Editors Bootcamp

Saturday, November 22nd 9:00 am - 3:30 pm

GBH Boston

Thank you to our presenting sponsors!

MPC Programs are made possible by the generous support of our Annual Sponsors. Editors Bootcamp is presented with additional support from The Production Group at GBH and AVID.

Special thanks to our program committee: Tim Mangini (Senior Director of Production Technology, GBH), Arnie Harchik (Editor, GBH), Barry Clegg (Senior Editor, FRONTLINE), and Eric Gulliver (Producer & Editor).

Program & Schedule

9:00 - 9:30 am

Check In

9:30 - 10:00 am

Editing: The Hard Way vs The Easy Way

A practical look at tricks and techniques that help assistant editors and editors breeze through the technical chores behind every project. We’ll explore simple workflows and time-saving approaches that can replace tedious manual steps, keep projects organized, and streamline the parts of the job that often slow you down — all drawn from real-world examples used in fast-paced production environments.

Featured

Sean Cardwell

Post Production Engineer, GBH

In a room full of artists I am an engineer, in a room full of engineers I'm the artist. 5 years ago I found my way from editing and animating into the Video Engineering and IT world. Since then I've been working to building ways that help make video editors lives easier, and smoothing the relationship between IT and production.

10:05 - 10:45 am

Art of the Stringout

While working in any complicated filmmaking environment, coming up with creative editing strategies to help you organize and visualize story ideas is where the stringout comes into play. It’s a place to mashup and conceptualize, while also getting the big picture overview on reams of footage and shot coverage. This presentation will offer tips and tricks in both Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro on how to do just that.

Featured

Mark Chesak

Editor

Mark a long-form documentary editor with over 25 years of experience that includes field producing, independent film and experimental video. From archival to live action, his role in the edit bay covers story craft to finishing. Credits include: “Crash of Flight 111” for NOVA, “Dangerous Prescription” for Frontline, “Surviving Mars” for Discovery Channel (edited on location in the North Pole), plus numerous shows for History Channel, NAT GEO and NBC Sports. Mark was also the finishing editor working directly with FRONTLINE founder David Fanning on the two-hour PBS documentary “In the Age of AI.” Additionally, he recently co-produced and edited The Petal Pusher a short directed by David Abel, that is premiering at the DOC NYC film festival this month.

Mark is also a professor, Avid Certified Instructor and Adobe Premiere Pro Trainer. He has taught classes and given lectures at Boston University, Emerson College, and The Maine International Film Television Workshops, Harvard’s Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies, and at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

10:50 - 11:30 am

Building an Editing Career in 2025

The editing field is evolving fast – from how editors get their start, to where work happens, to the skills that matter most today. This candid conversation brings together working editors from documentary, television, commercial, and digital media to share what the career landscape really looks like in 2025. Panelists will discuss their day-to-day work, how the industry has shifted in recent years, and the realities of freelance vs. staff roles, hybrid workflows, and building a sustainable career in Boston and beyond.

Whether you’re just getting started or redefining your next step, this session offers grounded advice on breaking in, navigating changing expectations, honing the right skills, and staying adaptable in a dynamic post-production world.

Featured

Arnie Harchik

Editor, GBH

Arnie Harchik a is long time, emmy award winning editor in the Greater Boston area. The majority of Arnie’s work has been with public television and GBH. From FRONTLINE to ZOOM... Arnie has done both story telling and finishing work for many GBH shows. His most recent projects have been with the Lifestyles unit cutting shows such as Life with Loi, Simply Ming, and Homemade Live. Each winter Arnie cuts WGBH’s High School Quiz Show. And this year he’s also working with GBHKids on Ruff Ruffman Content Creator and America’s Awesome Kids.

Shondra Burke

Editor

Shondra (Merrill) Burke is an accomplished editor whose documentary credits include Errol Morris’s Fast, Cheap & Out of Control and First Person series, as well as I Can’t Breathe, The Flute Player, Circle Up, Growing Up Ethan (NYT Op-Doc), My Louisiana Love, Indelible Lalita, Adrift, Losing Our Religion, Divided We Fall, and early editing on Have You Seen Andy, Tre Maison Dasan, and Mighty Mary.

She is also a longtime commercial, corporate, and campaign editor, cutting work for clients such as Arbella Insurance, Shields, UVAHealth, Ford, Sony, MathWorks, Markforged, Radcliffe Institute, Smith College, MassArt, and the Boston Public Health Commission, with spots airing widely throughout New England sports broadcasts. Burke has taught editing at Harvard University (Editing the Documentary master class), MassArt, the San Francisco Art Institute, and as a mentor at Maine Media Institute, and currently edits This Old House Classics and This Old House Short Forms for ROKU.

Chris O'Coin

Editor

Chris O’Coin is a Brooklyn-based editor known for his work on investigative documentaries. His credits span PBS, HBO Max, Showtime, Paramount+, Discovery, Hulu, Vice, and ESPN. His most recent project was Kissinger for American Experience

He’s best known for his work on PBS’s Frontline, including the Emmy-winning and critically acclaimed Amazon Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos—the most-streamed documentary in Frontline history. His 10+ other Frontline projects include the Emmy-nominated Elon Musk’s Twitter Takeover, Netanyahu, America, and the Road to War in Gaza, Age of Easy Money, The Power of the Fed, and Putin’s Attack on Ukraine: Investigating War Crimes, which won the prestigious RFK Award Grand Prize.

Earlier in his career, he served as editor and supervising producer at Vice, where his television and web work won a Canadian Screen Award, several Webby Awards, and a Clio Award. He began his editing career in Boston working with the company Killswitch Productions as an assistant editor and culminating as an editor and writer on the feature film Push: Madison vs Madison, which won the Audience Award at the Independent Film Festival of Boston and screened on ESPN and PBS.

