from those I worked with in 2017.
For much of the first half of last year, I worked with the team at
Revelator, a production company founded and led by Head of Production Chris Ohlson and Creative Director Matt Muir. Revelator's work spans commercials, live events, music videos and film. I've known these guys for years and work with them often. I'm drawn to their sensibilities, their work ethic, and they're ability to put you at ease even in the face of the most crushing deadline.
Jack and Pete Tell It All
They contracted me for several months as an editor and a post-producer. (If I had to say what a post-producer is versus a post production supervisor: I'm responsible for the personnel, the planning and the execution of a post-production workflow, yes, but also might have more creative input than possibly some post-supes out there... I dunno - maybe I'm giving post-supes short shrift!) Any given week during my contract I might be spinning two, three, or four different plates at once.
Aside from some general workflow consulting needs and the short spot here and there that needed cutting, there were two major projects I was responsible for. The first was an hour long documentary about the founders of the Missouri-based theme park Silver Dollar City. (Imagine an 1880s mining town... with roller coasters and cotton candy.) What's unique about Silver Dollar City is its commitment to employing actual craftspeople that might have been in just such a town: blacksmiths, wood carvers, cutlers, cobblers and candy makers. There's also a giant cave which you can tour if you're willing to climb 505 feet of steps to the bottom. Most tour goers can escape the cave by taking a rail car back to the top of the park, but for our crew - when we visited Branson, Missouri to film interviews and coverage of the park - we had to haul our equipment up and down that staircase more than a few times. (I think Chris had the record by going up and down 11 times in one day.)
The subjects of the documentary were brothers Jack and Pete Herschend. Titled Jack & Pete Tell It All, it was directed by their son Jonn who is a filmmaker and artist based in San Francisco. Jonn is gregarious and enthusiastic about anything and everything, so I enjoyed working with him. Here is the trailer for the doc (shot by Revelator collaborator Drew Xanthopoulos):
Jack and Pete Tell It All - Trailer from
David Fabelo on
Vimeo.
Jack and Pete Tell It All is an oral history documentary. Drew and Jonn took inspiration from Errol Morris films, shooting interviews in UHD with the subjects answering questions into the lens. We were able to punch in to the interviews in order to create more coverage without shooting more coverage (due to budget and scheduling constraints). Working this way gave me new insight into Morris' approach (pre-
Wormwood, al least).
The Sensitives
Speaking of Drew, in 2016 I edited his feature documentary
The Sensitives. Last April,
The Sensitives premiered in competition at the Tribeca Film Festival. Our screenings received a tremendous response. Q and A's were sometimes lively, sometimes emotional, always intelligent and insightful. I think what Drew, producer David Hartstein and I may have enjoyed the most was meeting other filmmakers and trading war stories about the journeys each of our films took to get there.
The Sensitives also screened at the Camden International Film Festival where it received Special Jury Mention for Cinematic Vision.
The Sensitives is available on
iTunes,
Google Play and
Amazon Prime. Own it on
Blu Ray, if you like!
Pandora
The other major project for Revelator was managing post and delivering next day edits and later an event reel for Pandora during their SXSW concert series. Teams from both Revelator and Pandora spent months preparing the shoot, which comprised of using seven stage cameras, two roving cameras, and a backstage interview set-up across four days featuring somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty performers. This was produced by Alex Bronner and Rolando Romero of Revelator and Brennan King of Pandora.
Camera feeds were fed to a Tricaster via SDI. Revelator's creative director, Chris Shea, directed the live edit. That signal was broadcast to screens around the venue. The Tricaster also recorded the live edit. We copied those files to a QNAP with Thunderbolt 2 and Gigabit connections. Our DIT would also be responsible for ingesting footage from the cameras. Our assistant editors fed me selects which I would use to build the recap video that we would upload the next morning. There were two reviews with Pandora's creative director, DG: once in the afternoon and another at the end of the night. Conor Gordon from Pandora provided me with much needed guidance and editing help when there was a backlog of material.
The first day was the toughest. I was wearing multiple hats: creative editor, post-producer, and IT novice. While we had run tests with the QNAP in the weeks leading up to the event, we hadn't had as much time perfecting the workflow with the Tricaster. The first day involved working out some bugs in that workflow, so my creative edit took a major hit and I had a fairly embarrassing first review with Team Pandora. But they were patient and gave me some specific direction that helped me build a stronger edit for the second review. While day one was anxiety-fueled, each subsequent day got smoother as we fell into a rhythm as a team. Don't get me wrong: documenting a live event is walking a tightrope, but we had a great crew from both companies who never panicked. We just worked the problems, adjusted the workflow, and tried to enjoy the ride as much as possible.
I have to give a special shout-out to my DIT, John Monroe, and my assistant editors Jo Haung-Zellner and Rachel Win. We threw a lot of technical/workflow hurdles at John. A lot of media was coming at him at once and he kept his cool the whole way through. Jo Haung and Rachel kept our project organized and combed the footage for the best material.
Check out one of the Pandora recaps here:
Pandora at SXSW 2017 - Day 3 Recap from
David Fabelo on
Vimeo.
Art Is Essential
Over the summer, I worked with Flow Nonfiction for the first time. I had been hearing great things about the good people at Flow for years so I was eager to work with them. They hired myself and another editor, Justin Barclay, to cut a series of short documentaries for the Minneapolis Museum of Art. Called
Art Is Essential, the theme of the docs is "art in everyday lives." As a way to highlight the impact art can have on each of us, each episode spends a day with a different artist or art lover associated with the museum.
One of the episodes I edited was "Andrea." It's a personal look at motherhood, art as an educational tool, and the importance of representation:
Art is Learning: Andrea from
Minneapolis Institute of Art on
Vimeo.
2018
Finally, last fall, after a short hiatus, I began work editing a new documentary about the Detroit Red Wings. We're still working on it, though we'll be locking picture soon. I can't say much yet, other than I knew very little about hockey eight weeks ago, but I know a ton now. I can also say I think it's coming along nicely and is going to be a fun one. Can't wait to share it when it's ready!
