JOSH MIELY, HOST: The media landscape doesn’t stand still, nor does the business behind it. Welcome to Changing Frequencies, a podcast from NAB Show. Each episode explores how media, entertainment, and storytelling are evolving, from broadcast to streaming, content creators to the cloud, and sports to AI, spotlighting the people who are defining what’s next. I’m Josh Miely from NAB.

Today, we’re looking at how the creative process itself is changing when the gap between shooting, editing and feedback starts to disappear. And stay with us until the end of the episode because we’ll share an exclusive promo code for our listeners that gives you a free show floor pass to the 2026 NAB Show happening April 18th through the 22nd.

For a long time, the creative process and media followed a pretty clear sequence. You’d shoot something, hand it off, edit it, review it and refine it over time. Each step had its place and each step created a natural pause where creative decisions were made. But that structure is starting to change.

Today, footage can be reviewed while it’s still being shot. Editors can begin shaping scenes immediately. Feedback can happen in real time instead of in defined rounds. The delay between production and post-production is shrinking and, in some cases, disappearing altogether. That shift isn’t just about efficiency. It changes the rhythm of the creative process itself. It makes it faster and more collaborative, but also more fluid and sometimes more complex.

At the 2026 NAB Show, these ideas are front and center: how cloud workflows are reshaping production, how creative teams are adapting and what it means when timing becomes a critical part of storytelling. So today, we’re looking at what happens to creativity when everything starts happening at once.

I’m joined by Derek Schweickart, team lead for Camera to Cloud at Frame.io and Adobe Company. Derek, welcome to the podcast, my friend.

DEREK SCHWEICKART: Hey Josh, great to be here, thank you.

MIELY: Well, Derek, let’s jump right in. We’ve spent years talking about cloud workflows as a way to make production more efficient. But when footage is available instantly, how does that actually change the way creative decisions get made?

SCHWEICKART: Camera to Cloud is really born out of the remote production workflows that started becoming more common during COVID, right? And that was a really particular type of production where we had to work remotely. We had to connect people in a different way. And I think it’s interesting to think about that now sort of in 2026, what that looks like. And what I tend to see with the instant availability is, it’s like you said in your intro, production is less production and post-production; things are happening at the same time.

You can have that archive of everything that’s happening in your pocket, which is really powerful, especially with Frame.io Camera to Cloud. You can see what you shot a couple hours ago. Maybe you’re in transit between locations and you can review what you saw that morning. Maybe you can have a second set of eyes who are in a different mindset than the crush of production, like an editor who’s off-site, who’s watching your back and making sure that you’re getting the things that you want.

So, in that way, I really think of it kind of as a production tool, right? To help you make those decisions and maybe, you know, catch something that you would have caught, you know, the next day or a couple of days later in a normal workflow, you can actually catch maybe the same day. Get that pickup shot or, you know, correct something more in real time. So that I think is an interesting attribute of it, that real-time production expansion, if you will.

MIELY: Yeah, and look, you mentioned editors. Like, how’s this changed their approach to their work? I mean, obviously it’s still putting things together, but it’s got to be different timing on that sort of stuff. And do they have to put themselves in a different frame of mind before they even start a project?

SCHWEICKART: I’m seeing a little bit of both, honestly, and it depends a lot on the context. In some ways, it doesn’t change that much, because when you need to deliver something is really what drives the amount of pressure that you have to do a certain thing to get your cut done, right? So I think that just the availability of the media itself doesn’t automatically change when people are doing things unless there is that pressure to deliver something sooner.

So, it depends a little bit again on your particular use case. What we see with C2C and Frame.io is people who are doing quick-turn production, like quick-turn social kind of content. They love it because they have to get to their audience as quickly as possible. And it makes a big difference for them to have it a day sooner or hours earlier than they would with a normal workflow.

People who are doing more long form, they tend to have a bit of, a little bit more room. And so it’s kind of up to them to see how much of the creative, like how that changes the creative process. And I’ve seen people where it doesn’t change it at all because it’s sure they got it there sooner, but they’re still cutting the next day. And other people, they’re trying to jump in, you know, to get on top of it. So it really depends a lot. And, I’ve seen a bit of both. Definitely the efficiency has come in for those workflows that need that turnaround really, really quickly.

