Post Production Team Roles and Who Should Own Each Stage of Review
How I split review ownership across lead editor, assistant editor, colorist, sound, motion designer, producer, post supervisor and client once my team grew past three editors, and how each maps to PlayPause roles.
Two years ago the post side of my agency was me and two editors, and review basically meant me watching every export on my phone late at night and forwarding voice notes into a WhatsApp group. Nobody on the team had a title or a role, right, because I was quietly doing every one of those roles myself. It worked the way things work when three people sit close enough to shout across the room, and I'm pretty sure most production companies run like that until the week they suddenly don't.
Today the same agency runs with a lead editor on each client, an assistant editor who owns every upload, a freelance colorist, a motion designer, a producer and one person whose whole job is the schedule. To be very honest, the cuts are not dramatically better than they were back then, but every stage of review now has exactly one name against it, and that is what finally stopped two editors fixing the same client note on two different exports.
So this is my take on post production team roles from the review side, for founders and in-house video leads whose team just grew past two or three editors. The job-description pages will tell you what a colorist does all day, but they won't tell you who should reply when the client writes that the skin looks orange in the last scene, and that small question is the one that really really costs you a round.
The core post production team roles
In video post-production the list of post production crew positions is fairly stable whether you cut ads, documentaries or YouTube for creators, and what changes is mostly how many hats one person wears. This is how I describe each role to a new hire, craft first and review job right after it:
- Lead editor: builds the story and answers every creative note on their project.
- Assistant editor: uploads and names each version, and checks every note got a reply.
- Colorist: grades the locked cut and owns every note about skin, contrast and look.
- Sound editor or mixer: cleans dialogue, balances music and owns every note about levels.
- Motion designer: builds titles, lower thirds and logo animation, and owns those notes.
- Producer: owns the client, the scope and the final approval.
- Post supervisor: owns the schedule, the statuses and every handoff between people.
The mistake I made when we grew was treating these purely as crafts, because every one of them is also a review job, right, each person creates, comments, triages or signs off. Write those four verbs next to every name and the gaps show up fast, for instance nobody on my team owned triage, so every client comment landed on whichever editor happened to be online.
For each person on your post team, write down whether they create, comment, triage or approve at each stage, and the gaps show up in about five minutes.
On hiring order, here's what I'd do from my own seat. At three editors I'd hire an assistant editor before a fourth editor, because uploads and note chasing are what eat your editors' evenings. Around five or six people I'd split the producer job off from the founder, and once more than four or five projects sit in review at the same time, somebody needs the post supervisor job. Until then I'd keep colorists, sound mixers and motion designers freelance and bring them in per project.
Lead editor and assistant editor responsibilities
The lead editor owns the cut, the film editing craft itself, but in review terms it means something narrower. The lead editor answers every creative note on their project, by fixing it or by replying in the thread with why not, and nobody else touches the edit without going through them, so one project always has one lead.
The assistant editor role is the one founders undervalue most, and trust me on any level, a good assistant is the reason your lead editors still get to cut instead of chasing files. Mine owns three things in review, the upload of every version, the naming of that version, and the check that every comment on the previous version has a reply. In PlayPause that looks like stacking the new export onto the same card as MV2 or MV3, right, so every round of that cut lives in one place, and then leaving one comment on the first frame that lists what changed.
That reply check matters most, because a note that got missed on MV2 is the note the client repeats on MV3 in a slightly angrier tone. My older post on proxy workflow setup for assistant editors covers the media side of the job.
Colorist, sound and motion roles in the review loop
The grade, the mix and the motion graphics layer sit on top of a mostly settled story, so specialists arrive late in a round and leave before the next one, and that timing is exactly why their notes get lost. They should only ever be pointed at the notes that belong to them, right, never be the first person a raw client note lands on.
The way I run it, the producer reads each round of client notes once and routes them with @mentions. A comment like "the skin looks orange here" gets an @ on the colorist, "the music drowns the voiceover at 1:12" gets an @ on the sound mixer, "the logo animation feels slow" gets an @ on the motion designer, and everything else stays with the lead editor. Threaded replies keep the specialist's answer under the original note, so the client sees one person owns it.
One thing to be clear about, PlayPause has a Premiere Pro panel for editors, but there is no native panel for DaVinci Resolve or After Effects. So my colorist and motion designer export their pass, upload it, review it in the browser and then work through the notes back in their own app, which is basically the export they'd do anyway.
Freelancers are where growing teams trip up, and the catch here is that you either add every freelance colorist as a member or you email them files and lose the notes. On the Agency plan and up, guest version upload lets a freelancer push their graded pass onto the card without an account, with their name and email collected, and side-by-side version compare lets the lead editor check MV4 against MV3. The post on how a post supervisor manages colorist and editor handoffs covers the handoff package itself.
The colorist gets a file and a list of timecodes in an email with no idea which notes are theirs, and the grade comes back on the wrong export
The colorist is mentioned on exactly the notes that belong to them, uploads the graded pass onto the same card, and the editor compares it against the previous version
Producer and post supervisor: owning status and deadlines
The producer and the post supervisor are the two roles people blur most, and when you blur them nobody really owns the clock. In my setup the producer owns the client, the scope and the approval, so the producer is the only person who sends a review link or calls a note out of scope. The post supervisor owns the schedule, the statuses and the handoffs, so they always know which project is waiting on us and which is waiting on the client.
