Editing Bucks County, USA: Crafting a Timely Episodic Documentary with Adobe

This is part of our exclusive Sundance interview series, where we sit down with filmmakers to explore how they use technology to bring their creative visions to life.

In a country increasingly defined by political and cultural divides, Bucks County, USA takes an intimate look at how these tensions play out in a single Pennsylvania community. Editors Hannah Gabriel, Rubin Daniels, Leslie Simmer, and Elise Ahrens were tasked with weaving together the personal and the political—crafting a compelling episodic documentary that captures the complexities of friendship, ideology, and identity in a swing county at the heart of America’s culture wars.

Using Adobe’s powerful editing tools, they shaped a narrative that balances raw, vérité moments with broader social commentary, ensuring that each episode remains both emotionally resonant and politically urgent.

PH: What Adobe features were essential in editing your Sundance project, and why?

Hannah Gabriel: Adobe’s multicamera features were key for ensuring we had easy access to all camera angles on a particular interview or verite shoot without having to bring everything into our edit timeline. It made it so easy to match back to the source sequence when needed, and the multi-camera view toggle was helpful for quickly checking out all camera angles for a particular clip in our edit timeline.

Rubin Daniels Jr: The project shot each interview with two cameras. Some shots had as many as five cameras. The multicam editing feature was essential for seeing each camera angle in the same screen. This made editing simpler and quicker. There are multiple editors on this project, so using Productions really helped each editor bounce between each others’ projects.

Elise Ahrens: It’s a basic tool, but Adobe Premiere markers are a big part of my workflow. They allow me to make color-coded selects on the dailies that my fellow editors can refer to throughout the project. I have color codes for important lines or story beats, as well as color codes for the basics like sound bites and broll. It saves me a lot of time to only have to review footage minutely once, and then refer to my markers after that.

PH: How did your chosen gear kit, including software and hardware, optimize your post-production workflow?

Hannah Gabriel: We operate off one set of drives on a shared server rather than mirrored sets of drives, which meant we didn’t have to shuffle footage and updated projects back and forth after each of our many shoots. Premiere’s Production feature also helped keep our projects organized, updated, and easily accessible throughout the edit.

Rubin Daniels Jr: Each editor on the project lives in different cities, to combat that we used Jump Desktop to remote login to computers in one location.

Elise Ahrens: Migrating our project to Productions was essential to allowing all four editors to edit off of a shared server at the same time.

PH: Were there any specific Adobe tools or plugins you relied on to enhance the final cut of your film?

Hannah Gabriel: We used Premiere’s Warp Stabilizer tool a lot in our final cut, which helped ease the shakiness of some of the original camera footage without making it look stagnant or motionless.

Rubin Daniels Jr: I love the label feature in Premiere Pro. I like labeling interviews and verite footage in different colors so I know which is which when I’m scrolling through my timeline. Also, I like being able to make GFXs in After Effects and import them into Premiere Pro without having to export the GFXs. I can open After Effects while in Premiere Pro, make changes to a GFX, save the file and the GFX updates in Premiere Pro in real-time. Same for all of the software in the Adobe Suite

PH: What gear or software do you consider non-negotiable for any filmmaker’s editing toolkit?

Hannah Gabriel: Beyond a good internet connection and fast, reliable hardware, I feel that it’s less about the tools themselves than your own comfort and familiarity with them.

Rubin Daniels Jr: Fast Internet connection, Adobe Suite, and having at least two screens to work from.

Elise Ahrens: Again this is a very basic tool, but I rely heavily on my personalized keyboard. I have several that I toggle between depending on if I’m reviewing footage, editing, or doing a basic sound pass. My edit keyboard is the most elaborate and constantly evolving to optimize my edit speed. I also customize my workspaces, mostly between reviewing footage, making selects, or cutting scenes.