LOS ANGELES—Editing a documentary requires editors who are organized and who have iron-clad patience to search through and review hours upon hours of footage.
But for a show like “Deadliest Catch,” on which I’ve been a picture editor for the last 14 seasons, these talents are stretched to the limit. Up to 47,000 hours of footage is captured for each season of the show and all those rushes—which include footage from shoulder-mounted cameras shot by camera operators/producers who are on deck with the crab fishermen, as well as multiple fly-on-the-wall mounted cameras from each boat—need to be condensed down into just over 20 hours of finished programming.
