Kylee Pena
Forum Replies Created
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I think it’s really great you’re working on stuff that is building your skill set AND paying you and you’re only 16. I came around to post production as my career when I was 15/16 as well. Even though it was only 15 years ago, I didn’t have the same access to resources and jobs as you do now. The fact you’re taking advantage of it and building it into a actionable plan is a really great start. You’re kind of already ahead of a lot of young people that post on this forum asking for advice.
My opening advice for you is to take all the advice you get lightly. I’m fighting the urge to definitively say “I’ve been where you are so recently, so here’s what I know” when the truth is that 15 years in this industry is a huge gap in experiences. And I think I’m on the younger side of working professionals on this site. Keep in mind that everyone’s path is different. You’ll get a lot of advice and attitude that has no place in your life right now because it’s only applicable to a very different time, but the advice and attitude haver won’t realize it. There’s a lot of universal and eternal platitudes, but consider everything you’re told carefully instead of accepting it all as The Truth. That would be overwhelming.
Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, my next bit of advice to you would be “please relax”. If your timeline doesn’t fit your needs when August 2017 comes around, don’t force it. If you feel an inkling toward something else, explore it. Don’t feel like you have to follow every single step of a plan you made when you were 16 because things change rapidly. Give yourself some breathing room to enjoy the journey.
Now, more practical advice and direct answers.
What should I be working to improve?
Do you know what your specific goal is? You want to be an editor? Of what kind of stuff? What’s your most ideal situation? Once you have that in mind, you work backwards to what you need to improve. Practically speaking, you need to know Avid Media Composer. If you learn as much as you can about media management and workflow in general, you’ll be doing yourself a huge favor. By the time you’re entering a job here, things could be different — but probably not all that different. People will be using Avid. TV and film will probably be using offline/online workflows. The resolutions will be bigger, but the concepts are the same. Stay up to date with changing technology.
Here’s the much more important thing though: you need to be a good person and you need to know people. So keep reading sites like the COW and learning practical tech skills. But learn how to network, find groups or events where you can meet people, and start cultivating real relationships with people. Have an online presence too. I’ve met so many people through FB groups, Twitter, and this site.
Is there anything specific I should be learning or focusing my time on?
Again, learning how to meet people. Which sounds ridiculous, I know. But the difference between coming to LA and getting a job or not is who you know. I can’t tell you how many people I have interacted with in LA that aren’t really top notch but work on really cool stuff. It’s because they know how to network and people like them. The “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” thing is totally true. You have to have the skills to keep up once you’re in the door, but more often you get in the door because a person says “hey, remember that one kid?”
Once I finish school, how should I go about finding my first job in LA?
Are you doing college in LA, or do you mean after high school? Either way, you should be making connections and looking for gigs long before you’re done with school. Being a young person, you can easily make a connection with someone at a company and ask for a job shadow or informational interview to learn more about what they do, then once you see how things work for them, you can pass along your resume. That’s a win-win for you. People are really busy in post production, but they’re also really giving whenever they have the time. (If you do college here, you should be working while you’re in school. Internships and stuff.)
Where are you moving from? Have you visited LA before? Do you know what it’s like? Do you know anyone here? Are you able to visit a week or so here before you move, to meet people and having coffee and make face to face connections? Even if you aren’t moving for a year or two, starting now is the key.
Also, you need to keep in mind that even though you’ve been doing actual work and you probably know a lot, if you don’t have any professional experience and you’re 18 years old, you’re probably going to have to work from the bottom. If you’re good, you will move up fast. But don’t be above production assistant work. You’ll get people coffee. You’ll clean. It’ll suck. But you meet people and they take you with them. Take a step back and learn from people. If you have an opportunity to take an unpaid or low paid internship somewhere amazing and you have the resources, go for it.
You should figure out what exactly you want to do as of right now and find people who are doing that, and talk to them. Your path will be really different, but by talking to them you’ll see that that’s normal. It’s also normal to change the goal all the time. When I was younger, I was frustrated all the time because I felt like I wasn’t fitting in the right boxes. But now I’m in LA and working in TV post and it’s awesome, so it all worked out. I did everything right, and if I had had more patience with myself then I would have been a less stressed out person for my 20s. Don’t beat yourself up. Work hard and chill.
