Patrick Southern – Workflow Architect at Frame.io

Patrick Southern is a Workflow Architect at Frame.io and Editor on the upcoming feature film ‘Faith Based’, starring Jason Alexander, Lance Reddick, Margaret Cho, and David Koechner. Patrick moved to Los Angeles from Oklahoma in 2012 to pursue his filmmaking goals. OWC Host, Cirina Catania, has been watching his rise from assistant editor on the OJ Simpson documentaries, to editor on branded videos and the independent feature, ” Faith-Based,” to workflow architect at Frame iO. To what does he attribute his success and what can other aspiring creatives take away from Patrick’s story? Follow along as Patrick and Cirina have a lively conversation about life in the filmmaking lane.

If you enjoy our podcast, please subscribe and tell all your friends about us! We love our listeners. And, if you have ideas for segments, write to OWCRadio@catania.us. Cirina is always up for new ideas!

For more about Patrick and FrameiO, visit him at Frame.io

For more about our host, Cirina Catania, visit cirinacatania.com.

In This Episode

00:51 – Cirina introduces Patrick Southern, the Workflow Architect at Frame.io.
04:52 – Cirina asks Patrick about the materials and tapes they found that were not released to the public while creating the O.J. Simpson documentary.
09:52 – Patrick shares his experience as an assistant editor.
15:15 – Patrick describes what it takes to be a good assistant editor and what gets you promoted to the next level role.
20:02 – Patrick shares two of the proudest achievements in his career.
24:02 – What is frame.io, and how does it work?
29:45 – Patrick talks about their feature film, Faith Based, a movie about two friends who realize all “faith based” films make money, so they set out to make one of their own.
34:44 – Patrick tells us an interesting story about how he started his career.
39:41 – What is Patrick’s bucket list?
43:14 – Visit Frame.io’s website, frame.io, to check out the next-gen video collaboration platform for high-volume creators.

Jump to Links and Resources

Transcript

This is Cirina Catania with OWC Radio. Our featured guest of the day, Patrick Southern, I have been watching Patrick for over seven years now since he moved to Los Angeles from Oklahoma. And I have to tell you, I’m so happy to talk to you, Patrick, because you are truly a real success story. You are the epitome of what happens when somebody works hard, is amazing at what they do, and has a great attitude. I remember, and I don’t think I’ve ever told you this. I remember turning around to Phil Hodgetts and Gregory Clark at one of our events, and I said to them, “You just wait, this guy is going to be a superstar,” and now that I’ve totally embarrassed you, say hello.

Thank you so much for having me on the show today. I really appreciate you.

I’m recalling some of those presentations that we were doing together at the Apple store in Santa Monica, do you remember that?

It’s forever ago it feels like, yeah,

I know. And then you went to LumaForge. Tell us about the LumaForge journey? Well, actually, let’s start before that because I think when I first met you during the LAFCPUG meetings, you were part of it, and you were talking about the O.J.Simpson Film, right?

Yeah. Back in 2015, I was a part of two separate O.J.Simpson documentaries, one for A&E and the other for the Lifetime Movie network. Both were two hours long, and I was the assistant editor. And they were both cuts in Final Cut Pro X. And so being that there hadn’t been that many feature-length documentaries made in Final Cut Pro X that had been documented so that people could share workflows widely with people. I tried to do the best that I could to document the workflow that we had on those two projects and ended up doing some articles on sep.co along with a number of talks here and there about what we had done. And I’m sure you remember this bit, it was the first documentary to use transcript mode in Lumberjack, which has since been superseded by Builder. But to that point, there wasn’t really a great way to work with transcripts inside of Final Cut Pro X. And since we were working with 30 or 40 deposition tapes from the O.J.Simpson civil case, it was pretty important that we be able to browse through those transcripts, find the stuff that we needed to cut in, and then cut it in. And at that moment in time, we had to do a paper cut upfront, and then I would go through finding the parts of the deposition tapes that matched the paper cut that our director had created related to that part of the paper cut and I would assemble a timeline which ended up taking at least four to eight hours per scene if you can call it a scene within the documentary. And then after having done that process, we can start cutting and be rolling that sort of thing. But years later, Lumberjack came out with a Lumberjack Builder, which now gives you the capability to go through and do a paper cut within the builder application. And that will then create a Final Cut timeline for you, which is significantly better than the workflow that I’ve asked for at the time back in 2015. But the workflow we had back in 2015, was still better than the workflow we’d had previously, which was just having to try to find that line within the transcript, may be based on time code, or if we weren’t lucky enough to have time codes and it was just hunting, backing and searching.

