Episode Highlights

• Yvette’s background as an editor and producer
• The role of and editor in unscripted television
• How Yvette made the transition into producing
• The reality TV workflow
• Yvette’s career trajectory and how she moved up the ladder so quickly
• Tips on how to successfully move from assistant editor to editor
• A few things Yvette learned in her first few years as a parent
• Sharing the caretaking duties with family and how to get some quality time in with your child
• How your perspective and priorities change when you have a child
• The difficulties of missing time with your child and how to make up for it
• Balancing work and parenting
• The importance of putting your foot down
• Coping with the guilt of missing out on your child’s milestones
• How being a woman with a child has affected Yvette’s career prospects (and how society judges that)
• How Yvette’s career aspirations changed (or didn’t) since having a child
• When your career is your identity, how do you take on another?
• Struggling to balance career and children is something we all deal with!

About Guest

Yvette Amirian is an award-nominated film and television editor, as well as a producer and writer.  In addition to her work in the industry, Yvette teaches editing courses at her alma mater, USC’s School of Cinematic Arts.  Yvette lives in Los Angeles with her husband and 5-year old son.

Transcript

Zack Arnold: I’m here today with Yvette Amirian, who is an award-nominated film and TV editor, as well as a producer, a writer, and if that wasn’t enough, she is also a teacher at USC at the School of Cinematic Arts. So, Yvette, it is a pleasure to have you on the show today.

Yvette Amirian: Thank you for having me.

Zack Arnold: So, the reason that you’re here, it’s actually a couple of different reasons. You and I first met when we were on a panel, I don’t remember exactly when, I think it was last fall, maybe for Alpha Dogs at Key Code Media, I don’t remember when it was, though, but it was a little while ago,

Yvette Amirian: I think it was in October, if I’m not mistaken.

Zack Arnold: Yes, so we were on a panel together, talking about editing, talking about the business. You approached me afterwards, and it just turns out that we have a lot in common, as far as our stories, as far as our approach to the industry, what we want to do, but the biggest thing that you and I have in common is that we’re both trying to survive this bat crazy industry while also trying to raise children.

Yvette Amirian: Yes,

Zack Arnold: So I want to kind of go down that road quite a bit tonight, but I just want to start by giving people a little bit of background into what you do for a living, how you’re involved with posts, and what you do on a daily basis, so they have a picture of what your life looks like.

Yvette Amirian: Sure, so I’m primarily an editor. Over the past couple of years, I’ve transitioned quite a bit into producing, so I’m editing currently a series for Fox, but before this, for two years, I was a supervising producer on a series for Lifetime for Lifetime Movie Network, that was a really fun job, but it was a really crazy schedule, where you know, as a producer, I was constantly bringing work home with me, and in some ways I think that’s easier because you have a little more flexibility, but at the same time you’re working around the clock, so that was really difficult in terms of balancing that and having a family, and of course, with editing, you know, our hours are very long, and we’re kind of tied to the office, so that has its own challenges as well.

Zack Arnold: So, you, I know that you’ve done work in unscripted and some scripted, you’ve worked on a lot of different shows, so this is a question that I get a lot, and because I don’t really work in this world that often, and I’m mostly scripted, before we kind of talk about all the other lifestyle stuff, I’d love to just kind of pick your brain a little bit and just understand a little bit more about the world of how an editor fits in in the world of unscripted, especially since you’ve been both an editor, producer, supervising editor, like just kind of walk people through all the different roles and what’s available.

Yvette Amirian: I mean, on the unscripted side of things like I said, I started as an editor, and I think one of the things that I found was one of one of my strengths, I think, was that I was really able over time to kind of learn how to craft stories through editing. I initially, when I got out of school, I went to USC as well, and I really wanted to be a writer, and I tried that for a couple of years, and I tried writing and doing spec scripts and things like that, and when my editing career took off, I kind of went with that, but I think in the process I’ve really learned how to use the skills that I really enjoyed as a writer to utilize that in editing, because in unscripted we really don’t, we don’t have a story, you know. Yes, depending on the type of unscripted series you’re working on, so for example, if you’re working on a competition series, there’s definitely a bit of a formula, but there’s always these little packages that exist in those series that you know really have no story, it’s just a bunch of people talking, or you’re trying to get to know the character, and in addition to working with our producers, story producers, supervising producers, we all really work together to craft that, and so much of it comes from the actual editing, and I think over time a lot of the producers who I’d worked with really saw that I was capable of doing that, and that’s where a lot of the producing opportunities started presenting themselves, and so when they did, I kind of took that and ran with it, and I’ve been producing for a couple of years now, and I’ve really enjoyed that as well. Generally, the way that it works in the unscripted world is you’ve got editors, and it could be anywhere from, you know, a couple editors, depending on the type of show it is, to like 15 or 20 editors, and on those bigger shows you’re generally separated kind of into teams, so you know we’ll have maybe two or three editors working on one episode at a time, working with one story producer, an associate producer, and then kind of on top of those producer levels, there’s a co-executive producer and an executive producer, so a lot of it really depends on the type of series that you’re working on, but you know, obviously we don’t have writers, we don’t have directors, so it’s really just editors and producers working together trying to create something, so

Zack Arnold: This is all kind of a bombshell to me, so you’re telling me that there’s no story, because it’s reality television. So, my assumption was that they turn the cameras on and they record stuff, and I watch

Yvette Amirian: It. Well, I mean, yes, there’s a story there. It’s just our job to kind of figure out what part of it to tell, because there’s so much of it sometimes, and there’s definitely a lot of stuff that we end up leaving on the cutting room floor, and things that you know we have to really work to craft to be able to tell it in a short amount of time. I mean, something that we tell a story of in, you know, five minutes took hours and hours and hours over time to actually play out, so that’s that’s a lot of the fun of. It, I think, and the challenge as well.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and every time that I’m working on a scripted show, and I’ll get a lot of dailies, like, say, I get like four or five hours of dailies, I’m like, oh man, I got five hours, and then I think to myself, we’re a reality editor, saying, oh my god, I got 240 hours today, you know, like that. Well, you have 10 cameras going 20-four hours a day, 240 hours every single day, and I’m like, and I’m complaining about four hours of scripted material with slates and people reading the same dialog over and over, and there’s already a story. Like, my job is easy.