Good luck, and feel free to email me if you’d ever like to connect further.
blog: kyleesportfolio.com/blog
twitter: @kyl33t
demo: kyleewall.com -
Did she record the video on the iPhone with the camera app that comes with it? If so, you’ll need to transcode it since the frame rate is variable in those files — it actually drifts around between like 26 and 32 frames per second, I think. Last week I needed to sync iPhone video with external audio in another app and happened to drop the video file in a FCP7 sequence, made sure the frame rate was 23.98, then exported a ProRes file. Then it synced up with the external audio when I brought it into the other app. I would assume if you imported that file back into FCP7, it would sync up with your audio there as well.
I didn’t have to fix any sample rate issues on the audio which is adding a layer of complexity to your problem, but it sounds like you’ve got a handle on that.
blog: kyleesportfolio.com/blog
twitter: @kyl33t
demo: kyleewall.com -
[Mark Suszko] “Make it a “ripple delete” then, and hope all the downstream changes are good for you!:-)”
This post was delightfully nerdy. Thank you!
blog: kyleesportfolio.com/blog
twitter: @kyl33t
demo: kyleewall.com -
[Mark Suszko] “Kylie, did you recently get “spliced”?”
The opposite, actually. Which is cause for double celebration IMO, so I’ll accept your Mazel Tov and offer you an “¡Ole!” for my birth name in return!
blog: kyleesportfolio.com/blog
twitter: @kyl33t
demo: kyleewall.com -
As soon as you got the GoPro stuff and realized you didn’t have what you needed, did you let them know? It sounds like you may have needed to set their expectations better early on in your cutting. If you suspected they didn’t look at what they gave you, you might have been better served to say something right away in case they wanted to scrap your part of it and go straight to the graphics person.
[Edward Harby] “being incredibly diplomatic won’t necessarily benefit me especially that I strongly feel that it wasn’t my performance that caused this”
Being diplomatic almost always benefits you, because you can walk away from a bad project knowing that you did what you could. Being diplomatic doesn’t necessarily being apologetic or overly nice.
If you jumped into this without expressing concerns early, I would kind of just accept responsibility for not putting a halt to the work and take it as a lesson for expectations — you can’t change the performance of anyone else on the job, but you can take ownership of part of the calamity. I’d email the people that owe you money and say “Hey, I’m sorry I couldn’t get your project to the state you hoped it would be in. We both know the footage suffered a lot, but I should have communicated to you better about how significantly the finished product would differ from the vision. I know you’re probably in a tough spot for finishing this, so I’m willing to accept payment for half my hours instead of the full amount for the work completed so far. I hope we can work together again.”
That is, if you want to work with them again. If not, leave the last sentence off.
Basically, I think when projects go entirely off the rails like this, it turns into an epic blame-fest. There’s no point to that. Whether it was your fault or not, take some responsibility and find a way to end it. Then set yourself up against losing money in these situations in the future.
blog: kyleesportfolio.com/blog
twitter: @kyl33t
demo: kyleewall.com -
For the first time since I’ve been attending, I didn’t return with some horrible respiratory infection or any other diseases! I bathed in hand sanitizer after every meeting where hands were shook, I tried not to touch any surfaces anywhere, and I started taking daily vitamins a month beforehand. This probably means I’ve set myself up for some horrible sickness in the coming weeks but…I don’t even care, I made it out mostly unscathed!
blog: kyleesportfolio.com/blog
twitter: @kyl33t
demo: kyleewall.com -
I graduated in 2009, so my experience with this stuff is still fairly fresh and hopefully helpful to you. I think a lot of people might tell you to keep knocking on doors and cold calling and stuff, but the reality right now is that there are a lot of people like you out there — like maybe more than ever — and blind emails or even phone calls aren’t nearly as effective as they used to be for soliciting entry level jobs.
What does work? Relationships. And that’s always been true, and will continue to be true until you retire from video production (so, until the sun explodes.) I graduated in the middle of a recession, so I was looking for a job when the difficulty level for such a thing was on Expert. I emailed dozens and dozens of companies and individuals over a year period and got ZERO responses other than a few “lol no” emails. You may have a little more luck eventually, but if you don’t count on it then you’ll just be pleasantly surprised. (Like, following up from cold emails MAY land you something on the off chance you follow up right when they have a quick opening for the kind of job you can fill easily, but that’s difficult timing and mostly up to luck. But it happens.)