This was a lot of historical material and didn’t you find some things that nobody had ever heard before?

Well, I wouldn’t say that nobody had ever heard before. Definitely, the jury in the civil case had the opportunity to hear some of it as to the lawyers and the judges involved in the civil case. And the tapes had been largely locked away over the last however many years, and I think it was 20 years at the time, it’s not closer to twenty-five years.

I often see the assistant editor as a technical editor more than someone who's assisting the editor. Click To Tweet

Yeah, that’s what I’m remembering that these were tapes that you guys somehow unearthed from the vaults, and the general public had never heard some of this stuff. Pretty amazing.

Right. That’s largely the case. Yeah, there were a few of the tapes like two or three of the tapes that had been available to the media over the years. So there had been a number of specials and whatnot that had grabbed some of the tapes, but I do remember specifically, coming across a moment in his deposition that I know that I definitely had not seen ever, and I don’t know if anybody else had ever seen where he was asked about his Bruno Magli shoes, and there was a photograph of him wearing those Bruno Magli shoes on an NFL football field while he was working as some sort of a sportscaster at the time, and he’s handed the photo and the look in his eyes, not just the look in his eyes, his eyes got just about as wide as a human eye can possibly get before the eye pops out. His eyes go super wide. And you can see the gears spinning in his head and a number of seconds pass, and he finally says, “The majority of this is me, but starting at the belt going down, I’m starting to think that this might be doctored. Those aren’t my pants, and those are definitely not my shoes.” This was before the time of Photoshop, so I don’t know how reliable the idea of that photo being doctored was at the time.

Well, how did it feel to be working on a project that really has turned out to be very historical, and you’ve won some awards for these?

Well, that project was a lot of hard work. And it felt good, because after we had completed the documentary, some footage that I had, actually, I was the first person to digitize a lot of those tapes, so there’s this large archive that we’d had access to that not everybody had access to. So there was a team, creating 30 documentaries about O.J.Simpson, who reached out to the production company and ended up using a lot of the footage. So that felt pretty good for a more notable documentary about O.J.Simpson to use our footage, but that ended up parlaying into, for me a job at 1895 films for the better part of a year I think, where I went from being an assistant editor, and slowly became an editor over time, ended up cutting my first documentary television series while I was there but also worked as an assistant editor on a documentary called the Challenger Disaster: Lost Tapes. And Challenger Disaster: Lost Tapes, ended up winning the team an Emmy. So I do have my own Emmy sitting in a box about four feet away from me right now. But I had it on a shelf, and then we rearranged our shelf and might rearrange it again because it was kind of nice to have it out visible.

Oh, come on, you need to unpack that. Put it on the shelf.

I might do that.

Put that out. You’re so modest. There are a lot of assistant editors who wonder how to do their job better, like what do I do to be really, really good? And is there a chance that I will become an editor someday. Do you have some advice for assistant editors about what they can do really well that is important?

Yeah, I mean, there are a few keys to being an assistant editor. I think number one is mastery of the technology. I often see the assistant editor as kind of being a technical editor more than someone who’s assisting the editor. You could almost call it like a technical editor and then a creative editor almost, right? But the assistant editor whenever I was working as an AE, the prime focus that I had was I needed to make this footage shine and organized so well, that the editor can find whatever shot they’re looking for, or whatever tidbit or a piece of an interview that they’re looking for without having to spend a whole lot of time on it. The sooner they’re able to find the footage, the faster we’re able to get stuff into the timeline. The faster we get stuff into the timeline, the more time can be spent on refining the story. So being able to be a master of technology is good, and it’s okay too though, to say I don’t know or to say that I’m overwhelmed, or I don’t have enough bandwidth for a thing because it’s always better in my experience to set proper expectations upfront than to over promise and under deliver.

