We were lucky to catch up with Joe Bernhardt recently and have shared our conversation below.

Joe, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you tell us about an important lesson you learned in school and why that lesson is important to you?

A lot of editors at my school only edited for school projects and nothing else. Their lack of experience made it so when they came across unexpected difficulties during their project like not knowing how to edit a particular scene, or just problems using the editing program, they didn’t know what to do and it set them back. Starting Jr year of college I started trying to work on as many projects outside of class as possible so that I could come across as many problems that I could. The more problems I had experience with, the easier it would be to fix problems with my editing on future projects. One example is from an internship I had over the summer of 2024. I was editing for a YouTube channel and the videos needed a lot of custom text, but the text tool in Avid, the editing program I was using, is terrible so I learned how to use the text tool that was part of an Avid plugin called Boris FX. I’ve now used the Boris text tool on basically every project I’ve done since then, and in ways I could never have done with the standard Avid text tool.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am a Freelance Video Editor for basically any video you can think of, but I specialize in commercials and narrative story telling.
I’ve been working in my industry since college where I majored in Television Narrative with an emphasis in editing. I started of working for various YouTube channels, but I’ve moved on to doing advertising videos for CD various luxury brands.
I work with clients to take their footage and bring it to life by putting it together with sound and visual effects as well as music. I like my clients to give me as many notes as they can, no matter how small, in order to take their vision for the video they have in their head and put it on the screen.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I one day want to be a union editor working for a narratively driven TV show, but it’s a long journey to get there. My next goal is to find as much steady non-union work as I can in order to accumulate the hours I need to join the Editors Union.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

YouTube is the greatest resource for learning how to edit I know. There are so many channels that will teach you the tools of an editing platform, as well as different editing techniques. One of my favorites is called The Editing Podcast. They have professional industry editors on as guest who go over scenes from movies and television they they’ve personally edited and walk the viewer through their thought process of why they edited the scene the way they did. It’s an incredible resource that I think every editor, or even anyone interested in movies, should watch.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://joe-bernhardts-website.carrd.co/?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAacw32hriGQCpRrcP5RtF-KfobqYea0ZljE1b8QaTz48fm8JVgxnF4qHE-ESQA_aem_DUCERerq44BLIlI6O9tYLg
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-bernhardt-453330262?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app