{"id":11970,"date":"2026-10-20T05:03:58","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T03:03:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.brokenmount.com\/bm\/2026\/10\/20\/cutting-primetime-editor-daniel-garber-on-taming-a-mountain-of-footage\/"},"modified":"2026-10-20T05:03:58","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T03:03:58","slug":"cutting-primetime-editor-daniel-garber-on-taming-a-mountain-of-footage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brokenmount.com\/bm\/2026\/10\/20\/cutting-primetime-editor-daniel-garber-on-taming-a-mountain-of-footage\/","title":{"rendered":"Cutting Primetime: Editor Daniel Garber on Taming a Mountain of Footage"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/p>\n

Fresh out of college, he took a job as a researcher and “glorified assistant editor” on a documentary that became The Reagan Show<\/em><\/em>. He clung to that project for three years and worked his way up to finishing editor, which he calls \u201chis grad school.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now he’s cut Some Kind of Heaven<\/em><\/em>, How to Blow Up a Pipeline<\/em><\/em>, and his latest, Primetime<\/em><\/em>, now in theaters. He sat down with Mike Valinsky on The Making Of<\/em><\/em> podcast to talk about how it came together.<\/p>\n

A documentary editor in a narrative world<\/strong><\/p>\n

Daniel’s background is archival documentary, where you sift through a pile of footage and let it tell you what the movie is. You’re the writer and the editor at once. He brought that mindset to Primetime<\/em><\/em>, working with director Lance Oppenheim, whom he’s known since Lance was a college senior. Lance encourages actors to ad-lib and deviate from the script, which gave Daniel plenty of content to work with in post.<\/p>\n

14 cameras, hundreds of hours<\/strong><\/p>\n

The production used 14 camera bodies, sometimes 10 rolling at once. Formats ranged from a cinema camera to DV surveillance footage to a colonoscopy camera and a battered Plumbicon tube camera. Daniel credits his assistant editor, Katie Gonzalez, with taming it all through detailed string-outs and multicams.<\/p>\n

The harder problem was creative. How do you make that many formats feel like one film? That\u2019s when Daniel and Lance built a visual language to teach the audience how to watch it from the opening scenes.<\/p>\n

Daniel cut the whole thing in Adobe Premiere, using Productions so he and his assistant can work on the same footage, whether working side-by-side or remotely. When on set or on edit retreats with Lance, he took a portable drive and worked from his laptop.<\/p>\n

Daniel’s advice for up-and-coming editors<\/strong><\/p>\n