I agree with that. Please be honest, if you’re looking for a job, people, be honest with what you know how to do, it’s okay that you don’t know how to do something. A lot of people say, well, I take the job, and then I figure out how to do it, but as somebody that is currently actually looking for a new assistant editor, because I moved to San Diego, it’s really frightening when you have a huge project, and you’re going to trust those media files to another human being, who if they don’t know what they’re doing could screw the whole thing up. It’s really scary from the other side looking in, right?

Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, it’s invaluable to have a good assistant editor. When I started on the O.J.Simpson documentaries, I’d never done television documentaries. I knew Final Cut Pro X very well, but I didn’t know how things were done on television. I didn’t know how to turn over things to Pro Tools or to Resolve because I didn’t have to do those things on the regular at the job I’ve done previously. So there was a lot of problem solving that had to go on. But because I was already familiar with the tool itself, figuring out the other pieces for me was relatively easy. I don’t know if everyone is wired the same way. But I think that something that is also imperative is if you don’t know something, don’t freak out about it, and don’t say that something is impossible to have been done. Take time, use your resources, that’s something I learned. I worked at an apple store back in Tulsa, one of the biggest things that they taught me was use your resources, you have the same resources available to you that everybody else at the store has, right? And so as assistant editors, you have access to the internet, and you have access to other assistant editors, you have access to the help menus of the application that you’re working in.

Having a workflow is a great way to collaborate with others since it promotes automation and efficiency.

Oh, come on. God forbid anybody would read the Help menu.

I used to sit down and read the Help menu page per page for Final Cut Pro Classic before Final Cut Pro X came out, just so that I could know how to use the application. Now mind you, I at the time I was going for a Final Cut certification, or that was like a dream of mine at the time. But they’re written with the intent of being read, and they’re great for review later on if you’re trying to find a specific subject or topic. But it also does not hurt to read through at least the first couple of chapters of helping you because they’ll oftentimes have overviews over the entire application and go significantly beyond that. The other thing that I found was the value of getting to know the various third-party vendors in the Final Cut ecosystem. I mean, that’s how I met Philip and Greg, was through seeing the thing that they were already doing and wondering to myself, well, I wonder if that can be parlayed into this transcript thing. And I reached out and said, “Hey, Philip and Greg, do you think we can do this thing?” and Philip’s initial response was, “Well, no, I don’t think so,” and then they sat on it for a little bit. And Greg came back a couple of days later and said, “Well, I think I’ve figured out a way we can do this.” Knowing your resources, I think, is extremely important when working as an assistant editor and not giving up when a problem becomes difficult.

So now that you’re editing, when you’re interviewing assistant editors, what kind of questions do you ask them, and what do you expect from them?

I’ll be honest, and I don’t do a whole lot of interviewing assistant editors ahead of time. Usually, what my experience has been going to things like the Creative Summit and going to LAFCPUG and being part of the internet community. I get to No people over time. So normally I don’t have just a slew of questions, because I’ve gotten to know this person over time and I’ve talked editing nerdery over time with them and sussed them out that way. But the things that I look for are the ability to face a problem if you can find a problem, and you don’t bring it to your editor and say, “Hey, how do I do this?” every single time, right? Or, “Hey, we’ve run into this, so I can’t do this thing that you wanted me to do.” If you find creative ways to solve the problem before coming to me to solve your problem, that’s a big check in the box, for the fact that my job as the editor now is to be focused on the story and getting those sorts of things taken care of. So if you’re coming to me asking a technical advice, and I always thought that sounded so snobby, and nose in the air back in the day, but the truth of the matter is that when you’re an editor and an assistant editor comes to you, ask you all the technical questions now, instead of focusing on your job, you’re helping them do their job when their job is to help you do your job. And so what I would say is if you’re an assistant editor, and you’re wanting to go far, I would say be proactive about finding ways to solve problems without having to involve your editor upfront. If you’ve tried multiple different troubleshooting steps, or you’ve looked through your resources, and you still can’t figure it out, by all means, go to somebody who has more experience in that area. Oftentimes, editors don’t have experience in those areas because they’ve been focused on the creative so long that they’ve forgotten the technical. That’s the thing, again, that I look for is somebody who is technically competent and who is proactive about finding solutions.

