The documentary Sugar Babies was directed by Rachel Fleit and follows Autumn, an enterprising college scholarship recipient and TikTok influencer. Having grown up in poor, rural Louisiana, Autumn is determined to overcome the struggles and barriers that define her and her close group of friends. She creates an online sugar baby operation that uses talking, flirting and photo sharing to get money from her followers.
"I came to work on this Sundance project through my connection with Rachel, the director," explains editor Holle Singer. "We had known each other for some time through a mutual friend, and we live so close to each other, both in Brooklyn and Amagansett. One day I was grabbing lunch and I ran into her by chance. I’ve always admired her work. The conversation evolved naturally, and I came onboard as an editor. Rachel and I worked closely throughout the process, often from my apartment, where she would camp out on my couch, and I’d share edits with her on my TV."
Singer (pictured) primarily used Adobe Premiere Pro for the edit, noting its flexibility and ability to work with a wide range of footage formats, including iPhone videos, social media clips and camera media.
"Speech-to-text was a helpful way for me to navigate and structure the narrative more efficiently," she explains. "I also used After Effects for removing unwanted signage and creating visual effects, including mirroring and artificial glitches. Frame.io helped Rachel and me collaborate easily through the note feature, whenever we weren’t in the same place. We were also working with verité-style footage, and Premiere Pro’s stabilization and audio cleanup tools were great to refine the footage."
Singer points to an intimate, tense moment between two of the film's subjects as an editorial highlight in which she opted not to cut at all.
"Letting the moment unfold in realtime created an incredible emotional weight, and I think it’s one of the most powerful sequences in the film," she reveals. "One of the biggest challenges was not a single scene, but it was probably sorting through an overwhelming amount of incredible footage. I sometimes find it difficult to cut moments I love, so weeding through it all was a process."