Steven Blanton

AI EDITING is very real and it’s very good and anyone telling you otherwise is lying or narcissistic about their own taste and “craft”. The taste the employer cares about is their own. The taste the audience cares about is their own. But most editors think that their taste is all important, same for most designers. The amount of an analog cope by professional software users is mostly just the bargaining phase of grief. Actual analog is where human craft is going to matter but not as an artistic flourish, but where a tangible body is meaningful. Photography, video production, art design, lighting and grip work, even physical packaging design and build outs. If it was communicated in a brief over email, or where someone sits over your shoulder as a creative director… That creative director can give the brief to AI, like Claude and Claude can do the same work in the same software. For video editing… by the time they upload the files to a Google Drive, across time zones for 4K footage and confirmed you downloaded it and got the brief… The AI will have the rough cut and more done in Premiere or DaVinci… At that point it’s not even just about the money… it’s about speed of execution and guaranteed deadlines… Which also means the capacity to do more production when editing is not the bottleneck anymore. And so many people in the world of editing or design… a world I was already in before some of you reading this were born…. I was using Macromedia and Corel when some of you were in swaddling clothes … Have become either so narcissistic or romantic about the idea of your “art” or “craft” or you’ve ever done this on the internet… never in a corporate office or at an agency… Deadlines actually matter. And your employer/client unless they are just as romantic as you… needs to fulfill a contract and needs to do more work… Because unless you’re a kid living off mommy and daddy in the suburbs… yes you’re in it for the money… Every video that can be shipped is another video that ads and sponsors can be sold against. Every design package fulfilled to spec, means room to take on another contract. You’re paid because your “art”, your “process” produces a result. Without the result, there is no paycheck… and you’re back to a hobby that has a subscription cost due every single month…. Yes, a human in the loop matters for polish. And that now means you don’t necessarily need the most technical editor or designer in the world… It might mean someone who was on set that day and thus has more context than getting an email brief matters. Or that the ok camera talent, now that all the mechanical work is done dam simply communicate what they want by literally voice dictating their vision to the software. Your technical ability was a moat and it was earned. But I have been using these tools since 1996…. 30 damn years… And they are better to work with than many of you who are 30 years old for a reason… You assume it’s about saving money, but most of it is how unprofessional and hard many of you have become to work with… And the fact you’re too emotionally invested in your style. Most of your clients are much more concerned about getting it done, and shipped on time… and with the least anxiety and emotional frustration possible. And that for many will mean doing it with AI, or with a person using AI that is more physically available and is a high trust human that knows how to manage their anxiety and expectations instead of negotiating every creative decision. Speed and Trust are more valuable now than the technical moat and monopoly you used to hold. You’re over valuing your own sense of taste when that is NOT what you were hired for … it’s what you like about yourself and your craft. The taste that matters to your employer is their own. And this is the worst this technology will ever be. When it’s less near sighted and less hard of hearing… The cope will be much harder.