Yvette Amirian: I mean, well, a lot of times, too, depending on the projects that we’re working on, we’ll have producers who come in before that, before we even start as editors who kind of weed through that material, and you know, add locators and kind of try and figure out what the story lines are, but for me personally, I mean the series that I’m working on right now, in as much as there’s these kind of string outs, if you will, like these assemblies that are already established, I’m constantly digging through the material because I want to see what did I miss, I want to be able to watch everything, and you know, every editor works differently, but for me it’s like I just want to be able to see everything that there is to make sure I didn’t miss anything. So it is just a lot of watching, it’s a lot of watching and figuring out what there is, what there isn’t, what do I need, what am I missing. So yeah, it’s very time intensive, it’s a lot of it’s a lot of work.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I did, I worked on one unscripted series. It was actually the very first editing gig that I ever had in LA, and I was only aware of how scripted worked at the time, and I was also, I was working in trailers. My main job was as an assistant editor for Trailer House, and I got the side gig editing a show for PBS that was just this fancy woman rock walking around in rich people’s homes, showing off all the cool technology, and when I was asked to cut, I’m like, yeah, sure, that’d be great, like any editing, I didn’t care what it was, it was handed to me, and she said, well, here’s the media, and here’s the sequence, I’m like, what do you mean, here’s the sequence, and this producer had already gone through everything and given me blocks in the timeline, all I had to do was reshape the music and add the transitions and the white flashes and trim, and I’m like, well, I can do this, like it was totally different experience, but then I learned that’s the process in reality, where there are multiple stages, whereas for me, as a scripted editor, you hand me all the raw dailies, I watch all the raw dailies, I cut all the raw dailies, I do all the notes on the cuts that I’ve done, and that’s it, and in reality it is entire heaps of people that are putting a show together.

Yvette Amirian: Oh, definitely. Yeah, absolutely.

Zack Arnold: Well, now that we have a little bit more understanding of what the process works, one thing I’m also interested in, before we kind of go down the parenting road, which is one of the main reasons I wanted to have you on, is that you’re still pretty young in this industry, but you have moved up very, very quickly. I was very impressed to find out the trajectory of your career, and I want to be able to help people have some sort of a roadmap, because I’m always a big believer that if somebody shares their story or says this is how I do things, the answer can’t be, well, I just got lucky, or I just used my instincts. It’s like, no, help people, show people how you did it, and I want to, I want people to be inspired by what you’ve done, because you’re a woman who has a child who’s very young, who’s also very, very successful, and I hear from quite a few women in this industry that are around your age, maybe a little bit younger, that say, I kind of want to move up and I want to be an editor, but it’s also kind of that place in my life where I want to start a family, which one do I choose? And I can’t tell them, choose both, because I don’t know how to do that, because it’s different for me.

Yvette Amirian: This is like, like, story of my life. This is stuff that I think about all the time, because I only have one kid right now, and eventually I’d like to have a second one. So it’s stuff that I even think about now, even though I already have started my family, and it is a really difficult thing. I imagine it’s a difficult thing for any working woman, you know, not just in our industry, but definitely because there is kind of a, as you said, there’s like a path that you take moving up from assisting to editing. You definitely reach a point where you’re like, I’m ready to do it, but I know that all this other stuff is going to come with it, and I’m already in, like, you know, kind of childbearing age, and I want to start that process. And how do you do it all at once, and you know, I think in terms of how I got to where I am, and I say this to my students too. I don’t think there’s any really one path. I think everyone’s story is really different, but then at the same time, I talked to someone like you, and like you said, we had a lot of similarities in how we kind of moved up the ladder, and for me, I definitely, I definitely didn’t intend to get into unscripted. I always wanted to cut scripted. My first couple of jobs were for scripted features and short films, and kind of through my network of contacts, I landed in the unscripted world, and I was really good at it, and I moved up really quickly because they saw that I was good at it. They were like, oh, wow, like, she really knows what to do with this material, she really knows what to do with story, and it just kind of happened really quickly. I wasn’t an assistant editor for very long. I think I was an assistant for maybe two years, if that. And once I made that transition to editing, it just kind of stayed that way, you know? I never, I never really went back, and so I’ve been editing for 10 years. Yes, like I said, it was over the past couple of years when I started making that transition to producing, and that was something that I always kind of had in the back of my mind that I wanted to do, and there was one producer in particular who I think really saw saw that I would be really good at that and gave me those opportunities, so now I’m kind of bouncing back and forth, I’m able to do both, and I’m happy that I’m able to do both, because I really miss editing when I’m producing, you know, it’s kind of.. it’s one of those things that it never leaves you. I don’t know if that makes sense the way that I’m saying it, but you really miss it when you’re doing something different.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I know exactly what you mean, because I’ve done some producing, done some directing, and I feel like that there’s a lot more freedom in there, but also people choose to be editors because they’re control freaks. Like, let’s just admit it, people, that’s why we chose to be editors. We like, we want to control people’s emotions and control their reactions, we want to control the naming conventions of files and sequences. Like, and then you’re sitting on the couch behind somebody, you’re like, so I will completely admit to that. So, yes, I definitely understand

Yvette Amirian: That was, but that was a good learning experience for me to be able to make that transition, because when I started kind of alerting people in the industry that I was interested, interested in producing, they were like, “My god, you’re gonna go crazy, you’re such a control freak, you always want ownership of your shows, but I loved, I actually really enjoyed being able to take that step back and saying, “Okay, hey, this is on the editor, they’re the ones who are shaping it, and you know, I’m just the one giving notes, and I’m the one kind of delegating and overseeing the entire process, and it was an easier process for me than I thought, and I really enjoyed it in a lot of ways, like I said, it gave me the flexibility to say, hey, I’m going to work from home today, or I’m going to come in a little bit later, because you’re not the one who has to physically meet the deadline, so it has a lot of benefits, and I’ve really enjoyed that part of it as well.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, it’s the difference between being the foreman and being the guy that has to lay the bricks, so the foreman can come in and check to make sure that the house is being built. And yes, I will tell you, there are days when I’m like, oh my god, if I have to lay one more brick,

Yvette Amirian: Yep,

Zack Arnold: But then at the same time, when you’re a producer, like, for the love of God, how many more houses do I have to look at today? So it’s on both ends, it can be very difficult, so I definitely can relate to both. So, if somebody that’s fairly young is listening, and I know that I have a fair amount of young listeners that are in the reality space, and a lot of times I can’t be terribly helpful because it’s one of those areas where I don’t have a lot of experience, and they just want to understand, especially as assistants, they’re like, how do I get away from logging and doing all, not they don’t digitize anymore. I was supposed to date myself there. So, can you kind of walk through a couple of the main, like, keystone turning points in your career to kind of give people a sense of, oh, okay, well, now I understand how she kind of did this,