And they have to be organized.

Yeah. Someone who’s organized absolutely. And somebody who is eager to learn, because that eagerness can turn into an opportunity to potentially help with assembling scenes, if necessary, or it can turn into adding sound effects, or it can turn into solving problems in a way that I would never have thought to solve the problem. So that ability to creatively approach things, eagerness to learn, and the ability to use the resources before coming to me immediately because I have worked with people in the past that their first reaction is to come to me and ask me how to do a thing as opposed to taking even five minutes to think about it for themselves.

Right, taking some initiative.

Yep. So those are the kinds of things that I look for in an assistant editor.

So Patrick right now you have an amazing new position as workflow architect at Frame.io, which we’re going to talk about in a minute. I’m so excited about that for you. Prior to that, you were at LumaForge, which is another wonderful company. So can you talk about the transition to LumaForge and what you were doing there? And then how you got to frame.io and what you’re doing there?

Yeah, absolutely. So LumaForge makes this crazy cool thing called the Jellyfish and when I was working on the O.J.Simpson documentaries, Chuck Braverman, he was the executive producer of the show, he and I both met up with Sam Messman. And Sam showed us both at separate times and unknown to each other. We didn’t know that we both had a meeting with Sam, one day after the other, actually. And Sam showed us this box with some tin foil on the top and showed us multiple computers connected to that box, and they were all sharing footage, and they were all playing multiple cameras simultaneously inside of Final Cut Pro X in the multi-cam. So, Chuck and I determined that Oh, you know what, we need this thing for the show that we’re working on. And at the time, the Jellyfish was not actually a product, and it was just kind of a proof of concept that LumaForge had at an office in West Los Angeles, almost Culver City. I think, in any case, we ended up getting the very first Jellyfish ever on our show.

I didn’t know that. That’s awesome. Jellyfish serial number.

Yeah. And it was probably about a year and a half after that, the TV series that I had been cutting in 1895. The first season was done cutting, and they didn’t have any other shows for me to jump on at the time. And instead of taking a pause in my work, I’m determined that I wanted to find something stable just to be able to pay the bills for a little bit before going back out into the freelance world. And so I called up Sam, and I said, “Hey, Sam, you guys at LumaForge do some pretty amazing stuff,” by that point, I had already done a number of trade shows with them just as a kind of like a friend of the company who came in to help pitch the product because I’d been the first person to use it. And so Sam offered me kind of a contract position, and then about a month, and a half later became a full-time position. And we didn’t know what I was going to do with the company. It was just a startup that had six people, and we kind of all did a little bit of everything. And over time, it went from being a temporary job to being a long term job, and I was there for almost three years and ended up working with some partners to put together some pretty amazing events. I think probably my two proudest achievements were our team getting to put together The Faster Together Stage for three years in a row at NAB.

Those were awesome events.

Two out of the three of those had around 30 people. And then the last one, I think it was like eight sessions, but was filling in the spot of the supermeet that year. So being able to, with no experience having done this mind you, being able to go in and create an event at NAB that became expected and became a kind of a staple for a number of people was pretty exciting, and something I’m very proud that we were able to do as a team. Around the end of 2018, I got a text message from James Heck, and he told me that there was a new Blackmagic rock Kodak that had hit that day. And my realization was, “Oh, we should probably do a video about this, this sounds pretty cool.” So Raibar Chener and I took the LumaForge’s Blackmagic Ursa Mini Pro and downloaded the firmware that enabled Blackmagic raw recording, and we went out and shot some test footage and came back to the office and shot a talking head.

The sooner editors are able to find footage, the faster we're able to get stuff into the timeline and more time can be spent refining the story. Click To Tweet

Your talking head by the way, for those who don’t know, it was you’re talking head.

