Footage is raw material. The job is to turn it into something that holds a room — that carries the
intention it was shot with all the way to the last frame. That’s what editing and color are for.
Editing & Color, Under One Roof
Jalen Buer is a video editor and colorist based in West Michigan, working remotely nationwide.
With 8 years of professional video experience, the work spans brand films, music videos, aerial pieces, and
short films — edited and color graded end to end in DaVinci Resolve.
Keeping the edit and the grade in the same hands matters. A cut informs the color and the color informs the
cut; when one person carries both, the finished piece feels deliberate rather than assembled in pieces. The
goal is never just clean footage — it’s footage that feels like the thing it’s trying to be.
What This Covers
Every project is scoped to the footage and the goal, but the work generally moves through:
- Footage review & selects — going through every take and pulling what actually serves the piece.
- Editing, story & pacing — building the cut so it moves the way it should, and lands where it needs to.
- Color correction — balancing exposure and white balance so every shot matches and nothing jars.
- Cinematic color grading — building a deliberate look on top of clean, matched footage.
- Finishing & delivery — titles where needed, and final masters in every format you’ll release in.
Selected Work
A few recent pieces — brand, aerial, and year-in-review films, each edited and color graded from the ground up. Click any to watch it in full.
Color & Log Footage
Color is the part of a film people feel without noticing. It’s the difference between footage of a place and
the memory of standing in it — the same frame, carrying a different weight.
Most of this work starts from log footage — the flat, low-contrast profile that looks washed-out
out of camera because it’s holding onto every bit of detail in the highlights and shadows. That latitude is exactly
what a grade is built from. The process runs in two passes: color correction first — exposure,
white balance, and shot matching so the footage is clean and consistent — then the grade, where
the look goes on and the piece finds its mood. Eight years of doing this in DaVinci Resolve is what lets a flat log
clip become something that feels intentional. The before-and-after below shows what that transformation looks like.
Hover (or tap on mobile) to reveal the color grade.
Where This Fits
This page is the wide view. If your project is more specific, there’s a page built for it:
music video editing for artists and bands,
cinematic color grading when the footage is edited and just needs the look,
and local video editing in Grand Rapids for West Michigan projects.
A broader range of finished work lives in the gallery, and if you make music too,
production coaching comes from the same studio.
It all comes from one place — Jalen & Riley Artistry — and the same pair of hands
that writes and produces music cuts and colors the video. That overlap isn’t
incidental; a producer’s sense of rhythm and a colorist’s sense of mood tend to end up in the same edit.