Yvette Amirian: Right? I think I think I heard you say it in a podcast once that you think part of it is like luck and being in the right place at the right time and also having the talent and also putting yourself out there, and I think I did all of those things, and I, you know, I really made sure that the people who I was working with knew from day one, like I’m not interested in being an assistant editor forever, and I really want to have opportunities to edit, and every single place that I worked, they at least gave me the opportunity to do it, and the place where I really kind of caught the big break, I guess, and I think part of this was just again like being in the right place at the right time, the editor who I was working with at that time, she had just had a baby, actually, and the baby was only six months old, and so baby was coming in, like babysitter would bring the baby in to like nurse and like stay with her, you know, while we were working, and she just had so much to go through, because there was like it was a documentary feature, so there was just so much footage, and I told her I was like, let me take a little bit off your plate, like, just give me some stuff, let me just show you what I’m capable of doing, and once I did, she gave me more and more and more, once she saw that I was capable of doing it, and in the end she offered to give me an additional editor credit on that, I didn’t even ask for it, and I think once that company in particular saw that and really saw that I was capable of editing and that I wasn’t just an assistant editor, they gave me more opportunities, and it was that was really kind of the big turning point for me. It was sort of like the rest was history, and that company kept calling me back and hiring me, and then obviously the producers who I would work with, the freelancers who would come in there, would remember things that I was good at, and then they would call me for future projects, and that’s really kind of how I got my start in editing. Before that, I had done a lot of production assistant work, post-PA work. I had done some assistant editing as well, but that was really.. that was probably.. I’ll tell you, if I can, like, think of the date now, maybe like a year and a half, two years into my career out of college,

Zack Arnold: Right? And going back to you, it’s said that you had heard me say on a previous show that you know it’s about luck and all these other things. I frankly don’t really believe in luck. I believe that you make it, and I think that luck is just when hard work meets opportunities.

Yvette Amirian: Yes,

Zack Arnold: That opportunity may not come overnight, and you may be saying, well, I am so ready, I know I can edit, and I just keep sitting here and sitting here and sitting here and sitting here. It doesn’t mean you’re unlucky, just means that the opportunity hasn’t met the hard work. You want to talk about patience, call Kelly Dixon, like biggest name in our industry now, editing Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad, and I think she’s nominated for like seven awards every year. She was an assistant for like two decades, right, but she had the talent and she had the patience, and once the opportunity met that hard work, she made it, so your timing was different, my timing was different, and it’s just about the positions that you put yourself in, but and this is not a tirade that I’ll go on again, because I tend to tend to go to jump on my soapbox, as many people know, but if you’re just saying, well, everybody else is getting lucky and I’m just unlucky, you’re just lazy, you’re just not doing the hard work to put yourself in the right places.

Yvette Amirian: I agree with that, and I definitely did the hard work, and I definitely, I think it was just, you know, however you want to put it, that right place, right time, when opportunity meets the hard work that you’ve done. I didn’t, I was not, you know, I was like I said, I was constantly offering to do it, I was constantly staying late, I was constantly kind of doing it outside of, outside of the duties that I was doing as an assistant editor, and I think that’s something that a lot of editors offer, both in unscripted and scripted. That’s a lot of advice that they offer young editors, is that you have to do it on your own time. You can’t be like cutting stuff for them while you’re doing your assistant editor duties to really put in that time and show them what you’re capable of, and that’s something that kind of frustrates me when I work with assistant editors, who you know, they’ll be like, ‘Here, I cut this, this one thing, will you look at it? Oh, great, you liked it. Now, like, can you make me, can you make me an editor, or can you give me.. it’s a process I really appreciate. For me, I really appreciate the assistants who really want my advice, who really want me to give them notes, and how can I improve, and how can I make things better, because that’s what that’s what I did, and I think that’s how I grew as an editor over time, and how I got better and better.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and if you’re an assistant that’s listening now, and you’re saying, well, why would I, why should I have to do all these things off hours? You don’t have to, if you’re just so good at your job that you can get it done sooner, and then do those things during regular hours, that’s fine. My philosophy is always you need to do your job spectacularly well. I don’t care if it takes you an hour or four, I do care if it takes you 14 hours, but if you’re doing it within the confines of your day, or you’re doing it in half the amount of the day, I don’t care. Just do your job first. Don’t come to me saying, I really want to be an editor, look at the scene I cut, I’m like, wow, this is a great scene. How about the outputs in the dailies? Oh, I didn’t do those well. Then why would I consider you like you got to put yourself forwards first and do a great job with what you’re paid to do? Then show that you want to do more. It’s all about creating that intention and making people aware, because so many people that are younger are thinking, well, of course, they know that I don’t want to be an assistant forever. Who wants to be an assistant forever? And all the producer or the editor thinking is just do this, like I don’t have time to think about anything else, but if you make them aware of it, that changes. But

Yvette Amirian: I will say that there are assistants that I’ve run into who just like being assistants. There are assistants who I run to run into who are like, I have no interest in editing. I really like this technical part of it, and I’m always kind of baffled by that, because I agree with you, most people want to be editors, but I have come across a few people who like really just like the technical aspect of that job,

Zack Arnold: And that’s great. I mean, you can take like toothpicks and shove them under my fingernails, that would be more pleasurable to me than just having the assistant duties that would have a lot of assistants do, and more power to you, but you’re right. I’ve met people that are like, I have no interest in cutting whatsoever. I will do the logging, I will do the outputting, the slates, like that’s just the way that their brain is wired, and that’s great, but that’s all the more reason that if you want to move up, people have to be aware,

Yvette Amirian: Right? And I, one other thing that I’ll say is that for me, in trying to make that transition from unscripted to scripted, which I have done. I really put in a lot of effort to doing that. That was my own time. I cut things for free. I offered to cut dailies for people just to be able to show them what I’m capable of doing. So, it’s, it’s in a way, it’s a never-ending cycle, like when you’re trying to make those transitions. If you’re trying to transition from TV to movies, or you’re trying to transition to from music videos to TV, or whatever it is that you’re trying to transition in between that philosophy of putting in that extra work and showing people what you’re capable of. I feel like it’s something that’s kind of followed me throughout my career, and I think part of that is having that work ethic and being being willing to work hard and put in that extra time, because I think it does get you noticed, and like I said, those are the assistant editors who really stick out in my mind, who are like, “Hey, I really value your advice, I really value your opinion, I want to see what you think.

Zack Arnold: I can already feel myself warming up, wanting to go down this road for two more hours. I’m gonna stop myself, because I’ve already, I’ve already done that. So I’m gonna put a whole bunch of links in the show notes. I’ve done one all about transitioning from reality to scripted, we did a whole hour about transitioning from assistant to editor. I’ve done two episodes with Norman Holland, who you know very well, as I do, who was the former head of the editing track at USC. I mean, so I have a whole.. like, I just did an interview recently about whether or not you should take free work, so I have a whole bevy of conversation.. like, I could go for six. Hours, and I already have, and it’s recorded, so I’m gonna put a whole bunch of links in the show notes. The conversations I don’t have, and the reason why you’re here is I wanna talk about making that transition from burning the candle at both ends, proving yourself, doing all these crazy things, and then all of a sudden it’s like, whoa, I’m gonna be a mom.