And my head was talking. That is correct. And we did a couple of these upfronts. And the first one, I think, got something like 10,000-20,000 views or something along those lines very quickly. And so we determined, it’s probably a good idea to keep doing these sorts of things. So we started actually doing a series called Edit Bay A for LumaForge. Basically the majority of the next year, we continue doing those, and I think we had something like 25 of them by the end of my time at LumaForge, but frame.io took notice and Emery around NAB of this year, asked me “Well, do you know of anybody like you who can do the sorts of things that you’re doing, but for frame.io?” and I mentioned a few names, and he was like, “Well, yeah, I’ve already talked to those guys. Thanks for trying to help me out.” So, we kind of circled back around that conversation, he was in town, I don’t know if it was June or July or something. And we decided to go grab some tacos, and the subject came back up, and I finally asked, “Were you looking for just anybody to do that, or were you looking specifically for me?”

And he then admitted it, right?

I don’t remember his exact response, but by the end of our meal, we were talking about me going through an interview process and seeing if frame.io is the right match. It was an opportunity to continue doing the sorts of things that I was doing for LumaForge, a company that I still very much love and still very much support.

Well, you’re always gonna be part of that family, Patrick. I remember the good old days going to that first office, it was like a warehouse type of building and all of you, remember the kind of like the finished gray cement floor and the dog running around. And people in the front with all the equipment literally being built in the back of the office. Anyway, so you’re always going to be a part of that family. They love you.

Yeah, I love them too, some of my good friends over there.

I can’t imagine people listening don’t know what frame.io is, but can you explain to our listeners what frame.io is and what they do.

Frame.io started, it was something like four years ago, I want to say. But originally, it was just a review and approval system with integration for Final Cut Pro X. That was kind of where it started. So what that means is, you finish your edit, and instead of uploading to Dropbox, or to Vimeo, or wherever and get an email with time-coded notes back later. Frame.io was akin to some of our competitors, a tool that allows you to upload your footage or upload your timeline directly to frame.io, and you can give time-accurate comments. So you could watch through, find a spot that you thought needed a change, and you could start typing, and they would set a timestamp comment in that place. Because of the integration with Final Cut, you could actually export your timeline, and it would either upload the entire timeline, or it would actually upload the Individual clips of that timeline to frame.io. So you can export your timeline, upload it, you could get comments back, and then I don’t remember if it was immediately or if it was soon thereafter, frame.io started adding the ability to import those comments into Final Cut Pro X as a compound clip, or was it a generator with markers on top and the markers word the comments. So frame.io now has integrations in Final Cut, inside of Premiere, inside of Resolve that allow you to synchronize the playback in the cloud with your timeline inside of your editing software. So if you’re in Final Cut, Premiere or Resolve, you can actually playback the file, in Premiere and Final Cut, it’s a Panel or Workflow extension that lives inside the application or in Resolve frame.io is actually built into Resolve. They use our API to actually add our functionality into the application, so comments actually come directly into your timeline as markers inside of Resolve.

That makes life so much easier, doesn’t it?

Yes, it does. So you’ve got those integrations, you’ve got the ability to upload bins or individual files, you can download full-resolution originals or proxies of dailies inside a frame.io now, so you can manage like an online, offline workflow using frame.io. You’re also able to pass back and forth Premiere projects or Final Cut Pro XML. So if you’re wanting to exchange like maybe I’ve logged this set of 10 or 20 clips, I can send over an FCP XML through frame.io along with the clips, and that can be pulled down on the other side. And I believe you’ve got the ability to drag from Final Cut into the workflow extension inside of Final Cut, and it will automatically generate an FCP XML of any metadata that belongs to that file or those files.

I remember when they announced that, wasn’t it last year like around the Creative Summit that they announced that?

That’s correct. I found out about this because one of their team members interrupted one of my sessions that was about collaboration to say, why don’t you press that button in frame.io, and I pressed that button in frame.io, and it blew my mind.

Oh, wow. Well, let’s talk about live on stage. That’s pretty cool. So what does the workflow architect do at frame.io every day?

Well, I’m essentially the Art Vandelay of the office, I spend my time creating video content like I was doing at LumaForge, but it’s educational content about workflow, either using frame.io or one of its partners or sometimes just friends of the company. So the first video I did was actually for Sony for their Sony FX9 camera. I’m still creating video content for filmmakers, but in addition, I’m working with partners of ours to help think up different ways that they can work with frame.io to make really interesting workflows for our mutual customers. I’m also spending time on the product side, giving feedback on certain things. So, for example, I might spend time, more time actually editing at the company than other people, so I might unearth bugs or certain workflow needs and be able to articulate those. But also, I don’t know if you saw the press release, but Michael Cioni, who’s formerly of Panavision, formerly of Light Iron, recently joined the frame.io team. And so he and I are working together to kind of sync up some other things that could potentially be done.