Kelly Hansen

Owner and Editor, Forage

Kelly Hansen is the founder and owner of locally-based post-house, Forage. An editor and voice-over artist, Kelly has over 15 years of professional experience in all things short-form, from broadcast TV commercials, to micro-documentaries to social content. Some of her clients include Under Armour, Archer Roose Wines, Hood, Bose, Toyota, Verizon and Pop Tarts. When not editing she gets far away from screens by getting lost in mountains, performing music, collaborating on food-based photoshoots, or trying out strange new hobbies.

Samuel Harchik

Senior Video Production Specialist - iZotope / Native Instruments

Samuel Harchik is an editor, videographer, director, and motion graphics designer from Boston. Since 2019, he's served as Senior Video Production Specialist for Native Instruments & iZotope. A 2015 graduate of Berklee College of Music (Music Production and Engineering), Sam began his career producing student music videos and assisting with Berklee's million-subscriber YouTube channel. He's since produced many videos for his own project Aviations and other major artists, including Dream Theater, Dead Poet Society, and Arch Echo, as well as brands like Dingwall Guitars and Darkglass Electronics.

Sam specializes in Adobe Creative Suite, DaVinci Resolve, and Native Instruments/iZotope audio tools, and is currently on his 18th round of revisions on his latest edit.

11:35 - 12:00 pm

Why We Cut with Media Composer

This session shares practical, field-tested tips for getting more out of Media Composer - from lesser-known features and workflow tricks to new and upcoming tools that make editing faster, smarter, and more collaborative. Presented by two longtime editors who now work at Avid, helping shape the product, this is a look at the features we’re most excited to see in the app because we still use it ourselves.

Featured

Rich Camp

Senior Product Owner, AVID Technology

Rich Camp is a Senior Product Owner at Avid Technology, leading product development for Media Composer. Before transitioning to product management three years ago, Rich spent over a decade in TV post-production in NYC, working on everything from unscripted reality to scripted narrative. This hands-on production background informs his approach to building editorial tools, and his passion for video production workflows drives his commitment to creating solutions that solve real editorial challenges.

Eli Hardy

Senior Engineering Director, AVID Technology

Senior Engineering Director at Avid Technology, leading the Media Composer development team. A graduate of Emerson College in Boston, Eli started working with Avid Media Composer starting at Chedd/Angier Production Company on Scientific American Frontiers in Watertown, MA and Paul's Place Editorial in Kenmore square. Over the last 30 years, Eli has worked on various corporate, commercial, broadcast, and sports television projects. Having worked his way up Avid from frontline Media Composer support representative in 2002 to Engineering Director, Eli has had the unique experience of being both a user and developer of Avid Media Composer and has strived to bring that experience into Media Composer to improve it for all assistant editors and editors in the media industry.

12:00 - 1:00 pm

Lunch Break & AMA Networking Tables!

During the lunch break, pull up a seat and chat with working editors, assistant editors, and post production specialists about your interests and questions.

1:00 - 1:40 pm

It’s a Wild Wild World

In this session we’ll dive into the evolving digital video landscape, where platforms like YouTube and TikTok are entertainment powerhouses competing with streaming services. We’ll unpack the essentials of successful social and digital video content and talk through case studies of digital video experimentation at GBH.

Featured

Joanie Tobin

Supervising Producer, GBH

Emmy-winning content creator and cookie aficionado, Joanie Tobin specializes in innovative, audience-first digital video strategy and production. She develops, writes, directs, produces, shoots and edits everything from short-form vertical video to news documentaries, video podcasts and interactive livestreams, on platforms from TikTok to YouTube. Currently supervising producer for digital video at GBH, she produces cross-platform digital video content and advises on strategy for teams including GBH News, Antiques Roadshow, NOVA, GBH Kids and The World. Her work has been recognized by the Webbys, Shortys, New England Emmys, the Educational Writers Guild Awards and The Washington Post Peeps Diorama Contest.

1:45 - 2:25 pm

The Art of Color

Color grading shapes how an image feels, how a scene connects, and how a story carries from shot to shot. In this session, we’ll break down how to evaluate a shot, establish a clear order of operations for building a solid foundation, demonstrate a neutral grade, and explore practical ways to match one shot to another. We’ll also touch on adding a creative look once the base image is working. A focused, real-world look at approaching color with intention and consistency.

Featured

William Rogan

Senior Online Editor and Colorist, America’s Test Kitchen

Will Rogan is the Senior Online Editor and Colorist at America's Test Kitchen, working on their two flagship broadcast television shows, and shows destined for streaming TV services. As an adjunct faculty at Emerson College, he designed the color correction course he currently teaches there. Will has also worked as a colorist on several award winning narrative and documentary films.

2:30 - 3:20 pm

Timeless Tools for Editing

While editors and assistants face constant change in terms of technology and workflows, the essentials of a compelling visual narrative remain timeless. This session will focus on the craft of storytelling to deliver an emotional response in your audience, no matter what format or genre you work in. Powerful tools like contrast, cause and effect, mastering time and also some little known principles from traditional Japanese theater that really make a story pop.

Featured

Mark Solomon

Editor

Mark Solomon is a visual storyteller with a celebrated body of work as an editor, author and public speaker. His cut his teeth as a film editor on Space Jam in 1996 and went on to edit highly regarded animated movies for the next three decades. Shrek, Chicken Run, and Frankenweenie are among his award-winning highlights. His book OVER THE SHOULDER, about storytelling from an editor’s perspective, is available now.