“Media Composer makes my job easy. I find the flow of working with Media Composer to be second nature.”

Searching for the Story in Reality TV 

 

Every sequence in The Amazing Race has difficulties with up to 13 teams running around the world. They have camera crews with them and everyone's in different locations. Making a cohesive scene where you're cutting back and forth between cameras and evoking the action of the moment has challenges.

 

When I get started on an episode, I know what country we're in, what challenges we're going to do, who wins the episode, who struggles and who goes home. I work with producers on a basic outline. Outside of that, I don't know how it's all going to come together. I have this moment at the beginning of almost every show when I'm looking at footage with long stretches of silence and I'll think, ‘How is this going to be a show?’ I'll have a moment of panic. At some point, it turns the corner. I see the show. There's a moment of inspiration and I'm like, "Okay, that's the in." I'm really proud of it. 

 

If a team is doing a challenge on their own, there's one camera. The challenge is making the scene feel as though it has that natural flow. We use unconventional methods of looking for good cutaways. Often there will be B-roll of what they're working on that will help us through that scene, but it's a matter of having a beginning, middle and end and having it flow naturally. 

 

On this last episode this season, there's an airplane jump. They go up 13,000 feet and the contestants jump out. One of the wing cameras didn't work. It is incredible how the scene looks minus that one camera. We always find a way to make it work. That's the magic of reality television. 

 

 

Writing the Script on the Fly

 

You have no idea what the contestants are going to do, but you need to craft the stories dependent on what you get. You can't go back and reshoot it. We use unconventional methods in that it's like we're writing the script in the Avid. We're writing the script on the cut. I get to choose every part of what we see. We get to decide the music, certain pacing, what happens before other things. Whenever we're putting together the first cut, I like to lean into the travel, the uniqueness of whatever location we're in. We try to show off the world. 

 

Sometimes things have to be cut down to keep the story in there when we're getting the show to time for network. We have different music for each country we're in and it makes each episode feel unique. I just edited a show in Romania, so I got to use Romanian music. 

 

Reality television couldn't happen without Avid, without being able to work as quickly as we're able to work in Avid. It just couldn't be done. I've cut documentaries on film and sometimes these things take years. We have just a matter of several weeks to put together an hour of television. I can't even begin to know how many cuts there are in them. I've never counted them up, but when you think about the pacing of it and everything that goes into it, it just wouldn't be possible. Avid allows me to try new things. Just yesterday I was putting together a sequence and I thought, ‘What if it happened this way?’ I had a chance to look at several options quickly and be able to deliver my show on time. The tools in Avid make it easy to be quick.

 

Media Composer makes my job easy. I find the flow of working with Media Composer to be second nature. We use ScriptSync a lot to go back into interviews. I love that when I'm doing the mixing of my sound work within the audio tool, I can make it go higher than 12 DB. I'm a big AudioSuite lover because I like to maintain creative control over the sound design. I can elevate the levels in a more natural way. Within the audio tool. It's a simple thing, but for me, it makes all the difference. Sound design is a very big part of reality television.

Katherine Griffin’s Avid Media Composer timeline for The Amazing Race

What the Emmy Nod Means 

 

An Emmy nomination is an honor every time, the hugest celebration and honor. Cutting The Amazing Race is the hardest thing I've ever cut and the most rewarding thing I've ever cut. It's nonstop.  

Katherine with current co-editing nominee for The Amazing Race, Christina Fontana, at the 2018 Female Picture Editor Nominee Mixer 

Photo credit: Paiwei Wei 

I'm elated about the nomination. It evokes in me a renewed excitement and that I get to share it with this team is incredible. The team is really amazing. I get to go to the Emmys and it's so much fun to celebrate with my friends. This year I'm very excited because there's an event that happens with the Editors Guild (Motion Pictures Editors Guild) that I get to go to that I actually started many years ago and collaborated with Avid to make happen. It's a women's event celebrating women editors who were nominated.  

The first Female Picture Editor Nominee Mixer organized by Katherine in 2018 

Photo credit: Paiwei Wei 

The Pull of Editing  

 

I started editing on a Steenbeck when I shot my first feature film. We shot it on Super 8 and I had no money, so I needed to edit it. I had edited in film school, but I had never edited a project. It was the first time I had that awesome feeling when you're working on something and 10 hours have gone by. You haven't eaten, gotten up to use the bathroom, or done anything else all day long, because you're so engrossed in what you're doing. That was editing for me and being excited about the nuances of it. I knew I loved it from the start. 

 

The magic of editing and how it can transform a story inspires me. I'll see a movie and realize that it's the editing that's sweeping me away. Editing is the final rewrite of anything. When you're sitting in the theater or watching a show and something you cut from one thing to another and your stomach just kind of falls out, right? There's just something about the power of the edit to tell that story that is incredible to me. I often think of the editing in Out of Sight. I loved that movie and the back and forth editing techniques they used. 

 

 

Keep Learning the Craft 

 

We all still take classes, still schooling ourselves on different ways to do things. We love to sit with each other as editors and often I'll see that they do something that I do all the time in a completely different way. Ask people to sit in and watch the process. Getting a front row seat to that is always helpful.  

 

The work I see requires being versed in Avid. I also think it's the best. I really do. I think it's because the creators of Avid modeled it after editing on film. Everything about it makes sense. I would recommend Avid above any other software. I have tried the others. There's an ease to learning the Avid that I love. I love that there's always five or six ways to do the same thing. I love picking up on ways that I can improve with every show I do. 

 

 

About the Editor 

 

Katherine Griffin is an Emmy and Peabody award-winning filmmaker. She studied screenwriting and producing at UCLA and writes, directs, edits, and produces for television, films, and documentaries. Katherine's screenplays and pilots have been semi-finalists in the Nicholl Fellowship and other competitions and fellowships. She collaborated on two feature screenplays with acclaimed film director Alfonso Arau and appeared onscreen with Shonda Rhimes in her Masterclass on becoming a Showrunner. In 2021, Katherine was hired by Disney+ Latin America to help oversee the look, tone, and casting for a 10-episode series entitled: Lucha. She wrote and directed the award-winning short film, Le Ballon Bleu, shot on location in Paris on the iPhone. She has earned 10 Emmy nominations, winning in 2008 for Outstanding Picture Editing on Top Chef. Her Amazing Race editing has been recognized repeatedly, including nominations in 2023 and 2024. Griffin’s diverse credits include American Ninja Warrior, Bachelor in Paradise, Project Runway, Beauty and the Geek, and Fear Factor.