Our editing workflow: from 500 clips to a finished deliverable

A typical hotel shoot generates 300 to 500 clips over 3 days. Without a system, post-production turns into chaos. Here is how we organize everything from ingest to final export.

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Step one is immediate organization on set. Every memory card gets labeled with the date and location. Files go into folders by day before anything else happens. This takes 10 minutes and saves hours later.

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In Premiere Pro, we use a color-coded bin structure. Red for interviews, blue for B-roll, green for aerials, yellow for detail shots. Every editor on the team knows the system. No guessing.

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We rough cut on day two of the shoot. While still on location, we build a loose assembly. This helps us spot gaps in coverage before we leave. Missing a shot on location is fixable. Missing it after you fly home is not.

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Sound design happens before color grading. We lay in ambient audio, music, and any voice-over first. The audio pacing drives the edit rhythm more than the visuals do.

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Color grading is the final creative step. We apply our base look, match shots, and fine-tune for the specific mood of the project.

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Export happens in multiple formats. Master file for the client archive. H.264 for web delivery. Platform-specific crops for Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. One project often produces 10 or more deliverable files.