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On this episode of Sips and Clips, we sit down with Jessica Halton, Copyright and Licensing Manager at Wixen Music Publishing, to pull back the curtain on music licensing from the publisher side. Jess takes us from picking up a clarinet in Dallas to landing her first music publishing job with zero referrals. She breaks down publishing versus master rights, why a songwriter with a 1% share can still say no, how most favored nations works, and what in-context trailer rights actually mean. We also get into her strangest requests (a Fortnite concert and a Muppets ride), why deals get turned down, unauthorized samples, and advice for editors who fall in love with an unclearable temp track. Plus, the joy of landing a songwriter’s very first sync.

This week on Sips and Clips, we sit down with Nena Erb, ACE, an Emmy-winning editor whose credits range from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Joy Ride to Marvel's Wonder Man. Nena tells us how one production meeting sent her to a basement edit bay at Sunset Gower and changed her career. She also shares how she went from assistant to editor in six months and what Dancing with the Stars taught her about speed and story. We get into why she cuts every scene from several characters' points of view and how growing up between Taiwan and the States shapes the stories she tells. She also explains why she sometimes drops the wrong music into a scene to find what it needs, and how she steers clear of "lizard brain" edit bays.

Cody Stoltz taught himself visual effects by painting lightsabers one frame at a time in Photoshop. He now has stunt credits on Superman and has never jumped out of a burning building. We sit down with Cody, a Chapman grad whose work spans commercials and indie horror to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Halo, Daredevil, One Piece, and Superman. We trace his path from Portland to Chapman and back, why he built a freelance career as a generalist in a field that rewards specialists, and what finally convinced him to join a studio. Then we go deep on stunt previsualization, a job most people don't know exists. Fights shot inside cardboard forts, performers in mocap suits, and a stunt coordinator flying a virtual camera around the scene in Unreal Engine. Cody also finally explains what that gray and chrome ball is for. We close on the cutting room: what a good relationship with editorial looks like, why temp VFX is the biggest double-edged sword in post, and how a late edit can quietly undo work that had intention behind every pixel.

Carsten Kurpanek spent his twenties as a tax officer for the German government. Almost twenty years later, he cut a Looney Tunes movie that almost disappeared. We sit down with Carsten and additional editor Ned Thorne to talk about Coyote vs. Acme, a film that took one of the longest and strangest roads to release in recent memory. Carsten traces his path from Germany to the ACE Internship, which rejected him once and which he now co-directs. Ned takes us from an island outside Seattle through nine years in New York to Los Angeles. They met through a Facebook post about an '80s spoof and have now made two films together that spent years unreleased. Then we get into the workflow, and it is unlike anything we have covered on the show. A full year cutting previs before the shoot, seven distinct stages for every scene, hand-drawn Looney Tunes key poses layered over 3D previs, and a complete demo version of the movie assembled before a single frame was shot. Plus puppets, tennis balls on sticks, a trained mime performing Wile E. over Zoom, and the hardest temp scoring job either of them has ever done. And then the shelving. Carsten found out the night before the news broke, on a movie that was already finished, delivered, and printed. We talk about what that does to you, why they spoke publicly about it anyway, and what the release has actually felt like now that the film is in theaters.

In 2012, Josh Steele landed in Glendale with no connections and found an apartment and a job on Craigslist in the same week. Nine years later he was helping with the pitch reels that got Coyote vs. Acme greenlit. We trace the long road in between, starting in Danville and at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, then through four unpaid internships, night shifts printing court shows to tape, and a hard line drawn to break out of unscripted and into features. Josh talks about cold emailing his way into the feature world and starting over as a PA to get there, how a union flip on the second day of production changed everything, and why VFX assistant editing became his ticket onto the shows he actually wanted to be on. Then we get into Coyote vs. Acme. Josh came on in June 2021 as previs assistant editor, working entirely remote, before the film was cast, shot, or technically even a movie. He shares what it was like building temp soundscapes out of animatics and storyboards, finding out about the shelving through social media like everyone else, and what the release finally means. We close on how the landscape has shifted across 14 years, and Josh's advice for anyone trying to build a freelance career right now.

