Editor Jamie Boyle Chose Adobe Creative Cloud to Craft Tribeca Doc ‘Breaking the News'

This post was written by Kylee Peña and originally appeared on Adobe blog on Jun. 8, 2023.

Documentary filmmaker and editor, Jamie Boyle, used Premiere Pro and Frame.io to bring this film to the big screen.

We sat down with Jamie to hear more about the making of Breaking the News, and learned how her passion for filmmaking came to fruition. Read on to hear how she found purpose behind the camera (and screen) using film as a tool to witness, protect, and navigate through difficult experiences.

Can you tell us about your experience as a filmmaker and how you got started in the industry?

During my junior year of undergrad, after being rejected twice from my university’s prestigious journalism school, my dad suggested film production. His reasoning was as simple as it was astute, “You’ve always loved movies.”

That same year, I made a short doc for my Intro to Film Production class that followed two of my family members as they grew increasingly sicker while being prescribed massive doses of opioids. A week after I finished the film, my sister went to inpatient rehab, and six months later, my mom got off them as well. I’ll never know how much I did or didn’t do, including making that film, helped or hindered them, but having the camera with me as a witness, protector, and tool, was what I needed in order to navigate through it. I knew that behind a camera (or when I have my editor hat on, behind the screen) was where I wanted to be.

How and where did you first learn to edit?

My undergrad film program required us to film on Super 8 and 16mm cameras and edit the analog film itself. I fell in love with editing during those many nights spent in the dank basement of the film building – cutting and splicing and dreaming things into being. The inky smell of freshly developed film, the whir of the machines, the tangible feeling that you were crafting something into existence – I was enthralled with the entire process. And nothing will teach you how to cut with intention, like having to physically untape a splice and change it if the cut isn’t working. I’ve now worn every hat imaginable, director, producer, cinematographer, editor, but editing is where my heart lies, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

Credit: Tribeca Film Festival

How do you begin a project/set up your workspace?

My physical workspace is very peaceful and tidy. It makes the inevitable messiness of starting a new project easier to bear. It’s always a huge relief when a stellar Assistant Editor (AE) has been on the project immediately before and backed up, transcoded, synced, organized, and logged all the footage. Every feature edit I’ve done has been on a tight, independent budget, so the aforementioned work is usually incomplete and understandably so.

We were lucky enough to have an incredible AE, Anna Ramirez, part-time on Breaking the News. This film would simply not have gotten done without her. There’s always time spent getting a large project as prepared as it needs to be in order to dive in fully and not have to worry about it again for the duration of the edit. It took me a while to learn how creatively freeing it is to never spend any time or energy hunting down a piece of footage or audio that was never logged or put it in its rightful place. Once that’s out of the way, I insist on watching everything myself. It’s a step that is being increasingly sacrificed in favor of quicker turnaround times, and it’s not worth it in the long run. I’ll never be convinced the film doesn’t suffer without that precious time of discovery.

Tell us about a favorite scene or moment from this project and why it stands out to you.

It’s really hard to choose. I have so many favorites. Some of the most enjoyable scenes to cut were the montages. The opening montage lays out how the white male lens has dominated the news industry in the United States since its inception. In order to fully appreciate what The 19th* was up against and dive into the lives and work of the individual journalists as quickly as possible, I knew we needed to accurately frame the historical bias of mainstream media in the U.S. and do so in around 90 seconds or less. I was screening some particularly upsetting news coverage from 1964 about the three civil rights workers killed in Neshoba County, MS. I came to a section when the anchor in the studio was handing off to two field reporters (all three of whom were white and male) and that simple interaction spoke volumes. I lined up a bunch of those handoffs from different points throughout history. It ended up dictating the tone and shape of that montage; a kind of dark absurdity that energizes as much as it enrages.

Credit: Tribeca Film Festival

What were some specific post-production challenges you faced that were unique to your project, and how did you go about solving them?

Where to begin? This project had four main participants, each with their own area of expertise and critical storyline. They were all spread across the U.S. and almost never interacted in-person due to the pandemic. All of the main narrative points unfolded over video calls, of which there were somewhere around 500 hours worth. There was a bounty of riches in terms of deeply moving and powerful material.

Shaping it all into a cohesive whole that simultaneously did everyone’s experience justice was an enormous challenge to say the least. Instead of focusing on one individual’s journey as the primary narrative arc, I looked at The 19th* news itself as the main character, i.e., how it was challenged and shaped by the people within it who put themselves on the line time and again in order to fight for something better for everyone. I also looked for the places where the participants were experiencing something similar and used those to inform and expand on each other. For instance, when one journalist was covering societal bias, another might have been struggling with the bias in their immediate environment. Pairing those together created space for the breadth and complexity of the individual experience while also functioning as a critical narrative point in the story of how this singular news organization came to be. These journalists were living what they were reporting on and it was shaping The 19th* in real time. I felt like that had to be at the forefront of this film.

What Adobe tools did you use on this project and why did you originally choose them?

I edited on Premiere Pro, and we used Frame.io for screening and feedback. I had just recently switched from a different editing platform, and I tend to be somewhat change-averse, especially when it comes to tech. I’m not a techy by any stretch of the imagination, and what is paramount to me is that I can edit without having to think about or spend any energy navigating the tool(s) I’m using. As everyone who has made the switch knows, the transition to Premiere Pro was incredibly seamless. I found it particularly impressive that Premiere Pro allowed users to adjust the quick keys to match those of other editing software. That kind of thought and attention to detail is so appreciated when time and energy are precious commodities.

As for Frame.io, I don’t know how we would have finished this project without it. One of the directors recommended it for screening cuts and giving feedback. She had used it on past projects and liked it because it keeps versions organized, allows the viewer to add notes on exactly the corresponding timecode, and comment on all other notes. I usually prefer to have conversations about feedback so I was hesitant at first. I’ve never been so happy to be wrong. We developed a process whereby unless anyone else on the team disagreed, the note was executed. Anything there was disagreement over was either settled within the back and forth on Frame.io or was flagged for phone discussion.

This post was written by Kylee Peña and originally appeared on Adobe blog on Jun. 8, 2023.