MIELY: I’m glad you mentioned that it’s different for the different vehicles going out, whether it be social or more of a long form. Because one of the things I was thinking about as we were getting prepped for this is, you know, if we can have this real-time collaboration, it means a lot of people can weigh in earlier. And look, it’s great to have everybody’s input, but sometimes that improves the work and sometimes it risks flattening a creative vision. Have you found that to be the case? And how do people avoid letting that happen?

SCHWEICKART: You know, I haven’t really found that to be the case, to be honest. You know, a lot of what I’ve seen, it’s a similar, like it kind of existed already. If you think about video village and people sitting around and making decisions just on set and the fact that you open it up to, you know, people on the cloud, it’s often the same group of people and, you know, capturing the attention during production is always challenging, right? Cause there’s a million things going on.

So, you know, I don’t think that — typically people in production have a lot of spare time to be coming up with, like, just creating extra work for themselves. So yeah, like I said, I’ve seen a little bit of both.

I will say that one of the things we’ve seen that was really interesting was making decisions when you actually can give feedback instantly. So, one of the products that we’ve launched that I really am excited about was Real-Time Logging, which is a partnership with our friends over at Ambient. So we were doing some marketing material internal to Adobe, and you could actually get feedback by the producers on set in real time just by pressing a button essentially and marking those moments. And they end up on your clips in Frame.io, which is kind of, to me, that was a really interesting use of the cloud technology for capturing things that were otherwise, you’d have to write down on a note or remember.

So just say, for example, you’re doing a long interview, like even you talking to me, you could be sitting there and hitting a button that says, oh, he said something interesting here or here. And then when you get into the editing bay, you have a lot of the producer feedback sooner. So, to me, that’s less noise and actually really good signal to what the creative intent was and how these sort of connected technologies can actually enhance creative focus as opposed to kind of what can also happen, which is like—I get what you’re saying, too many cooks in the kitchen, too many voices. But, you know, the opposite is also true.

MIELY: Well, I love that the opposite is true and that’s becoming more of the norm, because I think the fear could be if there’s more voices, it could slow things down, but it sounds like: one, it’s speeding things up, and two, because of that, are we seeing that kind of production timelines and stuff, especially as things become more expensive to produce? Are those shrinking? And that’s kind of where this is all settling itself out and just making it the new normal?

SCHWEICKART: Again, I think it depends a lot on the environment for sure when it comes to a lot of the social content, right? Like there’s just things get turned around really fast and it’s, you know, I feel like production crews nowadays are under a tremendous amount of pressure to deliver more video content than ever. This is something that we hear over and over again from our customers. They just, they have to get more stuff out and we’re seeing, you know, new businesses coming to sort of video production field just because if you’re a business owner, you’re a content creator at this point.

And so, I don’t want to veer too far off of the more creative, narrative, long-form documentary project that I think is at the root of your question. Because those workflows, there are so many constraints when it comes to feature film and whether getting your footage through Camera to Cloud or even through the cloud faster, does it change your budget, is kind of a difficult question to answer. You know what mean? I couldn’t speak for all the producers out there and how they’re solving those problems. But in terms of, like, the efficiency of getting your dailies, like, yeah, I think we’re into a new paradigm these days.

MIELY: And I guess I would say it’s probably an opportunity and as you say, it’s going to be different for everyone as we go. You know, delve a little deeper into, kind of like, on set. Do you see that this has changed what happens there, kind of, fundamentally day to day because of the new opportunities of this communication that Camera to Cloud allows?

SCHWEICKART: I hate to say it depends again, I think that what I’ve seen the most impact when it comes to Camera to Cloud and that narrative space is the creatives having more access to what they just did. So directors and cinematographers who can reference their entire shoot and just see and have it in their pocket and it’s more personal.

So it’s interesting, right? Because like part of the conversation here is collaborative and to say, yes, everybody can see the same thing. But at the same time, because, and maybe this is particular to Frame, but you know, because of the iOS app and the easy availability of the media once it’s in front means that I have my entire shoot in my pocket.

And that’s powerful as a creator. And I have seen that and I have gotten that feedback from, yeah, I get directors and photographers who just, once they get into that workflow, it’s hard for them to kind of get out of it because it’s so convenient to know what they did a couple hours ago or yesterday.

MIELY: So, you know, that brings up just this interesting thing of when does a project actually get finished? If you’ve got all this access to your footage and everybody can kind of chime in, when do we get there?

