Hanne Vaughn - Editor
Editor
Experience 20+ years
“My role models are all the people who can see past the problems and turn trash into gold.”
Describe your job role and the kinds of projects/clients you work with.
I am a video editor at Carousel in NYC were I work on commercials and other types of branded content for clients such as Victoria’s Secret, Pepsi, Ticketmaster, Claire’s, Oatly, and many others. My husband and I also own a production company that produces various tv shows and stand-up specials. On top of that I occasionally freelance, editing documentaries, scripted and un-scripted shows that air on the Prime, Max, Netflix, etc.
What does an average day look like in your post-production working world?
Most days, since the pandemic, I work from home unless I have clients coming to the office to work directly with me. After I take my son to school, I walk the 3 miles back home through the city sort of pre-editing and planning out my day while drinking my 3rd cup of coffee. I edit on Premiere or Avid, depending on the type of project. Most of the tv work I do is on Avid, while the commercial projects are almost always on Premiere. For me, the main difference between tv and commercial post production is how much you lean on your AE. I find that, when editing commercials, the AE’s job is to have all the footage transcoded and organized so that I can open up premiere and dive in right away. And with TV production the AEs often have a line cut or rough assembly of the scenes ready for me.
For Commercials I usually watch/scan through every piece of footage, making markers along the way to highlight moments I think help tell the story best. If I know I will be sitting with a client in the room later, I will organize these takes into sequences so I can easily share all the options with them should they want to see alternate takes. After that, I just start telling the story. I usually edit the VO/dialogue/SOTs first, making a sort of radio edit that feels good from a story-telling and rhythmic perspective. Then its time to work on coverage, and finally I score the piece and add SFX. The edit may adjust slightly as I score, but its usually pretty locked by the time I get to music. Nothing makes me giddier than laying a track down and hearing the changes just magically hit at the right places without even trying, you’d be surprised how often that happens.
For unscripted tv shows and documentaries there is a lot more involved in organizing the footage into different moments. I’ll edit each of those moments into scenes and then move them around to find the best way to tell the overall story.
Scripted shows are more about choosing the best takes and reading the script notes to see what the director was feeling on set. I always use Multicam and have each camera assigned to its corresponding number on the keyboard so I can basically edit the scenes as they play and then go back and fine tune. The same goes for stand-up specials. If they shot more than one show, my job is to work with the talent to chose the takes that work best from each and blend them seamlessly together into one Master show.
How did your career in post production begin?
My first real paid editing job was on the soap opera, Guiding Light. I like to call it boot camp for editors. When you have to cut an hour episode every day, you get pretty fast. One of the things that makes it easier is that soaps are shot live to tape; so you start with a line cut and are really just trimming, popping in ISOs when a cut was late or early, or adjusting when there was a pickup. This was back in the tape days where the AE would literally put the tape in the machine for me to grab shots I needed. We also did all the SFX (digitized from cds) and music (also digitized from cds) if there was a montage (which there were many…it was a soap opera after all). I worked the 4pm to Midnight shift (after working 9-4 at SpikeTV cutting Ultimate fighter content) and it was always “fun” when we would be getting to the end of the night and turn the page to see that there was a car crash, or ghost from the past, or some other effect-heavy scene as the cliffhanger. Those types of scenes had to be put together in the usual way. They were the most fun to edit, but not necessarily at midnight after a double shift.
What has been your career highlight?
I worked on Guiding Light for 4 years and one of the coolest things I got to do was edit a docu-style episode where the whole cast and crew went to Biloxi, MS to help rebuild homes after Hurricane Katrina. I went down with the show and went through dailies in the hotel each day, preparing the different scenes. When we got back I worked with an amazing writer on the team for a month (double shifts and weekends) to produce the piece that aired during the Soap’s usual time slot on CBS. That year we won the daytime Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in Multiple Camera Editing.
Who are your role models in post?
I sort of fell into editing because I was writing/directing a short film and the camera screwed up the footage. I decided to try to make something out of nothing and I ended up loving it even more than what I had imagined. My role models are all the people who can see past the problems and turn trash into gold.
What advice do you have for others wanting to start a career in post?
A lot of “making it” in this business is luck, not going to lie. But, if you are willing to start wherever they will have you and have the talent and personality to jump at the chances that are put in front of you, you will be able to make it a career.
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