Yvette Amirian: Yeah, there’s another human who’s gonna depend on me.

Zack Arnold: So, when did that transition happen? You certainly don’t need to go into great deal of detail about how it happened or what the circumstances were, but kind of talk me through that career transition and that life transition.

Yvette Amirian: My husband and I had been married for four years, and I think we both kind of got to the place where we were like, okay, we feel like it’s time, and I honestly, I don’t remember thinking a lot about what it was going to do to my career. I just really felt like I was ready for a baby, and of course, anybody who’s had a baby knows, like, you’re never ready, you’re never ready for a baby, no matter how ready you think you are. And you know, for me, I didn’t realize how attached I would be, and how difficult it would be to go back to work, and I went back at two and a half months after he was born, which I think is pretty early, and you know, I didn’t really stop working. I think you know, you and I met recently, and I told you that really over the past few months, that’s the first time that I’ve taken a break, and he’s almost five years old, and I really felt like I connected with him and kind of bonded with him during that time, and it’s a good problem to have. I’ve been really busy, and I’m really fortunate that I have a successful career, but there is always that struggle of, like, you know, because our hours are so long, our hours are so crazy, and of course we work freelance. It’s like, do I do I want to take that next job? What kind of, what kind of schedule is it going to be? And you know, is it going to be a six month job, is going to be three month job? Am I going to be able to take a break in between? Because I really now cherish those times that I have in between, where I get to just be mom, and I think a lot of working women and men in general don’t really have that opportunity of being able to take those breaks in their hiatus, you know, people are working all the time, they, they have a different way of doing it, they get vacation time and things like that that we don’t get, but for me, I’ve really learned to like any time I have those little breaks rather than taking on some new project or trying to do something on the side, which I think I really, really used to do, especially when he was younger, because I was so I really wanted to progress my career. I’ve kind of learned now to really cherish those times and just be mom, if I can swing it, if I can, if I can make it happen.

Zack Arnold: Well, I want to look at this from two perspectives, one of which would be just the absolute day to day, hour to hour, like what does it actually take to be able to work in this business and be a parent, and then also the larger part, the emotional part, the, you know, things you’re missing, things you’re not missing, but let’s start just from the micro, where you went from working crazy hours, now all of a sudden you have a kid, and actually two and a half months is amazing, because when, when I had, well, I didn’t have my, my wife had our child, I was there, I had a had a part in it, but she did most of the work, when we had our first child, it was right when I was done with one project, and right before I got hired on burn notice, so that was like my big break, and I’m like, oh my god, I just got the break, I’ve wanted for 10 years, and now I have a child that I care about more than my career. When did this happen?

Yvette Amirian: Yeah, but I kind of went through that that transition. So, what was it like for you, where you realized, all right, now I have to find a way, just on a day-to-day level, not the emotional part yet, just day to day. How did I have to change my life to still be able to go to work and have a kid at the same time? Well, as you say, we are control freaks, and I definitely am in my personal life as well. And I think having a child really helped me ease up on that, because you can’t do everything yourself, and if you’re lucky enough to have a partner in your life, then you know you have that person that you can rely on, and I count my blessings. I am so lucky because both of our families live here, and like we literally live two minutes from my, my parents’ house, and so both of our moms were an integral part of raising him when he was a baby, he would go to, you know, they would alternate, he would go to each of their houses when he was, when he was younger. Eventually, I ended up hiring a nanny who was more of a part-time person. And then once he started going to school, it became a whole different ball game of, like, who’s going to pick him up and who’s going to drop him off, and, you know, it’s, it’s crazy, but somehow or another we find a way to make it work. Right now, we’re at the point where you know, depending on my husband’s schedule, because his schedule is like the absolute opposite of mine, where he goes to work at like five in the morning and comes home at 4o’clock So he will usually, I will usually drop off our son in the mornings, he or one of the moms will pick him up, bring him home, or take him to, like, he takes jiu jitsu lessons every two, I think it’s two days a week. They’ll take him to jiu jitsu lessons, or they’ll bring him home, and the nanny will come and stay with him until one of us gets home in the evenings, and you know he doesn’t go to bed right now until about 9o’clock so if I get home before that. I absolutely am the one who puts them to sleep and does the whole bedtime routine, but I miss a lot of that because the hours are long, you know. Right now I’m working anywhere from like nine to 710, to eight, you know, on a really bad night where we have a cut going out. I can be there until 11, midnight, sometimes later, so you know it really just depends on the day, as far as my schedule of whether or not I get to make it home for bedtime, but I really try and be involved in the mornings, and in terms of like taking him to school as much as I can. So that’s kind of the day to day right now. I think it was harder when he was in school. If I’m being honest, I think that was a really difficult part, because it was just somebody has to watch him for long stretches of time, while my, while my husband and I are at work, and now it’s like you have a school that does that for the big part of the day.

Zack Arnold: Well, I just realized that I didn’t actually ask for the listener’s point of view, how old your son is. They have some perspective.

Yvette Amirian: He’s, he’s five, he’ll be five in July, July,

Zack Arnold: Because they’re thinking, wait, your son’s two years old and he’s doing jiu jitsu, that’s crazy.

Yvette Amirian: Oh no, he’s five now, he’s five, but you know, it really, I mean, I swear, like, it feels like the past five years have just flown by, and people will still ask me, like, how’s the baby, and I’m like, gosh, he’s not a baby anymore, he’s really not, even, even people who I work with, because, you know, like, they don’t see my kid on a regular basis, I don’t talk about him all the time, so they’re like, oh my god, he’s five, that’s crazy, and I’m like, yeah, it is,

Zack Arnold: Yeah. And the going back to what you had said previously, that the key word that I pulled out of there was bedtime. That was the game changer for me, was I’ve always been a night owl, I’ve never was really never able to get up early in the mornings, I was always creative after like eight or 9pm at night, and like I could use less for 12 hours, and then eight or 9o’clock hits, bam, I could cut like a machine for five hours straight, wake up in a drunken stupor the next day, and be like, whoa, what I did last night was awesome. Same

Yvette Amirian: Here,

Zack Arnold: I mean, I’ve done 24 hours straight just cutting something through the night, and it’s like that was cool, but then all of a sudden you have a kid and you’re like, wait a second, I have to be out of here at 7o’clock and when I was, when I was a kid, I hated those guys, and like, really, 7o’clock that’s when my day starts, and now I’m so protective of that time, it is so important to me, and when, when my kids were really little, like when I started Burn Notice, my first season, I almost never made it home for bedtime, which, selfishly, was very hard for me, but looking back, my child was like two months old, three months old, like he doesn’t know what destroys me is when my kids call and my kids are, I have a boy that’s six and I have a daughter that’s four, and when they call me at 630 and they say, “Daddy, are you going to be home for bedtime? and I say no, and they’re like, why wouldn’t you come home for bedtime to see us, like, it destroys me.