That’s awesome.

He’s kind of got a new wing of the company that he’s heading up and I get to help out with that, to a certain degree. And so it’s a mix of those things, the term Workflow Architect is a little bit vague because it encapsulates like four or five different things.

In the end, the most important thing in keeping your job is to be a team player and keep doing the best you can.

Because you know how to do so many things when Michael made the announcement recently, I’m thinking, “Okay, Where’s he going?” and never occurred to me that it was frame.io, but I think it’s a perfect marriage. He’s a great guy, and you guys, I think you guys are going to make some magic together. Before we go, I do want you to talk about in the middle of all of this, Patrick, you’re very calm, you’re always just doing your work, and in the middle of all of this, you’re editing a feature film called Faith Based. Tell us about that film, because who’s in it Jason Alexander and some other great people, right?

Yeah, we got Jason Alexander, the original Art Vandelay, we’ve got Lance Reddick from the John Wick series, The Wire, Bosch, and many other things, I mean, he’s been in a lot. We’ve got David Koechner of Anchorman and The Office, Margaret Cho a stand-up comedian, she’s in it, we’ve got Chris Marquette, famously I think from other things, but my favorite movie that he’s in is Just Friends with Ryan Reynolds. He was also in the latest season of Barry and has been in a number of other things over the years. We’ve also got Richard Riehle who, oh my gosh, his credits are innumerable, but he was famously in Office Space as the jump-to-conclusions guy. Who else we’ve got Marlon Young, we’ve got Christoph Sanders.

Geez, what a cast. So, who’s directing this?

The director is Vince Masciale, and his partner Luke Barnett, and Luke is one of the actors in the movie, actually, but also the writer of the movie. He and Luke have a company called Lone Suspect, and we work together on a TV pilot they did back in 2017 called Captain Karl’s Institute for the Abnormally Bizarre starring Daniel Stern, who is the narrator of The Wonder Years, he was in Home Alone as one of the Sticky Bandits, and City Slickers. So I’ve done that project with them back in 2017, Vince has also done a movie called Fear, Inc., which is quickly becoming a cult classic horror film. If you go onto iTunes, it’s currently 99 cents to rent for the month of October. So yeah, Vince is a great guy, and his wife, Krista, actually was my boss at LumaForge.

I love that.

That was kind of an interesting turn of events. I’ve worked with him on Captain Karl’s, and then she presented at The Faster Together Stage and then became my boss, and then I edited his feature film, and then I went to frame.io. So that’s kind of how those events turned out.

You have been for many years and still are an example of somebody who builds relationships, a team player, and is well-liked by everyone who works with you. And when people ask me, “What’s important? How do I keep my job?” I always tell them, just be a team player, do the very best job you can, be a team player, think about what the people around you need, and treat it like family because it really is. You alluded to our behind the scenes tech family, and it’s really true, there is a core group of us who kind of traveled together, the people that are building the tech I admire so much, people that are using it, people that want to use it. We’re all friends behind the scenes, and that’s wonderful. I think we all travel in packs, don’t we?

I agree. It’s kind of funny, I don’t remember if it was Philip or Greg or someone else in our group, but they started to call the Final Cut Creative Summit, a Final Cut Family Reunion. But it’s so true, the same group ends up at all sorts of events, whether it’s Final Cut, or Premiere or whatever, but if we end up traveling in that pack. And I’ve seen you and Philip and Greg and the team at Rapid Design, we just kind of run into each other and grab drinks or go hang out at the nearest restaurant or whatever. And we really have gotten to know each other significantly better than you’d expect for people who live in diverse places.

Well, there’s an aspect to it too that’s enjoyable, but it’s also important too because when you are on assignment, and you have to put a crew together, you don’t have a chance to do it twice. You have to, and that’s why we tend to work with people we know because we can trust that they’re going to do the job. And so these jobs like the jobs you’ve had in the last few years, it didn’t happen to you overnight. You built relationships, and you proved yourself every step of the way. I call it this meteoric rise from a mild-mannered assistant editor with a great attitude and good knowledge of tech to a full blast editor. I know I’m embarrassing you again. I love doing that.