I mean, Lorne Michaels has famously said, you know, SNL is never finished. It’s just time to go live. I mean, are we getting to that sort of thing where it’s just whenever a deadline hits, people are going to be able to do that? Are we getting to a point where we can have multiple versions of a project? Is this going to be “Spaceballs,” where we can watch the movie even before it’s finished? Like, where do you think we’re even going to get in the next five years?

SCHWEICKART: It’s hard to predict. I will say that there’s something in the creative process, to Lorne Michaels’s quote, which is a great quote, that is just true. I mean, that’s been my experience whenever I’ve, you know, I created a feature and many short films. You do at some point have to just stop, and it’s hard to know when you’re done. How the technology plays into that is interesting where I think there is a lot of noise that gets created through this, right?

And so, we do need to have ways of sort of finding more of the signal within the noise. And that is something that we’re actively working towards at Adobe and at Frame, especially in this era of AI where there’s so much more content being created and then renditions and just you can generate so much more media, and you need a place and ways to organize and really shape that into the vision that you want.

One of the things I’ve seen with the, kind of, you know, cloud digital era is fragmented storage becomes a real issue, right? When everybody has their version of something and there’s, you know, editors are not always in the same building, let alone the same city or state now, you know? And so keeping everyone centralized is really important to, you know, to this idea of how do we get everybody on the same page to get to that finish line?

I will say, I think there’s some exciting stuff coming down in the next few years, just, you know, in terms of different ways of thinking about what a finished product is. As we see, you know, more mobile devices, just the way that people consume media, which challenges, you know, a lot of institutional and legacy ways of doing things. I’m not entirely sure what we’re going to see in that space, or if we’ll see “Spaceballs,” but I do think there’s some interesting questions in there.

MIELY: There really are, and look, this has been a fantastic conversation. We’re starting to run out of time. So I want to get you out of here on this. When we think about Frame.io and we think about that future, what does success look like? What do you say, hey, you know, the problem we’re out to solve, if this, if we’ve solved it completely, or if we’ve solved it three-quarters of the way, it’s going to save this much time. Where do you see that? Where do you see yourselves fitting in the future of content production?

SCHWEICKART: I think Frame.io, we’re really looking at being a place to help you manage your creative work, you know, and across different industries, right? So, from marketing to quick-turn social to feature films, everyone needs tools to help them achieve this creative vision, you know? And I think what getting to finishing means is really getting everybody on the same page. And that’s one of the core tenets of Frame.io.

And we’re built on that with, you know, being the platform where you can communicate your creative ideas and making sure that everybody is seeing the same thing, talking about the same thing and working towards the same vision. So I do think we can play a significant role in that moving forward and helping people feel like their teams are less disjointed and a little bit more focused on a common goal, common mission.

MIELY: Excellent. Derek, thank you so much for taking the time. We’re excited to see you at NAB Show. I know the Adobe booth is N2141. Is that where you guys are going to be working out of or are you just bouncing around and taking meetings?

SCHWEICKART: No, no, little bit of both. We’ll be at the booth. I’ll be demonstrating our new product, which we’re calling Frame.io Drive, which to our topic of conversation here is designed to give you direct access to your Frame.io media on your desktop machines and in your desktop applications, really trying to give you that single source of truth.

So, yeah, come on by the booth. We’ve got people there who are giving demos. I’ll be doing some live demonstrations. And I’m happy to answer any of your questions and dig deeper.

MIELY: Excellent. Well, Derek, thank you for answering my questions. Everybody make sure you check out Frame.io Drive at NAB Show, and Derek, safe travels, and thank you again for being on the podcast.

SCHWEICKART: My pleasure, Josh. Thank you so much.

MIELY: What’s striking here is that it isn’t just about moving faster. It’s about changing when creative work actually happens and who gets to shape it along the way.

If you want to learn more about the technologies and innovations of Adobe, they will be at the 2026 NAB Show in the Creator Lab in Central Hall and on the show floor at their booth N2141 in North Hall.

As promised, listeners of Changing Frequencies can use the promo code PODCAST26 to receive a free Show Floor pass when registering at NABShow.com. That’s PODCAST26, and we’ll see you in Las Vegas.

I’m Josh Miely. Thanks for listening to Changing Frequencies. Subscribe, share and join us next time as we continue spotlighting the people shaping what’s next.