Cutting It Close: Editing 'Vegan Pop Eats' on a Tight Turnaround

In Vegan Pop Eats Ep 2: The Future of Food host Angela Yvonne takes us on a journey to look at veganism in the past, present, and future. It’s an educational, upbeat episode featuring food so mouth watering, I craved a vegan burger during every edit session.

James edited Vegan Pop Eats’s pilot episode in 2024. When he passed the torch to me this year, he thought it would be a relaxed timeline, and we’d have over a month for the edit.

Then, the schedule was sliced in half; I’d have two and a half weeks to cut a 26 minute episode.

Definitely not panicking.

I was eager to get my hands on the footage. With a pre-established look and feel, and a team that had worked together before, I was confident we had just enough time. 

Our fearless executive producer Buki Elegbede whipped up an outline and Angela started me off with some interview selects. I was able to cut together an assembly that was such a strong foundation, much of the work to get from the assembly to picture lock was trimming the episode to run time. 

It was the music that really made the edit style come together for me. I like to bring in score as early into the edit as possible, as it’s often the key to the pacing and feel of a finished piece.

Buki pulled a number of tracks to get us started. I was able to search for tracks similar to his vision, and found that the best music matched the show’s energy and supported fun visual transitions. 

Of course, after the edit was locked, there was turnover to sound and color to think about. Shout out to Edits Etc. members Will Freeman and Michael DiGioia. (Working with consistent and talented team members is always a plus to working within our Edits Etc. team)!

James set our post team up in Slack, so we could communicate quickly and effectively. We were able to keep each other updated on asset uploads, deliveries, and any hiccups or questions.

James also checked in with each of us individually to make sure we had what we needed to do our best work.

I’m used to working under pressure by now, but working with New Jersey PBS and Edits Etc. on Vegan Pop Eats alleviated some of that pressure that comes with every fast paced job.

Knowing that I was working with a team I trusted, and feeling supported by my post supervisor and producers made all the difference.

I hope you tune in and watch our episode!

Like Angela Yvonne says: “It’s dope on the green side.”

Watch the full episode below! ⬇️