Yvette Amirian: Yeah, Zack says he, my son’s name is Zack, and he says, “Mommy, are you going to put me to sleep tonight, or is it going to be Daddy, or is it going to be Alice, like the nanny? So he’ll ask those questions, and he’s very aware of

Zack Arnold: It. Yeah, and it’s.. it really changed everything about the way that I organize and structure my day, because I have kids, I’m now a morning person, not because I have to be for like two years. It was there, was no choice. It’s like, well, I’m a morning person because somebody’s screaming at 430 like that’s not a choice. But now my kids will sleep until seven or 730 but I still choose to be a morning person because it changes my circadian rhythms, and it means that I can get everything done, usually that’s within my control. I have everything done by 630 or 7o’clock at night, and I can get home, and I can put my kids to bed, and that’s something that I’ve talked about in the past, that it’s so much easier to accomplish something productively and efficiently if you have a why, because you can have all the tactics in the world, but if you don’t have a reason to stick to it, it’s not going to happen, and for me it was I’m leaving here at 7o’clock no matter what. I have two kids that are waiting for me at home that want me to read to them, and I’m gonna make it happen. So, to me, it’s so important to understand how that perspective is going to change, and it changed for me to the point where before I had kids, like I would work 1617, 18 hours a day, and nothing was going to stop me from achieving the dreams that I had of being a big time Hollywood film editor and winning Oscars and all these things, and I’m like, none of that is worth missing time with my kids, like, none of it, there’s nothing,

Yvette Amirian: People say it all the time, they’re like, oh, you don’t know, you don’t know until you have the kid, it’s true, and it’s such a frustrating thing to say, I have a girlfriend who’s pregnant right now, and I was trying to explain, like that bond when you kind of fall in love with them, like right when you see them, and how impossible it seems, and nobody, it really like nobody understands that until they have a kid, and I agree, agree with you, like the first couple of years of his life, I think I felt less guilty about the late nights and not being able to make it home, because it was like, okay, well, he’s like, he’s a year old, two years old, he’s not, he’s not going to remember any of this stuff, but now that he’s so much more aware of it, it’s very difficult, and for me it’s like, if I, if I know that it’s going to be a late night, if I know that there’s a big cut going out or something like that, I’ll try and do the opposite, where I’ll spend some time with him in the morning, you know, make sure that I’m the one who takes him to school, if I’m not going to be able to. Him, so it’s really kind of a day by day thing. I think I used to be much more like I have to know what the exact schedule is, and I know I have to know how it’s going to work, and now I’ve kind of learned that I have to take it day by day, because otherwise I’ll drive myself insane.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, which I can understand completely. So, kind of going along the lines, going with, we’ve kind of gone back and forth between the day to day to the big emotional stuff, but I want to go backwards again. A really common question that I will get from people is, wait, so you have a podcast and you’re building an online learning program and you’re writing a TV show and you have two kids, how do you have the time? But then I’m talking to you and you are a mom, you have a kid, you have a full-time job, and you’re teaching at USC, and I very rarely do ask this, but I’m like, How in the world are you doing all those things? Because I can’t even balance finding a way to teach and edit full time. I tried for three semesters, and it just about killed me.

Yvette Amirian: It’s hard. It’s really hard. I think the fact that I have a lot of help helps a lot. I would not be able to do it, if I was, you know, if I didn’t have my family around. For me, having a nanny is really an integral part of it, because you know, I need to be able to rely on somebody who’s going to be able to be with him in the afternoons, because I know that I’m not, I know that I’m not going to make it home at least earlier than 7o’clock So, if he’s home from 4o’clock until seven, and my husband has to go back to his, he owns a gym, like, if he has to go back to the gym and teach classes, then somebody needs to be able to be with him. So that’s been a really big part of it. And the USC classes are in the evening, so it’s much easier to be able to do the evening classes rather than, you know, doing daytime classes would just be impossible. But, you know, the nighttime class thing, it’s like I was going to be at work until you know, like, you said, I’m a night owl, so I was accustomed to being at work until 10 o’clock anyway. So, teaching a class from seven to 10 is not.. it feels normal for me. And on those nights, I kind of, you know, now that he’s older and he understands, I just tell him, like, “Hey, Mommy’s not gonna be home tonight, tonight it’s gonna be daddy, or “Today it’s gonna be the babysitter, or whoever it is. And there will definitely be times where he’ll whine and complain about it, and no, like, I want you, I don’t want Daddy yet, you know, and it hurts. It’s really like, you know, I don’t want to go back to the emotional stuff, but you know, it’s hard, especially now that he understands. But once he gets used to it, and once he realizes, like, sorry, this is the way that it’s going to be, then you deal with it, like I said, you deal with it on a day-to-day basis. Yeah, the teaching, the teaching thing, and balancing that with work is easier because it’s nighttime classes, balancing the day to day, and like just being able to be at work, it’s you know, with my mom, like my mom picks him up, always Facetime with him, if I know that I’m not going to be able to see him, I think I hope that he just, you know, he knows that no matter what, I’m always here.

Zack Arnold: Well, one story that I heard, and I can’t use names, but I believe that, yeah, but I believe that you and I talked about this while we were at lunch together recently, where I know a big, big time A-list feature film editor that works on giant Marvel movies, and this editor was working with another editor, and he or she, just so I don’t have to give away anything, they had kids, and they were working eight days a week, 26 hours a day, just lived in the edit suite, working on this giant film for years, and this person was like, well, like, go home, like you have children waiting for you, and this person said, yeah, but I can give them a great college education, and my response to that, and you can, you know, I would like to know your response, but my response was, I would rather my kids see me. Yeah, how would you respond to that, considering that you’re in a similar position?

