Why the Editor's Job Is to Make the Audience Feel Something with Sean Stender

Sean Stender is an award-winning Los Angeles–based editor whose work blends sharp comic timing, rhythmic pacing, and an understated visual sensibility. Sean began his career in the mailroom at Capitol Records before moving into post-production and eventually joining Cut+Run. His portfolio spans dialogue-driven comedy, docu-style storytelling, short-form narrative, and branded content, with clients including WhatsApp, Uber, Levi’s, Fender, Nike, Amazon, Credit Karma, Fiat, and Dr Pepper.

Notable projects include Levi’s 'Oakland Skateboarding,' the Grammys film 'Witness Greatness,' and the powerful short 'The Voices of #MeToo,' directed by Lara Everly.

Across genres, Sean’s background in music and subculture informs a style that is precise, human, and instinctively timed - qualities that also define his comedy work, where his sense of rhythm and wit play a central role in shaping the story.

LBB> The first cut is the deepest: how do you like to start an editing project?

Sean> For me, the first thing I like to do is get my head around the creative before I ever touch the footage. I’ll review whatever the director and agency have sent, including the treatment, music, scripts, creative decks, and shooting boards, to understand the intention and the story they’re hoping to tell. It gives me a bit of a compass before the dailies even land.

Once the footage comes in, I’ll sit down and screen everything, then start building selects. That’s usually where I start to see what the real version of the spot might be, the happy accidents, the stuff the director leaned into on set - all the little moments that weren’t necessarily on the page.

After I’ve watched everything, I like to hop on a call with the director and get a download from them. What were they excited about when they were shooting? What wasn’t working? And honestly, it’s also just a good chance to connect. The director–editor relationship is crucial, and I’ve found that projects where I’m closely aligned with the director from the beginning tend to be the strongest. The edit becomes a lot more focused when we’re all heading in the same direction from day one.

LBB> Non-editors often think of editing just in technical terms but it’s integral to the emotion and mood of a film. How did you develop that side of your craft?

Sean> Yeah, the technical side of editing is - in my opinion - the most overrated part of what we do. Anyone can learn the software and start pasting clips together. But shaping emotion - that’s the real craft. Your job is to make the audience feel something, whether it’s humor, tension, sadness - or whatever the spot is trying to evoke.

And the only way to develop that side of the craft is by actually living life. Emotion in editing is really just an extension of your own experiences. So I try to stay open to things. I watch films, I listen to music, and I pay attention to what makes me laugh. I try to surround myself with people who inspire me. All of that stuff feeds into the work, even if you don’t realise it in the moment.

If you don’t cultivate that part of yourself, it’s not going to show up in your edits. The emotional choices come from your taste, your instincts, and the life you bring into the room. The technical part is just how you execute it.

LBB> How important is an understanding of story and the mechanics of story?

Sean> An understanding of story is really at the heart of what an editor does. All the structural stuff matters; knowing where the emotional beats fall, how tension builds, when to reveal information - and when to hold back. Those choices shape how the audience experiences the film more than anything else.

But just as important as understanding those mechanics is being willing to use them in new and creative ways. I’ve always felt it’s far more interesting to take a simple story and tell it from a unique perspective than to take a complex story and run it through a traditional playbook. The angle you choose to tell a story from can completely change how it resonates with the audience.

A perfect example of that is the Netflix show 'The Perfect Neighbor.' On paper, it could’ve been just another run-of-the-mill true-crime doc. But the way they approached the storytelling made it feel totally fresh. They edited the entire show using only police body-cam footage - which is such a restrictive choice - but the limitation of it became its strength. The perspective wasn’t just a gimmick; it allowed the show to naturally explore themes of race, prejudice, and the 'Stand Your Ground' law in a way that felt immediate and honest. The storytelling stood out specifically because the creatives embraced that unconventional approach.

LBB> Rhythm and a sense of musicality seem to be intrinsic to good editing (even when it’s a film without actual music) – how do you think about the rhythm side of editing, how do you feel out the beats of a scene or a spot? And do you like to cut to music?