On this episode of Sips and Clips, Michael and Lian sit down with editor Chancler Haynes, the cutting edge editor behind the Taylor Swift music video machine. Chancler came up from VHS camcorders in Michigan to Full Sail University, where he talked his way into the industry by defending one of his favorite directors on the IMDb forums. That fight got him a friend in Joseph Kahn, and a PA job on an Eminem video. A veteran of the music video scene, Chancler walks us through his process: what on set editing actually looks like when you are cutting animatics off storyboards before a single frame is shot, and what it takes to assemble in real time at the monitor so the director and the artist can watch the video come together while they are still standing on the stage. He breaks down the difference between a story driven video and a straight performance piece, how the Avid muscle memory holds up when a trailer house drops you into another system, and what changes when he moves to features like Bodied, Street Kings 2, and Ick. Twenty years, one comment section, and a whole lot of Taylor Swift videos later, Chancler gives us a good look at a modern day editing career.

On this episode of Sips and Clips, we sit down with our first ever re-recording mixer and our first Oscar winner, Juan Peralta of Skywalker Sound, fresh off his Academy Award win for F1 The Movie! Juan takes us on his incredible journey from New York to the Dominican Republic to Full Sail University, through the lean early days of sleeping on an egg crate foam pad in a shared one bedroom and asking his mom to sell his speakers back in Florida to cover rent, all the way to driving up to that unassuming Skywalker Ranch gate for his very first day (which happened to be print mastering Office Space). Juan breaks down exactly what a re-recording mixer does, how notes travel through a mix stage, and why he treats every film as a service job where the movie always comes first. He drops some seriously practical wisdom for offline editors and AEs, including a dead simple calibration trick for your cutting room that blew our minds, plus what he actually listens for in your guide tracks and why your levels matter less than you think. Then we dig into the balancing act between reality and theatrical on F1, the bold decision to embrace total silence in space on Project Hail Mary, and how Rocky's vocals were split between two mixers. Inspiring, insightful, and full of mix stage gold, this is one you won't want to miss!

We hit 50, and we did it live. For our Season One finale, Sips and Clips took the stage with Doc Crotzer, the editor behind Road House, Glee, and now the HBO two-hander Miss You, Love You. Lian takes the lead as Doc breaks it all down with assistant editor Haruka Gerald (former Sips and Clips guest) and Michael Shusterman (current Sips and Clips host). Doc traces the whole path: a high school film teacher in St. Louis, a stint cutting DVD special features, and a Final Cut 7 pilot that turned out to be the one and only Glee, where he leapt from assistant straight into the editor's chair. Then we dig into the craft of a film like Miss You, Love You. Why a movie this quiet makes every cut feel loud, and the rule that governed the entire edit: if you don't have to cut, don't. Doc unpacks balancing point of view between Allison Janney and Andrew Rannells, why the opening got lopped off at the very last minute, and how the swirling dinner scene became the single most reworked sequence in the film. Then we get the story behind the cutting room itself: Haruka's first assistant gig, the engagement that doubled as Michael's audition, and what it really takes to hand off a show mid-edit. We laugh, we sip, and we send Season One off in front of a live crowd. And don't worry, there's plenty more to come. Thank you to everyone who has come along to sip and clip with us so far.

This week we talk with Joel Negron, editor of The Nice Guys, Transformers, Cocaine Bear, and now Project Hail Mary. Joel traces his path from a childhood spent on movie sets watching his father work as a production illustrator, through college music videos and three quarter inch tape, to landing in the cutting room. We get into how recommendations and trust carried him from assistant to additional editor to a feature career, and how he adapts to filmmakers as different as Michael Bay, Phil Lord, Chris Miller, and Shane Black. Joel breaks down the art of take selection on Cocaine Bear and how you ride the line between absurd and grounded without getting too clowny. Then we go deep on the decisions behind Project Hail Mary: the 700 hours of dailies, the dual timeline structure, and adapting Andy Weir's novel with Andy on speed dial. Joel walks us through finding real emotion in scenes where Ryan Gosling is acting against an empty ball, how he builds VFX heavy sequences from plates and animatics with his assistants, and why he has worked to protect a healthy life outside the edit bay all along

