Behind the Title: PS260 Editor Matt Posey
postPerspective recently wrote a profile on editor Matt Posey's career and what it's like working at P.S. 260. From childhood inspirations, favourite editing plug-ins, to current highlights in his editing career with Depeche Mode's VR/360 Music Video, "Going Backwards" and Sophy Holland's Documentary, The Illustrated Man, Matt offers personal and unique insights into the wonderful and ever-changing world of media!
Can you describe your company?
PS260 is a boutique editorial house (with offices in Venice, California and New York City) specialising in commercials, music videos and features. We also have a motion graphics and visual effects department. We’re a small team that fosters real creativity and experimentation in the work that we do.
What's your job title?
Editor
What does that entail?
Editing is essentially taking video, audio and images and crafting them into the most effective telling of a story. It is an extremely collaborative process that involves many components — understanding the technology, working with directors/writers/creatives, coordinating sound and effects — but at its heart, editing is telling a compelling visual story over time.
What would surprise people the most about what falls under that title?
I suppose for people who aren’t a part of the post process the most surprising thing might be how drastically a story can change in the edit. There’s that saying that a film (or short, or commercial, or whatever) is written three times: first as a script, then as it ends up being shot and finally as it’s edited. Very rarely does a final product end up as “boarded,” and I still find it amazing how such small changes can completely change the viewer’s idea of what’s happening on the screen — what if we held this shot so the character blinks weirdly one more time? Or how about we add a sound effect of his keys rustling? What if we open with the other character so now we’re in their POV for the rest of the scene?
Editors can frequently act as fixers — with the stress and unpredictability of productions, things don’t often go the way they’re planned and the editors are then tasked with making sense of a puzzle with missing pieces. I love being challenged to find some outrageous way to tell the story, and we want to tell it with the material that’s in front of us.
What's your least favourite thing about the job?
Sometimes these creative solutions to production problems work really well and sometimes they feel a bit lacking. It’s at these times you know these problems could have been solved if editorial was involved earlier in the process. I’ve been lucky to be involved in some projects through pre and post production and, along with minimising prep in post and allowing for more time to be spent on creative editorial, potential issues were caught and ironed out before they became bigger concerns.
What is your favourite time of the day?
Lunchtime is always a pretty great thing. PS260 makes sure we’re all well fed.
If you didn't have this job, what would be doing instead?
Probably desperately trying to garner YouTube hits for my speculative fiction essay videos.
How early on did you know this would be your path?
I’ve been editing since I was a kid, re-editing Star Wars audio books on cassette tape to tell new stories. Later, I began capturing analogue video that I shot or recorded from the TV with a Dazzle Movie Star box and editing in Adobe Premiere 5.0 (I never thought I’d go back to Premiere almost 20 years later, but I did). I always knew I wanted to work with video and loved to experiment with new effects and ways to craft a story, so I went to art school and got a degree in video art. After that I found I needed to make rent, so getting paid to do what I love was the easiest decision I’ve ever made.
Can you name some recent projects you have worked on?
Recently, I’ve done a lot of video work for Depeche Mode. The director Tim Saccenti and I created the live visuals for their current tour, along with two performance music videos and three 360 music videos, which should be out very soon!
I’ve also just finished a wonderful feature documentary, Illustrated Man, about tattooed men and the history of tattooing in NYC, with director Sophy Holland. Currently, I’m working on some videos for Elizabeth Arden, starring Reese Witherspoon.
You have worked on all sorts of projects. Do you put on a different hat when cutting for a specific genre?
The goal of every project is the same: to make the audience feel what you want them to feel, whether it’s laughter or sadness, or that rush of adrenaline as they’re making their way home from the theatre. But each project comes with its own set of limitations.
With TV spots, you’re confined to 30 or 60 seconds and you have to temper your grand ideas of how best to tell the story with the economy of time, not to mention the sometimes limiting concerns of the brand or product you’re representing. Long form and features can allow you all the time you may need, but you have to be mindful of the audience’s attention span.
The best thing you can do is continually learn, and have at-the-ready techniques to help you with a specific form or genre, like knowing when to be in a wide or a close-up shot, using the camera’s distance to create tension or reveal emotion. Or in a comedy, for example, knowing not to reveal new information right after a big joke because the audience will miss it while they’re laughing (thanks Ren & Stimpy).
What is a project that you are most proud of?
My first feature, We’ve Forgotten More Than We Ever Knew, was an incredible learning experience for me. It taught me so much about how to cut dialogue, build out a scene and carry a character’s emotional arc across 90 minutes. Plus, it’s just a really cool film.
What do you use to edit?
Right now I’m using Adobe Premiere CC 2017. The recent updates have finally stolen me away from Avid and Final Cut.
What is your favourite plug-in?
This is like asking someone what their favourite book or movie is, so it’ll probably change depending on the day of week. Right now I’m into using stock reverb plug-ins, or things like iZotope Vinyl to mix in sound elements in interesting ways. Tomorrow it could be star wipes.
Are you often asked to do more than edit? If so, what else are you asked to do?
Definitely. Because of the progression of technology, clients are expecting more and more, and the divide between offline and online is narrowing. I do a lot of the online effects in the edit, whether it’s motion graphics, correcting eye lines when the actors stray, or comping split screens.
In the features and music videos I work on, I have a lot of freedom to work on bigger CG shots and effects set pieces, which is always a lot of fun.
Name three pieces of technology you can't live without.
Of course, no one can live without their phone nowadays. It does help a lot for my job as well, allowing me to remote in to my workstation to check on a render or reference an EDL at a session.
The other two would be my corded Apple full-size keyboard and Logitech M500 mouse. They’re amazingly simple tools, but they make things so much easier.
What do you do to de-stress from it all?
It’s all about having a good work-life balance, which is an issue most editors have to grapple with. Fortunately, I have some amazing people in my life who make sure to occasionally pull me away from all the screens.
