Edit Suites

[Person Lastly]

i’m an editor at an offline boutique and windows are very welcome. comfort and creative aesthetics are important to us and our clients. you can see photos on our site https://sliceedit.com >what is slice>photographs. i’ve spent thousands of hours at many finishing facilities. for obvious reasons, these environments are darker, quieter, neutral and without windows to control color temperatures and brightness. this doesn’t mean these suites should be stale and impractical however. spend the money on the most tasteful/comfortable furniture and leave the starwars paraphernalia at home.

the areas outside these dark and gloomy rooms should be more colorful and brighter for clients and staff (not shopping mall bright). save space for client work stations as well, so that busy producers, offline editors, art directors, writiers, directors, can leave the suite to make phone calls and work on their laptops without disturbing the creative process. if you’re a one-stop-post house (meaning edit and final output) these points still should be applied. But maybe you don’t need the most expensive furniture to make it work for you.

just know a comfortable client is a happy client. and a happy client is a returning client. and don’t forget to do stellar work when he/she’s there.

Editor

[Rich Rubasch]

One thing I think I would amend to Mark’s great post is that we always put in some kind of hard floor around the edit desk. In our small edit bays we currently have vinyl tile on concrete. No dust, no static, easy rolling in the chairs. I prefer rolling around on the tile and finding a good pattern in a tight weave can be difficult or expensive.

Other than that I would also add that you must have dimmers on all lights. Backlighting the computer monitors is good on th eyes…just a very low wattage soft light behind the monitors. Ikea has many options here.

As for our walls, we found a great gray paing by Ralph Lauren called Studio Gray (Home Depot) and it is a great paint.

Good luck,

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media

[Mike Cohen]

Don’t forget storage space. My office is half of a loft, so my office and editing setup are on the same long desk. We do not have clients in the office too often, so it stays kind of messy.
We have floor to ceiling shelves dividing the loft in two, giving lots of space for tape storage. Honestly a dedicated storage room for tapes, camera gear and clutter would be great.

[Ben Oliver]

you need lots of action figures. i prefer ninja turtles. i cannot edit without an action figure. I cannot stress this enough. when you have a crap director or producer over your shoulder, sometimes its easiest to explain things using the action figures as models, cause there actors blow and can’t deliver a line to save there lives.

oh wait…thats the project I am working on right now.!!! thank god for leonardo.