The room is set to a crisp 62 degrees. The lighting is dim. The sparse furniture is modern, tufted leather. Above three, curving computer screens, the viewer's eye is driven up the wall to a pencil-thin 4K television overhead.
The setting is a Hollywood editor’s dream and Adobe hopes their new edit suite on 4th Street in Downtown Santa Monica will earn Adobe Premiere the chance to edit next year’s box office smashes and Oscar nominees.
“We’re really proud of this room,” said Mike Kanfer, Adobe’s principal strategic development manager and an Oscar-winner himself for his work on Titanic. Kanfer is part of the team dedicated to working with A-list directors and editors to fine-tune features in the hopes Premiere will eclipse Avid and Final Cut to become the go-to software for Hollywood. The Santa Monica location serves as both an office for employees and a training ground for established editors.
“If the software is getting in the way in any shape or form, that’s something we need to improve on so we jump in and hope to address that,” said Karl Soule, the voice of Adobe’s YouTube channel dedicated to teaching Premiere Pro.
The company has earned the nod from industry heavyweights David Fincher (director, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) and the Coen brothers. Premiere was used to edit Stranger Things, Gone Girl, Hail, Caesar!, Only the Brave, The Florida Project and Deadpool.
The company views Santa Monica as a strategic location.
“It’s amazing to be right here in the center of this,” said Senior business development manager Van Bedient, who grew up in Santa Monica. “The restaurants, the beach, quick access to the freeway and quick access to our customers. It was a no-brainer.”
Bedient said the company is already working with a Hollywood editor who lives in the Santa Monica area on a major project for Netflix. He said the city is also home to “YouTube luminaries”- young editors who’ve mastered multiple programs to edit professional looking content for the Internet.
“It’s been an interesting process,” Bedient said. “This younger generation of filmmakers, they’re not bound by ‘it has to be done this way.’..they just do it. Nothing seems to stop them. They don’t have the boundaries that traditional processes have introduced.”
With the new Santa Monica location, those editors will likely have a say in the future of non-linear editing, too.
kate@smdp.com
