A taste for travel: Andrew Gunadie’s journey to “Nom Voyage”

Andrew Gunadie, digital producer and host of Travel Channel’s Nom Voyage, takes a hands-on approach to editing episodes using Adobe Premiere Pro.

Image source: Andrew Gunadie.

Award-winning music and video producer Andrew Gunadie — or gunnarolla to his YouTube fans — has come a long way since co-creating the viral video Canadian, Please. So far, in fact, that he can now add digital producer and host of Travel Channel’s Nom Voyage to his portfolio.

The series, which started out as a fun project for foodie and travel-lover Gunadie, explores “all the bites, worthy of a flight.” After producing two segments for his own channel showcasing the dining experience in two of North America’s busiest airports — LAX and Toronto Pearson International Airport — Gunadie received a call from an executive producer at Discovery Inc., Travel Channel’s parent company.

“I was shocked,” he says. “I was doing it just for fun and building my portfolio of branded content. But it’s been a dream come true. I have an opportunity and a budget, and it validates my worth in this business.”

Gunadie went on to shoot six more airport-themed episodes for the first season of Nom Voyage, and a second season of the series focused on dining experiences in cities, theme parks, and festivals. Each episode is true to not only the passion Gunadie has for the subject matter, but also the professional polish that caught Discovery’s eye in the first place.

After studying media theory and television production, Gunadie landed an internship on the reality show Canada’s Next Top Model. There, he learned how to arrange hours-worth of footage alongside music and special effects to create engaging material — skills he routinely applies to his own content.

“When you have footage that, on its own, may not be that exciting and you add in the right pacing and audio, you can really elevate the viewer experience,” says Gunadie. “Picking out moments and soundbites helps to convey the essence of an eight-hour shoot in a compelling five-minute video.”

A full plate: talent, producer, and editor

In addition to hosting and producing each episode of Nom Voyage, Gunadie continues to take a hands-on approach to editing. Whether he’s working with another editor or editing himself, he always uses Adobe Premiere Pro. “I’ve been a long-time user of Adobe Creative Cloud apps,” says Gunadie. “They help me work faster and more efficiently while giving me the freedom to experiment artistically with content.”

If another editor is responsible for the first cut, Gunadie makes sure he arms her with the details he needs — beginning with a paper edit outlining the structure of each episode. This helps with the tight turnaround times they face to release each episode.

From there, Gunadie might tighten up the pacing or make other edits to ensure a consistent look and feel. That means he has a lot on his plate — but features such as Speech to Text and Captioning Workflow in Premiere Pro streamline the editing process while maximizing accessibility and SEO.

Gunadie also appreciates the efficiency of having all his creative assets in a single library that can be organized into binders, making them easier to find when working on multiple projects at the same time. And motion graphics templates, provided by the network he’s working with that he can access in Premiere Pro, make the editorial workflow even faster. He uses Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to edit promotional images for Instagram and has also started experimenting with video clips from Adobe Stock. “I can save time and money by not having to outsource projects, and by just going into Adobe Stock to find motion graphics that work,” says Gunadie.

Image source: Andrew Gunadie.

Once his final stamp is on the cut, it is sent for color grading. The result is an episode that looks and feels like the rest — regardless of who the editor was. “Each episode is a journey,” he says. “You miss out on a lot if you’re always chasing the destination — it’s during the process where you learn the most.”

For Gunadie, that lesson had helped him to redefine success and secure other work within the Discovery family, including producer and host for HGTV Handmade’s Handmade Tested and Travel Channel’s Hit Me With Your Best Spots and TRVL’s Late Night Rewind. Most importantly, he’s doing work that showcases his art to an appreciative audience, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Watch the Tips & Tricks Tuesday interview with Andrew Gunadie and get access to host Valentina Vee’s tutorial guide.