I wrote up the full list of post production supervisor responsibilities separately, and the review half of that job mostly comes down to statuses. Custom statuses come with every PlayPause plan, so my cards move through Editing, Internal review, Client review, Changes requested, Color and sound, and Approved, and only the post supervisor moves a card into Client review.
Who-watched analytics on Creator and up show who opened a link, when and from which city. So "the client hasn't replied" splits into "they haven't watched it" and "they watched it and went quiet", right, and the first needs a reminder while the second needs a call from the producer. My post production schedule template builds every review round in with a named owner, so the post supervisor chases a date that was agreed rather than hoped for.
Say, for instance, a team of three editors, an assistant, a motion designer, a producer, a post supervisor and a freelance colorist is on the fine cut of a six-minute brand film. The assistant stacks MV3 on Tuesday, the producer sends the link, and by Wednesday the client has left fourteen comments. The producer routes nine to the lead editor, three to the motion designer and two to the colorist within an hour, and the post supervisor moves the card to Changes requested with a Friday deadline. Nobody had to ask who is doing what, and does that make sense, right, the round keeps moving because every move already has a name.
Where the client fits, and where they should not
I treat the client as someone who reviews alongside the team without ever sitting inside it, and the whole setup gets easier once you hold that line. In PlayPause the client opens one link in a browser with no account and no install, leaves a comment that sticks to the exact frame and can draw on it, and never needs to know which editor did the fix.
The one rule I'd push on every founder is a single named approver per client, collected by the producer before MV1 goes out. The week a marketing head, a founder and a legal reviewer all write "approved" on different versions is the week you learn that an approval with no owner behind it is just one more opinion. When there genuinely are several people on the client side, the multi-stakeholder review page shows how their comments stay on one card.
The client should be able to comment on every frame and still never need to know which editor fixed it, because the producer is their only door into the team.
The client also shouldn't be a workspace member or sit in on the internal round, so the producer only sends a password protected link once the card is in Client review, and revokes it instantly if it gets forwarded past the approver. What the client should review at each stage is a separate question, right, and my post on rough cut vs fine cut covers that.
Mapping post production roles to Owner, Admin, Manager and Editor
PlayPause gives every plan four roles, Owner, Admin, Manager and Editor. I keep Owner for myself so the workspace belongs to one founder, Admin goes to the post supervisor, Manager goes to producers and lead editors, and Editor covers the editors, the assistant, the motion designer and any in-house colorist or mixer.
Freelancers usually aren't members in my setup, they get a review link and, on Agency and up, a guest upload, and clients never get a role because they don't need one to comment. I'm strict about this because a role is basically a promise about responsibility, right, so anyone with Manager next to their name can be asked why a client note is still open, and so on down the list.
- One person uploads and names every version
- One person routes client notes to the right specialist
- One person moves the status between stages
- One person confirms every thread is answered
- One named person writes approved
Pricing quietly shapes team structure too, because when every new person costs a per-user fee, teams start sharing one login, and a comment from a shared account tells you nothing about who owns it. Frame.io bills from $15 per user per month, so as simple illustrative math, seven internal people start at $105 a month there, while PlayPause is flat per workspace and the Agency plan covers up to 50 members for $19 a month.
Mistakes when a video editing team structure grows past three editors
The first mistake is promoting your best editor into the post supervisor job, which I did, and what I got was a supervisor re-editing other people's cuts at night and a team that had lost its strongest cutter. The second is letting everyone approve internally, so a cut passes because whoever looked last said it was fine. Then there's the client with an editor's personal WhatsApp number, right, and every one of these comes back to a stage of review with no single owner.
The post-production house page shows this setup running across a whole slate of client projects, and the PlayPause Premiere Pro panel puts routed notes inside Premiere, where clicking one jumps the playhead to that frame. When IT eventually asks for single sign-on, my post on video review software with SSO covers what to check. At the end of the day, the craft roles are the easy part to hire for, and review ownership is the part you have to design yourself.
Frequently asked questions
What are the main post production team roles?
For most video teams it's a lead editor, an assistant editor, a colorist, a sound editor or mixer, a motion designer, a producer and a post supervisor, with the client reviewing from outside the team. Small teams merge several of these into one person, right, and that's fine, as long as you still know who creates, comments, triages and approves at every stage.
What does an assistant editor do in the review process?
In my team the assistant editor uploads every version, names it, stacks it on the same card as the previous version, and leaves a change log comment for the lead editor. Most importantly they check that every note on the previous version has a reply before the next one goes out, which stops clients repeating the same note two rounds in a row.
Should the producer or the post supervisor own client approval?
I give approval to the producer, because the producer owns the client relationship and the scope, and I give statuses and deadlines to the post supervisor. The producer sends the link, routes notes and records who approved which version, while the post supervisor moves the card between stages and chases replies, so nobody has to guess who to ask.
Do clients need a PlayPause account to leave notes?
They don't, the client opens one link in a browser with no account and no install, clicks the exact frame, leaves a comment and can draw on it. I still keep one named approver per client and password protect the link, so the notes come from the right people, and the producer can revoke it instantly if it gets forwarded.
If your team just passed three editors, write one name next to each stage of review this week and set up a workspace to match it. You can see which plan fits your team on the PlayPause pricing page, and every plan starts with a 7-day free trial, so you can run a real project through the new roles before you commit.
So yeah. That's my way of saying it.
Saumyajit co-founded PlayPause after years watching review and approval quietly eat creative teams' deadlines. He writes about the workflow side of video, feedback, versioning, and getting to a clean sign-off.
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