Sean> I love music. I grew up playing music, so that sense of rhythm and musicality was something I lived with long before I ever sat in an edit bay. While I really enjoy cutting to music, it’s usually a relatively small part of the work I do day-to-day.

Most of the material I cut is dialogue-driven, with a lot of comedy, so the music is usually more of a background element rather than the star of the show. But even when music isn’t front and centre, the rhythm still is. Dialogue has its own beat. Performance has its own beat. Even the way shots move or transition has a kind of pulse to it.

So, when I’m editing, I think about it almost like choreography. I want the scene to feel like a dance, the timing, the pacing, the flow from one moment to the next. If the rhythm is right, the whole thing moves as one cohesive piece. You can feel it when it clicks. That’s the part of editing I really love, finding that rhythm where the visuals and the performance and the timing all sync up - even if there’s not a single note of music driving it.

LBB> Tell us about a recent editing project that involved some interesting creative challenges.

Sean> Earlier this year, I cut a short film, which was the first scripted long-form narrative I’d taken on in a while. I’ve done some docu-style long-form in the past, but narrative is obviously a different beast. So right out of the gate, that was exciting but also a real creative challenge - just shifting my brain out of the shorter commercial mindset and into something that had more room to breathe.

It was a pretty scrappy production; low budget, with four or five days of shooting, and a very run-and-gun approach. So when I got the footage, I spent a week or so assembling the individual scenes, which were all fairly straightforward.

The real challenge began once the director and I sat down together and started shaping the entire film. In commercials, the beats are basically locked; you’ve only got 30 or 60 seconds, so you don’t usually have the luxury of moving major story moments around. However, in a 25-minute film, you suddenly have all this flexibility. We were constantly rearranging the scene structure, trying things earlier or pushing them later, feeling out whether the beats were landing in the right spot and whether the tension was building properly. That was the heavy lifting - finding the most honest flow for the story.

Once we had a rough cut, we screened it for some friends and family, and pretty quickly realised people were confused about the main character’s motivation. The actors were mostly non-actors; real guys from the Venice Beach basketball league the story was based on. The film follows an older player who used to be the star but is aging out, and a younger player is coming in and essentially taking the spotlight. There’s jealousy, obsession, social media feeding into his paranoia; there’s a lot going on internally for him. However, because the performance wasn’t always conveying the nuance, we had to work hard in the edit to clarify what he was feeling and why he made certain choices.

We were cutting around moments that didn’t quite land, reordering scenes, tightening interactions, basically carving out a clear emotional throughline from material that didn’t always hand that to us. It was tough, but honestly, it was one of the more rewarding projects I’ve done recently because it stretched a different creative muscle than what I use in commercial work.

LBB> In the US, we know that editors are much more heavily involved across the post production process than in Europe - what’s your favourite part of that side of the job?

Sean> Honestly, that used to be even more true about ten years ago.

These days, the landscape’s shifted a bit, so we’re not in the room every time, but we're always available.

Where we remain most involved is in the finishing and conformance stage. At Cut+Run, we have Jogger Studios (our sister VFX/finishing company), and they handle a lot of the finishing for the spots we work on. Having them right there in the building is a massive asset during the offline period. With the amount of phone comps, text graphic animations, social overlays, and all that, it’s huge to be able to ask them for a quick mock-up and drop it straight into the cut.

It eliminates a significant amount of guesswork for the client. Instead of them having to imagine, “Okay, so this is where the text bubble will go, and this is how it will animate,” we can actually show them the animation in the edit. Suddenly, the offline feels way closer to a finished spot, and that makes the approval process so much smoother. For me, that’s probably my favourite part of the broader post-involvement: having access to those tools and being able to present something that already feels polished before we even reach the final stage.

LBB> What’s harder to cut around – too much material or not enough?

Sean> Despite the belly-aching when the drive arrives with eight hours of footage for one 30-second spot, I guess it’s better to have options.

LBB> Which commercial projects are you proudest of and why?