Here’s a few specific things that did work for me. For one thing, I did an internship while I was still in school. I got that internship from asking the company if I could do an “informational interview”. That is, can I come in for an hour or half day or whatever and shadow the person whose job I really want and talk to them about it? People in this industry are really giving and will lend their time to a nice, young, curious person if they have the time to lend, so this is a great way to pry open the first door. I happened to do this at the right time, followed up with a thank you email that included my resume and desire to keep learning as an intern, and then I spent a semester there. From there, I became friends with the senior editor. On my last day, I took HIM out for coffee. I kept in touch a couple times a year, asked to meet up with him at his new spot after I graduated, and he sent me my first freelance work which helped solidify me as an real editor. In fact, when I went to visit him after I graduated and got one of those unexciting all-round corporate video jobs you mentioned (more on that in a moment), I told him I wanted to see how real editors worked. He just looked at me a little confused and said “but…YOU are a real editor.” That was like 6 years ago, so you can see the impact of knowing established people in the industry, even if it’s not directly job-related.
So the unexciting first corporate job sounds like the kind of thing you might want to aim for, actually. I knew I wanted to be an editor, but I got this shooting-and-editing-and-producing job through an instructor at school who knew someone who knew someone who recommended me. It was fine for a while, I learned a lot, and I spent that time developing more relationships. I wanted out quickly, but I was there for four years. During that time? Building up my skills to back up my personality, but spending a majority of my time networking locally and online, getting to conferences to get in front of people and start to know them face to face. That led me to my last gig and then to my current one. There was never a random email or phone call. Always an email or phone call to a friend or a mutual friend.
Because people like to work with people they like and know and trust, or vouched for by someone they like, know or trust. That’s daunting when you start out, but we all start out that way. So start to develop a network, and get in the door by asking for the things you want from the people have can give them to you — a tour, an interview, a job shadow. Treat people like people instead of job-havers. Land whatever you can get in between but continue cultivating relationships in between, and your professional life will be more rewarding to be surrounded by so many smart people.
As far as how to market yourself, I think it depends on what you want to eventually do and where you are now geographically. If you’re in a city like LA or NY, my instinct is that generalists aren’t so appreciated. But when I was in Indianapolis, it was helpful for me to build my resume with a lot of these skills because corporate jobs tend to want one person that can do everything fairly well instead of eight people that can all do one thing exceptionally well. I think that’s a thing you need to figure out over time. And if you aren’t sure, you can look at the job being offered (if you’re applying) and tailor your resume to build yourself up in those areas. If you’re trying to talk about yourself in a networking situation and you’d really like to focus on being an editor but you mostly want experience, talk about that: “I’m a new graduate and I’d like to be come an editor, but I have all kinds of experience and I’d like to spend my time working in the field and learning more about everything I can.” Or something like that. People like young people who are committed to learning a lot and show up on time. You can take over tasks we don’t want to do OR go pick up coffee and we don’t feel too bad about telling to do either.
So figure out where you’re going to live and what you want to do, and work toward that by meeting people at events and online.
blog: kyleesportfolio.com/blog
twitter: @kyl33t
demo: kyleewall.com -
Just to add context to Shane’s response for you —
Consider what you’re trying to accomplish when you’re color grading. Your 4K media has a ton of color information so you can push your correction and grade exactly where you want. If you were to grade proxy material, you don’t have all that information in the media. And yeah, all but the recent version of Media Composer don’t support 4K, so you have to have a pretty linear workflow to jump from proxy to 4K. But otherwise if you aren’t doing this offline to online workflow, I know plenty of people that grade in Media Composer as they go. Depends on the project and your needs.
You mentioned exporting a timeline to After Effects and then exporting from there after you color grade. Nowadays this isn’t a process you need to do between dynamic link and Premiere’s fairly robust color features. However, I wanted to mention I worked on a show that basically had this workflow. Exported a ProRes file and brought it into Resolve, used scene cut detect to add the cuts back, then exported a ProRes file from there. I can’t remember exactly what it is, but I’ve been told that you can go through like 8 iterations of ProRes exports before you have any discernible quality loss. Just figured I would mention your workflow wasn’t exactly far off. You just have to know why you’re doing it AND make the right choices — like the codec — along the way.
And XML is an extensible markup language, which is a fancy way of saying it’s a bunch of code you can use to fit the specifications of whatever data you’re working with. I’ve worked with it on web stuff for website design, but in video it works as an interchange language. If you open up an xml document you’ve exported from FCP in a text editor, you’ll see it’s basically a description of your sequence, with tags like and . You can move your work from one app to another, or you can use it for a number of other things. Like one time a client asked me to change the font color of all my lower thirds on a project that was like 4 hours long so I exported XML files, opened the document in a text editor, and did a find/replace command to change all the instances of one color to another. But like Shane said, you’ll use AAF in the Avid environment, which is another interchange format.
blog: kyleesportfolio.com/blog
twitter: @kyl33t
demo: kyleewall.com -
I’m also in my late 20s, so hopefully my advice will be fresh for you.