Yvette Amirian: I think, I mean, look, I’m young, and I had him when I was young, and I was still in a place in my career where I was very.. not to say that I’m not like hungry anymore, I definitely want to continue to move my career forward, but I think at that time that kind of look, I think there’s part of it that’s like a fear of like, what are they going to think now? I have a baby, are they going to want to keep utilizing me, are they going to keep hiring me? There’s definitely always that concern, and I’m sure there’s plenty of women out there who feel that way, but you know, one piece of advice that a good friend of mine gave me, who she’s one of my only female editor friends, she was like, ‘Look, you’re good, and you know that you’re good. You don’t have anything to prove anymore. You just have to be able to put your foot down, and like you said, I’m leaving here at seven, or I’m leaving here at eight. Yes, I can work a couple of late nights, but I have to be able to get home at this and this time, and this job that I’m on right now, I like it’s like every other Thursday, I have to be able to be home at 7o’clock because there’s no one else to watch my kids, so I kind of like laid that out from the beginning, so that there was no confusion, and I think when I was younger, when I had initially had him, I was really scared to do that. Now, looking at it, like hearing that story, I absolutely agree with you, it’s like, for me, you know, yes, I want to be able to provide him with a great life, and I think I’m doing that no matter what, but I, I want to be able to be present. I missed a lot of stuff, like I missed the first time that he walked that killed me. I missed the first time that he said his first word, that killed me. And I’ve been there for a lot of other things, but it is a really big deal, like some people will be like, oh, whatever, okay, like he’s not going to remember that, yeah, he’s not going to remember that, but it’s something for. Me, like, there’s a definitely a level of guilt that you feel from missing those things. I’ve learned over time that that’s more important to me, and yes, my career is very, very important too. And anybody who knows me, anybody who’s worked with me, will tell, will tell you that I have a really strong work ethic, and I’ll always make up the time, I’ll always be there to get the job done. But you know, I do have this other thing in my life now that’s really important, and I don’t know, I don’t have all the magic answers, but I’m finding ways to do it, and I’m finding ways to balance it.

Zack Arnold: Well, the next question then that I want to ask, which is something that I would not experience because I’m a man, but this is definitely a topic that I’ve wanted to get into for a long time, and that is being a film editor that’s female, which is already unusual. Being a film editor that has a child is extremely unusual, because if you look at the list of all the super successful female editors, most of them don’t have kids, or their kids are grown already. Do you find, and maybe you already have all the contacts and all the previous relationships, this isn’t an issue, but do you find that it’s harder to get hired, because people are afraid of hiring a female editor with a young kid.

Yvette Amirian: No, I’m not necessarily. I think that’s exactly what it is. I think I already had the contacts, and I think that’s that’s one thing that I will say that has made my life easier as an editor and as a mom, is that I had already made that transition, like I was no longer, I was no longer assisting when I had my kid. I think that if I had been an assistant, or if I hadn’t made that transition yet, I think that may have been more difficult, but at the time that I had him, I’d already been cutting for what, like, yeah, I’d been cutting for almost six years at that point, so I had that network of contacts, and I had the people who I really would get a lot of my jobs from, and people who would consistently call me back, and even the people who I was kind of like, ah, like I’m a little bit scared that they’re going to react a little bit differently. They still call me back, because I’ve already established that, you know, the company that I’m working with right now, or even the company that I was working for, the last place that I was working, they didn’t know me, but the executive producer knew me, and I feel like if you have somebody on the team that trusts you and knows that you’re going to deliver, then it’s not really an issue. I think it definitely helps if the people that you’re working with are quote unquote family friendly, you know, and who understand that. I certainly think that, you know, when you have people on the team who are parents themselves, it makes things a lot easier. I’m actually to the people who I’m working with right now, both of the producers are female, and they both have kids, and that’s something rare for me. I think a lot of the people who I’ve worked with do not have kids, producers or editors. I think I know two female editors who have, who have kids, like personally, people that I know. So it is rare, and I think I told you when we had had lunch, like it’s really hard to find people who can relate to that. I think you know, I’ve worked with a lot of men who have kids, but a lot of them have a situation where their partner has a less intense job, or maybe they’re a stay-at-home parent, or something like that. So it’s really hard to find people who, who can relate to that, who actually work in the industry, and more specifically, who work in post.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and if you’re looking at the way that society views it, like I have two kids, and I’m working a busy job, but nobody’s saying, ‘Well, you’re supposed to be home when he takes this first step, and you’re supposed to hear his first words. But for a woman, I’m not making the judgment, I’m just saying this is the way that it is, you’re supposed to be home for that stuff. So it’s even harder in that sense, but no, I like people just assume that, well, of course, I’m off and I’m doing the work and I’m working the long hours and I see my kids on the weekends and I’m John Hamm from Mad Men, you know, like that’s okay, but I think for women there’s that much more of a fear, just even though things have changed so much, it’s still the sense of well, how am I going to be treated and what are the expectations, and I think it’s important for somebody listening to this, it might be female, that’s hitting that point in their editing career, where they’re saying, I kind of want to have a family. It’s very encouraging to hear that you still have a very successful career. It’s crazy busy, and you’re trying to juggle daycare and plays and jiu jitsu classes, but that’s just logistics, like that’s it’s not like your whole life was turned upside down, and you had to change your career because of

Yvette Amirian: It. You get used to it. I had, I had a good friend who she has three kids now, but you know, she was like, you know, after you have the first one, you’re like, “My God, like, what did I used to do with all this time? Like, there’s so much time that it takes to have you have to take care of the kid, and then you have the second one, and you’re like, “Oh my god, what did I used to do with all this time? And then by the time you have the third one, you’re like, I just don’t know what my life used to be, and it’s, it’s funny, as time goes on, you, you really start to feel that way. You’re like, really, like, how did I manage to do all the work that I used to do when I didn’t have a kid? Like, it’s like having two jobs, even though you’re not like 100% there for one of them, you’re always involved in some way, whether it’s juggling the babysitters or juggling who’s picking him up, or oh my gosh, like he’s sick, or I have to make a doctor’s appointment. It’s sort of most editors, I think, are really good multitaskers, so I think that that helps. But yeah, I mean, it’s definitely it’s definitely a juggling act. And the other thing that I’ll say is that you know that that kind of judgment about, you know, society’s views on like women and being at home, and you should be at home. The kid, and all that. I mean, look, I’ve definitely had that, just simply from a cultural point of view, like part of, like, my own personal culture. And a lot of my friends are stay-at-home moms, or if they are working moms, they have much more relaxed jobs, like nine to five, and they’re like, “What do you mean you work until 7o’clock or 8o’clock at night? Like, that’s late for them. I’m like, “Really, that’s not, that’s not late, that’s normal,

Zack Arnold: That’s a half day,

Yvette Amirian: But I think part of it is that I’m really passionate about what I do, and I really love what I do, and I think when you enjoy something so much, it’s really hard for it not to be a part of your life, like I feel like, in as much as I would feel like part of my life was missing if I didn’t have my son, I feel like a part of my life would be missing if I didn’t have my career, and I think when you’re that driven and when you really feel like you can’t live without something, you find a way to make it work.

Zack Arnold: Well, I can say that definitively, of the 81 episodes I’ve done, you were the first Armenian female editor with a child. I had this, the first for me,

Yvette Amirian: I know one other one, I know one other one

Zack Arnold: Well. She hasn’t been on my show yet.