Sean> The one I’m most proud of is actually one of the first things I edited when I was transitioning from assistant to editor. It was this short film piece for Levi’s that followed a group of skateboarders in Oakland. There was a rundown skate park in their community, and the film followed both the rebuilding of the park and the lives of these kids around it.

It ended up being about a 15-minute film, plus several shorter cutdowns, and we worked on it for about three months. It was the first time I’d ever worked that closely with a director. We were in the room together every day, shaping this thing. That experience taught me a great deal about the importance of that relationship. At the end of the day, it’s the director’s vision, and the more in sync you are with them, the better the work becomes. That project really drove that home for me.

Additionally, the story itself felt meaningful. Spending time with those kids, getting to know their world, and telling the story in a way that felt honest was a really rewarding experience. And it was one of the rare brand pieces where the product actually made perfect sense within the story. These kids really wore Levi’s. Levi’s is workwear; it’s durable, and it’s what skaters actually use. Many branded short films feel disconnected from the actual product, but this one didn’t. Everything lined up: the brand, the kids, the story. It felt like the perfect blend of advertising and real filmmaking. That’s why it still stands out for me.

LBB> There are so many different platforms for film content now, and even in advertising something can last anything from a few seconds to a couple of hours. As an editor, are you seeing a change in the kind of projects you’re getting from brands and agencies?

Sean> Yeah, the landscape has definitely evolved. Deliverable lists keep expanding while runtimes keep shrinking. There was a time when a typical project might be a set of three 30-second broadcast spots with a few 15-second cutdowns, and that was the full scope.

Now it’s almost reversed. Broadcast work is still part of the mix, but more often, the centre of gravity is social. A job might include a couple of 30s alongside a full suite of 15s and all the different platform-specific formats.

It’s not a sudden change, the shift has been building for a while, but it’s accelerated over the past few years. With more platform-first thinking across the board, editors are continually adapting to a world where content needs to exist in many shapes and sizes.

LBB> Who are your editing heroes and why? What films or spots epitomise good editing for you?

Sean> My editing heroes are the people who brought me up at Cut+Run: Steve Gandolfi, Frank Effron, and Jay Nelson. I assisted all of them at different points, but Steve - in particular - really honed my editing instincts. He’s a master storyteller, and watching how he breaks down a scene or shapes a moment taught me a great deal. His dedication to the craft and his work ethic made a huge impression on me early on.

I also just feel genuinely lucky to be surrounded by the level of talent we have at Cut+Run. Everyone here is doing such strong, thoughtful work that it’s hard not to be inspired. So for me, my heroes aren’t necessarily people in books or on lists; they’re the editors I learned from and continue to work alongside every day.

LBB> How does editing in the commercial world differ from the film world and TV world?

Sean> I’m a commercial editor, so my insight into the film and TV side is limited. I’ve only dipped into longer-form projects here and there. However, from my experience, the biggest difference is time. In film and TV, you’re allowed to live with a project for a lot longer. You can sit with scenes, rethink things, take breaks, come back with fresh eyes, and there’s something really valuable in that.

Commercial work is the total opposite. It moves fast. You’re always on something new, and there’s a pace and an energy to that that I actually love. You never really have time to get bored or burnt out on any one project because you’re already onto the next thing.

Sometimes I get a little envious of the breathing room longer-format projects get. In commercials, you don’t always get that chance to step away and reset your perspective. You’re making big creative decisions on a much tighter timeline. So, they’re just very different rhythms; one is fast and constantly changing, while the other gives you space to explore and refine. They both have their own advantages, depending on what you’re looking for.

LBB> Have you noticed any trends or changes in commercial editing over recent years?

Sean> Yeah, definitely. As more work shifts toward social platforms, the editing style has accelerated significantly. Cuts are quicker, flashier, and the whole mindset is about grabbing attention immediately. Those first six seconds have become very important; if you don’t hook someone right away, they’re already scrolling past you.

And with that shift, some of the traditional 'rules' of editing have loosened up. Things that were once considered mistakes, such as jump cuts, are now entirely acceptable. The pacing is so fast, and the storytelling is so compressed that those old conventions just don’t apply in the same way anymore.