Rebecca Miller

Rebecca Miller has been producing programs since 1985. She founded Rebecca Miller Productions in 1992 (in Newton, Massachu-setts), where she functions as Producer/Director/Designer/Editor of broadcast and non-broadcast video programs. Miller has worked for a long list of clients including: NBC Cable and International, Carib-iner Communications, Jack Morton Productions, Panasonic, Digital, and the PBS series Talking with David Frost. Miller recently created a video wall for Nortel Networks. She specializes in high-end pro-grams featuring original creative ideas, well designed graphics and animation, editing, and music tracks chosen to surprise the viewer. She edits on a Media 100 system. I did very little analog editing or film editing before I started editing on the Media 100. I never really considered myself an editor; if nonlinear editing had not come along, I wouldn't be editing; it's far too frustrating and not nearly as rewarding. But nonlinear editing has allowed me to do things which I would not have done otherwise. People often go out and shoot this bad, smeary DVCam, like "garbage-cam," and then they hand me boxes of hour-long reels which may have a twenty-frame gem in the middle of it. I get stuck with this stuff constantly, so my goal is to just speed through as much as possible. I have a music bin, an audio bin, an animation bin. I also have bins that are related to the footage itself: the interview bin, the stock footage bin, the good stuff, the junky stuff. Sometimes I have a bin in front of me called "Inspiration." This bin mostly has pieces that I tape off the air and then digitize; stuff that I think is really good, especially high end graphics stuff. And I study how they did it. I try to figure it out, or I just look at it for inspiration and do it my own way. Or I'll see that a piece is much better because they slowed down a particular part of it. I also study other people's reels, especially the high-end graphics reels. When you work alone, like I do, it's always good to get fresh viewpoints.