The Nowhere Inn, starring real-life friends, Annie Clark (a.k.a. GRAMMY award-winning recording and touring artist St. Vincent) and Carrie Brownstein, who join creative forces and band together to make a documentary about St. Vincent’s music, touring life, and on-stage persona. They quickly discover unpredictable forces lurking within-subject and filmmaker that threaten to derail the friendship, the project, and the duo’s creative lives.
Emmy and ACE Eddie nominated editor, Ali Greer, sat down with us to discuss why she chose Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Photoshop to edit the film. She also tells us more about her first experience editing, her favorite workflow tip in Premiere Pro and After Effects, and her advice for editors starting out in the field.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7igJaXJreU
Image Source: IFC Films.
How and where did you first learn to edit?
I started editing in early high school. I took a summer program for film and that was the first time I opened a project to edit. I continued to edit little films with my friends throughout high school and then went to film school at the University of Colorado at Boulder. In film school, we learned to edit film on a Steenbeck editing system. Throughout that time, I continued to create side projects and learned Premiere Pro and After Effects. I became very interested in animation as well.
How do you begin a project/set up your workspace?
I have a bin structure with numbers for everything I will need, that way the bins are always in the same order and it’s easy to find. I make sure there is a bin for all the scenes, my cuts, music, SFX, VFX, etc. I also make sure all my keyboard shortcuts are set up in the program.
Tell us about a favorite scene or moment from this project and why it stands out to you.
Editing The Nowhere Inn was a lot of work on montages and connective transitions. Many of the transitions were done in After Effects, so it was fun getting to experiment with different ways of distorting the footage and blending shots together. It was a lot of building montages, then deconstructing them, and then making them again.
Image Source: Ali Greer.
What were some specific post-production challenges you faced that were unique to your project? How did you go about solving them?
One challenge we faced during post-production was figuring out how far we wanted to take the animated transitions. We had to balance how surreal to make the film, while remaining authentic. Another challenge was finding creative ways to weave together the concert footage with the film and documentary footage.
What Adobe tools did you use on this project and why did you originally choose them?
We used Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Photoshop. It was so wonderful having the ability to seamlessly transition from Premiere Pro to After Effects because most of the scenes had some After Effects work.
Image Source: Ali Greer.
Why were they the best choice for this project?
After Effects is such a powerful tool for creating effects. We were able to quickly transfer scenes over to After Effects and use a lot of layers as well as blending, distorting, and tracking effects.