[Hunter Leachman]A. How much do I need LA vs. say Dallas, Atlanta, or Austin?
I guess it depends on what your goal is, at the end of all this. There’s a lot of cool work happening in those other places, but if you want to edit TV and movies, you’re going to need to be in LA (or maybe New York). Dallas seems heavy on agency work, and Austin seems to be a lot of interactive. As someone who currently lives in Atlanta and works on a network TV show, I still wouldn’t recommend someone come here in their quest to be an editor. The productions that come in to work usually bring their own editorial staff. I’ve talked to a lot of people around here from Atlanta AND LA, and they agree there’s a huge potential for an assistant editor to really be vital, but crews just don’t look for locals. And once the show is done, they run back to LA since there’s no post-related tax incentive, so you never see it through to the end. There’s a lot of reality that shoots here, and there’s certainly plenty of post being done, both with film/TV and everything else, but it’s super competitive and not anything like LA.
B. Social climb vs. product climb? I feel editing on lower food chain projects and working up to higher projects is better, then say assistant editing on higher food chain projects and trying to climb through ties with other editors.
There’s no one right way, but I think it depends on what you’re capable of doing. I’ve worked my way up from lower food chain projects and a LOT (A LOT A LOT) of networking. I think it’s a lot easier to work your way in through higher food chain projects, particularly those that move quickly, like TV. You have to be really essential and flexible and direct about it, that your intention is to keep learning and move up. I feel like most of the people I know who started out assisting managed to work their way into actually cutting on their show. If you’re working for someone that doesn’t value the fact you’re trying to climb the ladder, you’re definitely associated with the wrong people.
But really, both approaches are valid. It’s a matter of what you do with that experience.
C. Expectations vs. capital costs. OK if this was the early nineties, and Avids were still six figures, the assistant editor / intern type position would be of more benefit than it is now? I have an interview for an internship at an indy studio, an assistant editing internship. They shoot on the Blackmagic 4K. I know I’ll learn a few things, and get 2-3 assistant editor credits. Worth it at all? Or should I get on eBay and just shoot my own stuff and get first hand editing experience that way?
I always think a real internship is worth it because things happen in the real world that you don’t have access to when you’re shooting stuff on your own. Also, you want to be an editor, yeah? So why bother shooting your own stuff when you potentially have access to a place where you can focus primarily on editing? If I were looking to hire someone, time spent working inside a facility will always be more valuable to me than if they’re off on their own. Plus, you make connections, and those are what get you jobs. Not that shooting on your own isn’t super valuable and can be worked into networking, but I wouldn’t choose it.
D. Careerist vs. weekend director/editor. Assuming I move to a non major market. What do you have to say about getting a “normal job” and getting away on weekends to shoot independent projects and build up filming abilities independently and over time.”
I moved to Atlanta from a non-major market — Indianapolis. It was super hard to find an editing job there, but I kept one for four years out of college. It was corporate. A majority of the work there is corporate. Some people are okay with that, some not. But the good thing is these markets actually do have producer/editor jobs within corporations that are more like 9-5 jobs with benefits. Getting a regular non-editing job altogether and working on your own stuff on your own time? Again, depends on your goals. If you want to edit features with budgets or work on primetime TV, I don’t think leaving a major market to go hone your skills is the best idea. But people do it all the time. If your goals are more broad or open-ended in terms of editing, this might work for you. Just keep in mind that when you leave the industry altogether and work on stuff on your own, trying to return is really hard.
I could never hold another job that wasn’t related to my career and only be a weekend director/editor (unless, like, I had to in order to survive.) I would feel like I’m taking a giant leap backwards. But that’s me, and my goals are more focused on specific areas of post production. It sounds like you are more open to the indie world, and that’s great. Don’t be super swayed by any else’s advice if they don’t share your goals, but don’t think that working on your skills on your own time is going to get you back to Hollywood.
blog: kyleesportfolio.com/blog
twitter: @kyl33t
demo: kyleewall.com -
[Andrew Kimery] “multicam setup or what his favorite codec is”
Sorry to be such a disappointment 🙂 I did have you darling nerds in mind and was fully prepared to go briefly into technical nitty-gritty if it seemed like a good topic, but it ended up being a greater testimonial for Premiere that none of that was actually a concern for him in the storytelling process.
I’m glad you’re all enjoying the interview!
blog: kyleesportfolio.com/blog
twitter: @kyl33t
demo: kyleewall.com