Yvette Amirian: She hasn’t.

Zack Arnold: So, yeah, you’re definitely the first female Armenian with a child that’s a successful film editor. There’s not a whole ton of those around.

Yvette Amirian: No, I don’t think so. The

Zack Arnold: Next question that I want to ask, and we kind of touched on this a little bit, and I touched on it probably more than you did, but a really important question that I want to ask, just from my own perspective, is once you had your child, did you find that your career aspirations changed?

Yvette Amirian: Yes, and no. I don’t think initially they did. I think over time, when the opportunities for producing presented themselves, I was like, do I do I want to move away from editing, is this something that I want to do, and I really think that the appeal of that was that it was going to give me a little more flexibility, and it was going to give me an opportunity to be more involved on a larger scale, and you know, I was, I was clearly like wrong about that, because producing, obviously, is just a ton of, a ton of work, and then as much as it’s flexible and gives you a lot of those, those options that, that allow you to, like, spend more time with your family, in some ways, you’re overseeing a whole team at the end of the day, and you’re doing a very man, you know, you’re managing a lot of people. So I think they changed in a way that I realized that work is not as important as what it used to be. It is still important, and I do find ways to, you know, make it happen and make it work, but and this is so difficult for anybody who doesn’t have a kid to understand. At the end of the day, that is what’s always going to come first, you know. My kid is sick, nobody else can pick him up. I’m going to have to leave work, and I’m going to have to go pick him up. I’m really lucky that I have a lot of people who are helping me do that, and that is what has made my career and maintaining my career really viable. If I didn’t have that, I don’t know how I would be doing it. And I get that question a lot too. Like, how do you do it? How do you manage all this? It’s really because I have a lot of help, and I’ve surrounded myself with people who are going to be able to help me out. I really, I knew that I was going to need a nanny. I knew that I was going to need somebody to help me, and most of the working moms that I know in the industry have a nanny helping them in some way. In terms of whether or not my career aspirations changed, I don’t know. That’s a really hard question, and I don’t really feel like they have. I still have things that I want to achieve. I think maybe my timeline has changed, you know. Where I felt like I have to do this by the time I’m this age, I have to do this, I have to get this done. I really thought I would have made this transition by now, and now I am a little more like, okay, that’s fine, it’ll happen when it happens. It’s still something that is on my list of goals that I want to achieve, and if it doesn’t happen when I wanted it to happen, that’s okay, you know. I am still young. I’m fortunate in that sense. I am still young. I have more that I want to accomplish, and you know, I see myself doing it. I don’t know if that makes sense the way that I’m explaining it. No,

Zack Arnold: It absolutely makes sense, and I think that timeline is certainly one that I went through as well. But the bigger thing for me, I kind of went in two opposite directions. At first, it was, holy crap, I’ve got a kid now. I’ve got to like accelerate the career path. I got to make more money, and I have to be more successful and more established, so I don’t have these periods of time where I can’t find work like it used to be. Well, you know, you go a few months and I just have to choose the perfect project, and it has to be the right resume builder, and then you get to a point where, like, well, I’ve got $1,000 tuition payment to make every month, so just give me something to edit. I don’t give a crap what it is, so that changed for me. But what I also found was that, granted, I will be the first to say that when you start to have things like Empire on your resume, it’s easier to make decisions like this. So I don’t want people to think that, oh, it’s so easy for him, like, you know, I’m very, very aware of that, but at the same time, what’s happened to me is I started making career choices based so much more on daily lifestyle and quality of life rather than just being resume builders. I mean, frankly, that’s one of the reasons that I made the transition away from Empire. Like, Empire is one of the number one shows on television, it’s a huge resume. Builder, but it was taking time away from my kids, it was taking time away from my sanity, it was stressing me out. So, even when I was home, I wasn’t really home, or I was grumpy, and I said, I’ve got to do something about this, and I thought to myself, I’ve always been on this trajectory where I want to work on the biggest tent pole movies and make gazillions of dollars every week, and I want to win Oscars, like that was me, maybe 10 years ago, and now I’m thinking maybe I’ll do that stuff someday, but when I hear the lifestyle that they have, I’m like, I don’t even want to pursue that path until my kids are in, like, college,

Yvette Amirian: Yeah, exactly,

Zack Arnold: I’m not going to miss that time, so my career trajectory has taken a complete 180 because of kids and I don’t feel bad about that,

Yvette Amirian: Right. And I think it took, I agree with you 100% and I think it took me a while to not feel bad about that, to not feel guilty about it, because I think I put so much pressure on myself to say, like I said, I have to meet this and this at this timeline, and I want to work on these shows, and I want, you know, I don’t want to do these types of shows anymore, and now it’s like, you know, if it’s going to be the type of show where I’m still working, like you said, like I’m still, I’m still working, I’m still working on a really legitimate good show, I’m still working for a big, big network, or whatever, whatever it is, whatever the job happens to be, you know, and if it allows me to be able to have a little more flexibility in my life, have a little more enormously, or maybe it’s just that it’s like this is such something that a lot of people will talk about. Maybe it’s just that it’s closer to my house, so that I don’t have to sit in traffic for like three hours, or whatever it is. I think you and I had talked about that, even those little things make a big difference when you have a kid, and when you’re on those time crunches, where you have to like make it home by a certain time, or you have to drop them off at school before you have to go to work, or whatever, it is all those things make life a little more convenient, and I think it took me a really long time to like take that pressure off and say, like, you know what, you don’t have to feel guilty about this, you have more time to do these things in your career, and I’m like, you know, I’m still working, and I’m still really successful, and I’m still really happy with the projects that I’m working on, and I think you know, I mean, I think, as far as like any young women who are kind of at this point in their lives, where they’re, they have to make that decision of whether or not they have the kid now, or if they wait, or whatever. I think one of the things that I did right, or that I was really lucky about when I had him, was that I was at a really high point in my career. I was really well established, and I was getting consistent work. I wasn’t taking a lot of breaks, and so now that I want to take more of those breaks, when I’m able to, it’s easier for me to do it. And, like I said, you know, that’s one of the benefits of doing what we do, where we are working freelance, is if you can have even just a couple weeks, even like a month, you know, a month, even if it’s a week in between those jobs, I really try not to, like, overdo, let’s take a side job and let’s do this, and oh my gosh, let’s work on this side project, or whatever it is. I really try and just focus on being with him and treasuring that time with him, or going on a family vacation, or whatever it is, and it took me a really long time to do that, because I think when I, when he was initially born, I think I still had a lot of that fear of, like, I have to keep up, I have to keep up, I have to keep working, I have to keep proving myself. When in reality I had really proved myself at that point, and it took me a long time to get to the point where I just kind of said, okay, like I have to be able to have a little more of that balance in my life and not put so much pressure on myself.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I think it’s really key, kind of, to bring out what you had said about just making simple decisions based on the fact that you have kids and not being ashamed about it. Like, one of the reasons that I chose to leave Empire is I was in my car for three hours a day, and there’s nothing that breaks your heart more than doing bedtime from the 101 from your phone. It’s like I cannot do this another day, and I just happened, and this I say, I don’t believe in luck. This was luck. I live walking distance from my job right now. I’m walking to work, but that means that tonight I get to play Monopoly with my kids for half an hour before bedtime, and that to me is worth more than the resume builder. But again, when you get to a position in your career where you have something like empire on a resume, it’s flippant and easy to say something like that, but at the same time, I’ve decided that at least right now in my career my kids are at that perfect age where they actually want to be with me and they don’t hate me. That time is coming, it will happen, then maybe my career trajectory changes, but right now my kids wait for me to come home. They love me, they want to play with me, they want to jump on me, like I’m not going to give that up, because I still am in this mad, crazy mode of building my resume and building my career. And, like you said, it was hard to make that decision, like it took a lot of coaching and therapy to get over the fact that was my whole identity as a person, was how successful am I in my career as an editor, and I kept working and working and working, and even after I was successful, and it was taking time away from my kids, I, I just, I had to extract myself away from that perspective and say, is this worth it, and and it wasn’t, and it took a long time, but now I. I am not apologetic. It’s like this is the choice I made, and I’m happy about it.

