How Ryan Rakes Logs His Ironbound Documentary | Eddie AI

At a glance:

"Eddie frees me from the administrative busywork so I can focus my energy on polishing the final film." — Ryan Rakes

The one-man band and the mountain of media

Ryan Rakes is an award-winning director, editor, and VFX and motion-graphics designer whose commercial and post work spans brands like Nike and LEGO and credits on shows including Orange Is the New Black and Da 5 Bloods. He is also a long-term vegan athlete and personal trainer. Ironbound is where those two lives meet: a feature documentary following elite vegan strength and physique athletes, made to "smash the persistent myth that you need to consume animal products to build elite, world-class muscle, power, and muscular endurance."

He has carried the whole thing himself. Shot and managed solo for over a year, cinematic footage gathered across the US, Canada, and Europe. The reward for that ambition is a post-production problem the size of the shoot: around 40 long-form multi-cam interviews running thirty minutes to an hour each, plus an ocean of training and competition B-roll. After a year behind the camera, even his own footage starts to blur.

"Since I have been shooting for over a year, it is easy for me to forget the specific details of what every single athlete said. The process of logging and organizing everything is a massive bottleneck."

— Ryan Rakes

Eddie as the virtual assistant editor

That bottleneck is where Ryan brought in Eddie. He is candid that he is early with it, just starting to experiment, but it already does the job he least wants to do himself: the heavy ingestion. Eddie transcribes, tags, and logs the footage, turning forty hours of talking heads into clear cliff notes he can skim.

The effect is that he can find a specific soundbite by memory instead of by scrubbing. It has also been quick at first-pass structural outlines, and at helping him pump out the short-form social promos that keep the @projectironbound account fed while the feature comes together.

"It acts like a virtual assistant editor that takes over the tedious tasks I do not want to deal with. Since I am essentially a one-man-band, and I also work full time, Eddie is a massive time saver for me."

— Ryan Rakes

What Eddie doesn't do, and that's the point

Ryan is clear about the line. He uses the rough cuts and the logging to refamiliarize himself with the footage and as an editing base, not as a finished edit. The craft stays his.

"I still do the heavy lifting when it comes to the actual craft of filmmaking. I am still the one finding the emotional rhythm of the story, and dialing in the MGFX, cinematic color grading, and sound design."

— Ryan Rakes

The administrative busywork goes to the assistant. The fine-tuning, the emotional rhythm, and the finish stay with the filmmaker who shot every frame.

The result

Early in the process, the part of a solo documentary that quietly kills momentum, the logging and organizing of a year's worth of media, is handled. Ryan can walk into the edit already knowing what his athletes said and where to find it, keep a social presence running off the same material, and spend his limited hours on the part only he can do: shaping Ironbound into a film.

Ironbound is [in production / status to confirm with Ryan], a solo production following elite vegan athletes across three continents. Ryan is still early with Eddie, but for a one-man band doing this alongside full-time work, taking the ingestion grind off his plate is what makes the rest of the film possible.

Try Eddie on your next documentary cut →

Drop your interviews in and let Eddie hand you a starting point. heyeddie.ai ↗