Oh, it’s really kind of you, Cirina. I really appreciate it, but I really do appreciate over the last number of years, you’ve checked in, and we’re always very supportive even when I was just an assistant editor, on nothing of note at the time. And I don’t know that I would come where I am a meteoric rise, I appreciate the notion. But it really does come down to knowing people who help each other out. I mean, really, that’s how I am here because I’m gonna make this as fast as possible. I met this woman through working at an Apple store, and I knew her daughter in high school, her daughter had died between the time that I’d been in high school and when I met this woman, so we kind of bonded over the mutual loss of her daughter. Obviously, it was a much larger loss for her than for me, but she was a friend. And then when she found out I was moving to Los Angeles introduced me to the brother of her son in law, who happened to maybe right at about a year after I moved out here, introduced me to my first job at a creative firm actually as a full-time editor, but he also was the one who pointed me towards Light Irons Outpost University, which is where I met Michael Cioni back in 2012. And I got to know Michael slowly over seven years before we finally started working together, but Sam’s introducing me to that job introduced me to Michael Metzdorf. And Michael Metzdorf is the one who got me the job on the O.J.Series, and the O.J.Series ended up leading to my job in 1895. And also, later to my job at LumaForge, and my job at LumaForge led me to get to know Emery, which led to my job at frame.io. So ultimately, it was a path that I could not have carved myself, not to go on and on about this, but I do think that there must have been some sort of higher power involved in this somehow. But there was also clear science that getting to know people and having a genuine interest in them as human beings and being a good person to work with and working hard at your job does pay off over time. And what Cirina is that saying about luck is opportunity meeting preparation, right? If you aren’t prepared, then when an opportunity arises, then luck doesn’t happen, I suppose.

Yeah, you get the “see you later.”

Yeah, we never have control over the opportunity. The opportunity is something that’s always out of our hands. We always have control over the amount of preparation we put into something.

Yeah. So the Faith Based film, do they know where that’s going to be distributed yet? Are you just in post on it? Where is it?

So post is largely done with any independent film while you’re still in the search for a sales agent and distributor, and all that sort of thing. There’s still things that could be changed later on once the distributor comes on, they may say, “Hey, we need you to change this, this and this.” So we’re currently holding on that for the last month or so, as it’s being passed out to sales agents, for them to review and determine whether or not they’re going to take it on and then they’ll take it to distributors from there. So, right now, distributions do not wind up, but we’ll see.

It’ll happen.

You’re familiar with that process, I’m sure, working on county story, you have done quite a bit of work for what like National Geographic and other people that the distribution was kind of already built into the project.

Being a master of your own craft is good, but don’t forget that it’s also okay to say you don’t know if you’re overwhelmed. Click To Tweet

I think what helped me the most learning about the distribution and marketing of films was my tenure at the studios. That was very fortunate for me. I always wanted to work in production, and when I first moved to LA, the only job available out there, it was a big actor strike, it was right when MGM and UA had merged after Heaven’s Gate, and so the only job available was in publicity, and then I moved from there into marketing. But over the years, and then at the new UA, worked for a distributor, so I learned a lot about that. But the business has really changed in the last, I would say 15-20 years, the business of marketing and distributing has changed an awful lot. I want to interview the team and you on Faith Based, and so we can go under the hood a little bit more on that. But I want to ask you what, what is on your bucket list that you haven’t done that you really want to do? Do you have a secret wish that I can sort of put out there into the universe for you?

That’s a good question. I’m really excited about getting to work with Michael Cioni on some of the initiatives that we’ve got going on at frame.io, I’m really excited to see where that goes. I really am looking forward to Faith Based getting distribution, and I really look forward to continuing to do films with my friends and doing high-quality work with my friends and doing stuff that makes us all laugh. Like the amount of time that Vince and I spent in the edit bay, cracking up at jokes from the set. Even the 75th time we’ve seen him, there’s something rich and endearing about that process. I don’t know that I would ever want to go edit things for people who aren’t friends or again, just because it’s already a stressful process unto itself. But when you are working with people that you know that you enjoy and that you know that you can spend 24/7. If you can find those people that you’re willing to spend that sort of time with, then the process actually becomes enjoyable and fun. I have worked on projects where not knowing people going in sometimes they ended up being great, amazing people that you enjoyed working for, and sometimes they didn’t. If I’m going to be taking on side work while working full time at frame.io, better be with people that I like spending all the free hours of my evening and weekend with.