Yvette Amirian: I have a memory of us, you know, like you do the hospital tour when you’re about to have the baby, and we’re sitting in a room with all these moms and dads to be, and the nurse is asking us a bunch of questions, and she goes, What’s your biggest fear about all this? And all the moms were like, oh, like, I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to hold the, you know, how do you hold the baby, and I’ve never been with a baby, and I, my answer was like, my career is my whole identity, and I don’t know what’s going to happen now when I have this other job, that was my answer before I even had him. So, I think I recognized, like you said, it is your identity, and I think it still is in many ways. I think I still really identify, like I really identify the fact with the fact that I’m Yvette, the editor, it’s just that now you’re in this other role, and how do you figure both of those out, and how do you figure what the balance is there? And if you have to take a step back from one for a little while, you know, having the faith and the confidence to say, like, I’m going to be able to do it again at some point, it’s a hard thing. I’m sure it’s a hard thing for any working parent. It can’t just be our industry, you know. So, I don’t know. It’s definitely difficult. It’s not easy. I don’t want this conversation like I don’t want everybody out there to be listening to this and be like, “Oh, cool, like they’re making it work, and it’s not easy. There’s nothing easy about it.

Zack Arnold: Oh, it’s back breaking. It is excruciating every single day, and every single day of the back breaking, excruciating pain is 120% worth it. There’s no question that all the toil and the heartache is worth it, but I think it’s, it’s really important for people that are listening and are either going through the struggle of, should I make the transition to having kids, or am I crazy to try and do it in this industry, or if they’re struggling with all these same things, it’s very, very normal. Anybody that I talk to that has kids in this industry, sometimes they’re pulling their hair out. I mean, look at pictures of me before I had kids, they’re like, “Oh my god, you had hair. I’m like, coincidentally, that’s right before I had my first child. Now I have no hair. There’s there’s a reason for that, but it’s important to know that that struggle is very, very real, and you’re not dealing with it on your own. And I think that what you said about your identity and how that being the thing that was in your mind, that that never even crossed my mind, like I was just like, holy crap, like I’m gonna have something in my house that is going to cost me money and I’m gonna have to work harder and I’m never gonna be able to sleep, it was just all the practical that was

Yvette Amirian: That was there too, I think, but when I, when the process of like, oh my gosh, we want to have a kid, like, it didn’t even cross my mind initially, and then as it started getting closer, because I was like, I had to have been like seven or eight months pregnant by the time we did that hospital tour, that’s when it really started hitting me that, like, oh my gosh, like, this is all that I’ve ever done, and even, like, my poor husband, like, he’s had to deal with so many of the late nights, and he’s always been so, he’s always been very understanding and respectful of that, and I cannot tell you how much I appreciate it, and how important it is to have a partner who, like, gets what our industry is, but I think when you have a kid, it changes – it’s not, it’s not, it’s not your partner, it’s not your wife or your husband, it’s like it’s this little person that you’re its mom, you know, you’re its dad, and it’s just so different, inevitably there’s a lot of guilt, and you know, kind of being torn up inside that, that comes with that naturally, and like I said, I’m sure it’s not just us, and I’m sure it’s not just our industry, but definitely I think we feel a lot just given the nature of what we do and what our, what our schedules are like.

Zack Arnold: Well, given the nature of our schedules and the fact that we both have young kids, and we both become morning people that take our kids to school. I’m going to be respectful of your time, and I’m gonna, gonna let you go, but I’m hoping that this was immensely helpful for anybody, regard, because I know that at this point, anybody that doesn’t have kids, they turned this off like 20 minutes ago. So I’m only talking to people that are parents in post that have kids at this point, but

Yvette Amirian: You know what, I will tell you, I have so many female students who will come up to me and be like, it’s really inspiring that you’re a woman and that you’re an editor and that you’re working in this industry, and how do you do it? They’re already starting to think about it, and I think it’s really important, and I think it’s an important thing to talk about, because I certainly didn’t have it when I was in school, there was, you know, it was just not a subject that really came up, and I’m happy. I want more people to talk about it, and I would like people to be as prepared as they can be. Like I said, you’re never going to be ready, but it’s good to talk about it. It’s good to get that perspective from people who are parents in the industry.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, that’s the biggest mistake that I.. and this has nothing to do with post production, just people that I talk to that want to have kids. Well, we’re waiting for the right time. Well, then you’re gonna be dead first. There’s no such thing. You’re never ready, ever.

Yvette Amirian: My doctor, my doctor said that to me when I, when I, before we were even pregnant, I said, “I don’t know, it’s not the right time. He’s like, “You’re gonna have kids when you’re like 90. It’s there’s never a right time. Yeah,

Zack Arnold: My kids are six and four, and it still is not the right time. Trust me, like, did it never going to happen, you just bite the bullet and you do it well anyway. This has been tremendously inspiring to me. I hope it’s been inspiring and helpful to others, and I cannot thank you enough for taking time out of your evening to share your story with my audience.

Yvette Amirian: My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Episode Credits

This episode was edited by Curtis Fritsch, the show notes were prepared by Natalie Boschan, and this show is executive produced by Kanen Flowers. We are a member of the THAT STUDIO podcast network.

The music in the opening and closing of the show is courtesy of Dorian Cheah from his brilliant album ARA.