How Alix Diaconis creates video for The Verge

Along with technology news, resources, opinions and analysis, video has become an increasingly important part of the The Vergecontent of. But to create amazing and engaging videos, you need an experienced team to create that video – along with the tools that allow team members to let their imaginations run wild.

Alix Diaconis is one of the filmmakers who helps make video magical The Verge. We talked to Alix about what she does and what tools she uses.

Alix, what do you do for The Verge?

I am one of the video directors for The Verge. I work every day with my three co-workers (but actually friends) to create the videos in The VergeYouTube channel of. Sometimes deadlines are fast because technology and news are fast, but our team has worked together for years, so even live events look perfect and fun. Each of us shoots, takes pictures and edits; then, the video is handled by our graphics and sound assistants. So bam, let’s go to the next one!

What hardware and software tools are needed to produce a video for a website like The Verge?

It really varies from video to video. For some videos, we will remove all barriers, while for others, we need to be quick and light. Damn, I think we just recorded videos with a GoPro.

When we go to a press event, we will keep it very light with a monopod, lapel microphone and a camera that we feel most comfortable with. And then I’m going to edit the event on my MacBook Pro.

But most of the time when we are filming on the spot, we will bring a bigger kit with an HD monitor, a slider (which helps to track photos), maybe a drone. And when we’re doing big things, like a flagship phone review, we like to bring everything, including a probe lens like the Venus Optics Laowa to make intro photos like this.

Since we’re uploading videos for our work, good upload speeds from the Internet make life a much Easier. We also have a shared server, so we have access to our terabytes and terabytes of footage all the time.

Oh, and also teamwork. Lots and lots of teamwork.

What specific hardware tools do you use for your work?

For shooting, I prefer to use the Canon EOS C200 – I think it looks really cinematic – and my favorite lens is the Canon EF 70-200mm (for B roll at least). Sometimes I use the Sony A7S II or III, which look extremely sharp, but I’m not a big fan of Sony’s menus. For sound, I will usually use a Sennheiser G3 lapel or a Zoom H6 recorder. For photos, I use the Canon 50D.

For post-production in The Verge offices, I would edit on a 27-inch iMac, which must be updated. At home, however, I have a more powerful editing PC that my producer built for me. It has an 8-core AMD Ryzen 7 3700X processor, a 2 TB NVMe drive, a Radeon RX 580 series graphics card, 32 GB of RAM and a 28-inch 4K Asus screen. Of course, there are always technical problems – it is part of editing – but the PC is the best editing machine I have personally. (Thanks, Phil!) However, I miss the beautiful screen on the iMac.

Also, as the video takes up a lot of space, I will sometimes use an additional SSD for projects. And as for the headphones, I use the Sony MDR-7506, which are the only headphones that I can comfortably use all day.

And then there’s the fun, random equipment: a GoPro Hero 8, an Insta360 panoramic video camera (which we recently used for this e-bike video), a Zhiyun Crane, a DJI Mavic Pro drone … and everything else that we can get our hands.

What software tools do you use for your work?

Everything Adobe everything. Premiere Pro for editing, After Effects for basic graphics and Photoshop for video thumbnails. You can do a lot in Premiere, but it has its bugs and is not always optimized for Apple hardware.

What tools do you use for your own projects?

I have taught myself DaVinci Resolve for color images. I still barely understand the program, but it makes the footage look 100 times better than coloring it in Premiere. And purely for fun, I shot 35mm with my dad’s old Minolta camera.

What hardware and software tools would you recommend for someone just starting out?

Premiere is very common for editing. But if you want to try something free and have an iPhone or iPad, there is the Splice app. It is very intuitive, but you are limited to the clips you have on your device. There is also DaVinci Resolve, which is free and as advanced as most paid editing software.

As for the cameras, choose one that feels comfortable to use! And for a computer, invest in a good one if you’ve seen yourself editing for a long time; Windows iMacs and PCs are good and the specifications will depend only on the size of your projects. I haven’t had a chance to use Apple’s new M1 MacBook Air or Pro yet, but both seem like good options if you prefer a laptop.