Live Sessions with Jake Benjamin

We caught up with editor Jake Benjamin to chat about remote workflows, his new creative studio and working with Louper Transmit, our native plugin for Premiere Pro.

You’ve just opened your new studio, Serious Bigtime, can you tell us a bit about that?

Yeah, we opened in October. It’s myself and two partners: another editor and a minority partner who's an executive producer. We collaborate with people in production, with designers and other editors. We create mostly short form: social content, branded content, sizzle videos and commercial campaigns.

I like stuff that has craft, that’s what I really care about. I love scripted stuff. It’s a lot of fun.

Can you take us through what your approval process looks like?

It depends on the client and budget. When I'm working with ad agencies, internal reviews come first. The agency generally provides feedback before anything goes to client. Then we typically do three rounds of revisions with the end client, but it could be more. It really depends.

It's one of the things with live editing that is really useful, because I can talk through feedback and respond to it. I'm a front-of-house editor, meaning I specialize in working with clients. So I'm good at reading people and their reactions. It's really helpful for me to watch somebody watching a cut for the first time.

I like Louper’s new layout views, I tend to switch it to the four-up grid view. I don’t mind seeing my edit on the screen, but honestly, the main thing I'm looking at is the people.

You were one of our first Beta testers on Louper Transmit. Are you using it for your live sessions?

Yeah, I’ve been using it for a while now, I like it so much better than NDI.

The new plugin is working great. It’s been pretty seamless.

Which of the Louper Transmit streaming functions do you use with your clients? Do you ever share your timeline?

I generally use Program with clients. Every once in a while I'll switch to the GUI, to give the client a sneak peak, depending on their personality. Because sometimes they get a little kick out of seeing under the hood! I think the art of live editing is a bit of theatrics… it's about understanding the people you're working for.

I’ll share the GUI while I’m repositioning graphics, showing them a thumbnail view of my source footage, or anything where they need to see my markers. I'll also use it if I'm handing a project off to somebody else, to show them exactly how my project is laid out.

With a live remote session, can you recreate the feeling of being in the same room with your clients?

Almost nothing can replace just hanging out in the same room, but you guys are getting really seamless on the live editing. Honestly, it helps out a lot. I like having the functionality to lower people's volumes, I can mute my clients and keep working with the room open, they can mute me. I just raise my hand if I have a question. And it’s super useful being able to draw on the screen. There are a lot of things that just make the experience seamless.

If I'm working with very particular clients, especially software companies, I like to do live approvals. By discussing functionality face-to-face, we can get to the nitty-gritty quickly, identifying and resolving any misunderstandings. Live sessions are really, really useful for taking out that guesswork.

Jake is an editor, director of post production and co-founder of Serious Bigtime, a full-service creative studio based in New York City. He has been using Louper to power his live edit and approval sessions since 2023.

Check out what Jake and his team are up to at Serious Bigtime

Click here to learn more about Louper Transmit for Premiere Pro.