Declan Gale Videography
Video editing · Auckland

Freelance video editor in Auckland

Footage already shot and sitting on a drive? Send it over and I will cut it. Long-form down to short, colour graded, captioned and sized for wherever it is going.

From $600 Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve Quote the same day
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Who this is for

You shot it yourself and it is still on the card

Common with events, internal comms and anything filmed in a hurry.

Someone else shot it and disappeared

Also common. The shoot happened, the edit did not.

You have got a backlog

A year of footage across a dozen jobs, none of it cut, all of it still useful.

You need a second pair of hands

Producers and agencies with more edits than editors. Happy to work to your spec, your LUT and your delivery requirements.

What I do with it

Cut it

Long-form down to short. A conference day into a three-minute recap, an hour of interview into ninety seconds, a shoot into a set of verticals.

Grade it

Colour corrected and matched across cameras. If it is log footage, that is what it is there for.

Caption it

Burned in or as an SRT file, your choice.

Reformat it

16:9, 9:16 and 1:1 from the same edit, sized for wherever each one is going.

Music and stock licensed for your deliverables where the edit needs it.

The honest bit

The edit can only be as good as the footage.

I can fix exposure, colour, pacing and sound to a point. I cannot fix a shot that was never taken, an interview with no usable audio, or a two-hour event covered from one fixed angle at the back of the room.

If the footage is thin, I will tell you that before starting rather than after, and we will work out what is realistically in there. Lifting it to a different standard means reshooting, which is a different job with its own quote.

The honest bit

The edit can only be as good as the footage.

I can fix exposure, colour, pacing and sound to a point. I cannot fix a shot that was never taken. If the footage is thin, you will hear that before I start, not after.

Sending me footage

Whatever is easiest. A Smash link is what I use most, or a Google Drive link, a hard drive, or a card dropped off if you are in Auckland.

Three things make it much faster, and faster means cheaper.

01 Send everything, not a selectionDeciding what is usable is the job. A pre-filtered folder usually means the best shot got left out.
02 Say what you want out of itA runtime, a rough idea of the story, and where it is going to be posted. Three sentences is plenty.
03 Flag anything that has to be in thereA specific speaker, a specific moment, the bit where the thing happened. If it is not flagged it might not make the cut, and finding it afterwards means going through the whole lot again.

What it costs

From $600. Priced on how much footage there is and what you want out of it, not by the hour.

For context, freelance editors in New Zealand generally charge $75 to $150 an hour. A short-form edit off a manageable amount of footage sits at the lower end of a day’s work. A conference day cut into a recap plus verticals is more.

Send a rough idea of the volume and the deliverables and it comes back itemised the same day. One round of changes is included, and a round is one consolidated list of notes.

Turnaround

A few days for short-form. One to two weeks for a full edit. Faster is possible and quoted as its own line.

You get a delivery date in writing before I start, not a vague estimate afterwards.

Questions

What formats can you work with?

Most things. Sony, Canon, Blackmagic, DJI, phone footage, screen recordings. Log or standard. If it is an unusual codec, send a sample first and I will check before quoting.

Can you match footage from different cameras?

Yes. That is most of what grading is for on a multi-camera job.

Do you work with agencies and other producers?

Yes, regularly. Happy to work to your LUT, your spec and your delivery requirements, and to hand over project files if that is part of the deal. More for producers here.

What software do you edit in?

Adobe Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve. Whichever suits the job, or whichever you need if you are taking the project on afterwards.

Do I need to be in Auckland?

No. Editing does not need either of us in the same room. Most of it happens over a link.

Send me what you have got

A rough idea of how much footage there is and what you want out of it is enough to quote from.

Also available for event videography, corporate video and social content.