So speaking of people that we like, we’re both going to be in a lot of our friends is going to be at the Creative Summit in November. You’re giving a couple of talks?

I am.

Tell us what those talks are going to be.

Well, the first talk on Thursday evening is going to be about mixing for both stereo and surround sound inside a Final Cut Pro X. And I’m going to talk about how with Faith Based actually we were able to take a stereo mix and turn it into a surround sound mix in about five minutes.

Wow, very cool.

And that’s the mix we played in our first preview at a theater in Hollywood at Red Studios. We were able to turn that around pretty quickly. So I’ll be talking about that on Thursday night. And then Friday morning, Vince, the director, he and I will be presenting on our camera through the cutting room process on Faith Based. That’s great, including a number of workflow tricks that we learned along the way. And some workflow tricks that we brought from what we’ve done on Captain Karl’s and, there’s also a piece of software called post-lab that we got to use that we never used before that enables multiple people in multiple physical locations to collaborate inside a Final Cut Pro X.

Opportunity is something that’s always out of our hands. What we have control over is the amount of preparation we put into something.

Oh, I’ve not used that. I have to try that. Well, this is awesome. I guess I will see you next at the Creative Summit, well, no, I’m gonna try to go to LAFCPUG on the 23rd this is probably going to air after LAFCPUG though. I’m going to try to get in just to see everybody, but I will definitely see you at the Creative Summit. And I’m still your biggest fan, and I’m following you. I am just so happy that we met, keep up the good work, and keep encouraging other people, and just being a bright light for so many other people. And I know you’re working really hard and it was nice of you to take time out of your day to do this. And we’ll talk again really soon. I’m so proud of you, keep it up.

Thank you, Cirina. And I’m happy to talk to you on any platform at any time. You’re a good friend and have been a good mentor and support over the last few years. So I really appreciate your time.

This is Cirina Catania with OWC Radio. I’ve been speaking with Patrick Southern, workflow architect at frame.io, and an editor that I’ve been following for many years. I encourage all of you to go to owcradio.com. If you like what you’re hearing on these interviews, please subscribe, tell your friends about us and definitely go to macsales.com and show our sponsor OWC how great they are by taking a look at what’s available to you there. And you know what I tell you guys, every week, get up off your chair, and go do something wonderful today. Take care, and thanks for listening.

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Establish a standard workflow to automate and streamline repetitive tasks. This will help minimize work-related problems and increase efficiency.
Collaborate with skilled individuals who can get the job done. Production is always a team effort and it’s an advantage to have team members who can perform their tasks seamlessly.
Have regular meetings with the team to ensure everyone is on the same page and everything is done according to plan.
Make sure there’s a backup of files just in case an emergency arises. It’s always good to secure a fallback whenever things don’t go according to plan.
Keep an archive of clips to protect content. Some footage may be considered crucial parts of history. Doing this makes it easier to find your footage in case it’s needed in the future.
Protect my files especially pre-production footage that cannot be released to the public. Make sure they’re secure in a safe storage environment.
Keep perfecting your craft. Master editing apps and continue to hone your skills. Constantly learning is great for growth in every career path.
Be organized. Sort out memory cards accordingly or label footage appropriately so it’s easier to find.
Be a team player. Show respect to everyone you work with because there’s a huge chance you’ll work or do business with them again.
Check out Frame.io’s website to learn more about efficient video workflows.

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For more than 25 Years, OWC has had a simple goal. To create innovative DIY solutions to give you the most from your technology.

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Cirina Catania Editing Filmmaking FrameiO OJ Simpson OWC OWC RADiO Patrick Southern

Patrick Southern – Workflow Architect at Frame.io & Emmy-Winning Editor

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