This week we talk with Timothy Good, the Emmy-winning editor of The Last of Us. Timothy started his career in Chicago and worked his way from the halls of Warner Brothers Television to the edit bay of one of the most celebrated dramas on TV. Spoiler warning: this episode discusses key moments from The Last of Us (including Season 2). We get into how he broke into the industry, what it was like getting his start on the feature that knocked Titanic out of the number one spot, and how he approaches the unique challenge of adapting a beloved video game for the screen. Timothy walks us through cutting the Bill and Frank episode, the technical and emotional decisions behind Season 2's most consequential scene, and why he believes in editing by character and intention rather than strictly by the source material. We also talk about his deep commitment to mentorship, how he elevated his assistant editor to a full editing credit, and the lessons his own mentors left him with.

In this episode of Sips and Clips, we sit down with VFX Editor Stephen Cheatum (Megan 2.0, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Here, The Creator) to talk about his decade on the vendor side of visual effects and his recent pivot to the cutting room. Stephen takes us from his Lord of the Rings special features origin story, through his NYU film school chapter, to landing at Shade, Framestore, and Crafty Apes, where he once juggled 13 shows at the same time. W We dig into how Stephen built his own FileMaker Pro database from scratch to automate pulls on Megan 2.0, what it took to relearn Avid in the weeks before his first client-side gig, and the leap of faith involved in saying "I'll figure it out" when the union calls. Plus we touch on how Stephen's coffee intake should probably concern a physician.

This week on Sips and Clips we sit down with Len Ciccotello. A New Jersey native, Len got his start at the legendary commercial shop Lost Planet alongside Hank Corwin before spending years building his craft as a BTS and EPK editor on projects ranging from Hidden Figures retrospectives to Ready Player One. We break down what BTS and EPK work actually involves, how the field has evolved with streaming and short-form, and what it really takes to transition into scripted when nobody hands you a roadmap. Len walks us through the burnout that ended one career and the panic attack at a Broadway play that started another. He shares the spreadsheets, sticky notes, and self-imposed deadlines that got him from mob scene to his first scripted assistant gig with Natalie, and what it's been like building a long-term working relationship with editor Nina Erb. We also get into the skills that transfer seamlessly, the ones that require a relearn, and why community ended up mattering more than the content.

Mother's Day is around the corner and to kick off the season we have Carmen Hu and Christina Mar on the show today! Carmen and Christina are both Los Angeles-based assistant editors and moms, and this is our first-ever double guest episode. We dig into how each of them found their way to the cutting room, what it's actually like being pregnant while working in post, and the real talk on navigating maternity leave as a freelancer. Carmen and Christina share what supportive colleagues look like in practice, how parenthood has reshaped their priorities and their philosophy on running a cutting room, and the advice they'd give anyone thinking about starting a family in this industry.

In this episode, we sit down with Francesco Russo, post PA on the live action Avatar: The Last Airbender series (no worries we keep things totally spoiler free!) Francesco walks us through his path from Lancaster, Pennsylvania to the cutting room, including a stint at Chipotle to the Zoom call that changed everything. We get into what it's really like supporting five editors at once, managing 30-plus lunch orders, and how to make the most of the downtime that nobody warns you about. We also dig into the post PA vs. assistant editor which to start with debate, the value of shadowing, and the pieces of advice that led the path for Francesco's start in the industry.

This week on Sips and Clips, Michael reunites with his college friend and certified Catan rival Kris Krager, a motion graphics and VFX artist at Paradise Creative in Los Angeles. If you've watched an ad campaign for Fallout, Bridgerton, the Garfield movie, or Vanderpump Villa, there's a good chance you've already seen his work, whether you knew it or not. Kris walks us through his path from a Disney kid in the Santa Clarita Valley to Chapman, where a donut shop day job turned into an animated senior thesis about robots making your breakfast. We talk about his early internship working on a Thumb Wars revival with Steve Odenkirk, the hike that led to his current job, and how he learned the ad agency world from the ground up. We dig into what motion graphics actually are and where they end and VFX begins, and what the day-to-day collaboration between a motion graphics artist and an editor looks like. Kris breaks down what makes a note useful, what makes a note difficult, and why specificity is everything. We also get into style guides,, 13,000-pixel-wide NBA arena banners, and video game cinematic dreams.