EP208 Jamie Tenenbaum, Creative Development Executive and Contest Judge – TV Matters
After stepping away from her tenured role at Point Park University’s Cinema Arts Department, Cara Friez saw a post from EditStock founder Misha Tenenbaum looking for help designing curriculum for EditMentor, a new interactive video education platform. “I literally left my job the day before he made that post,” Cara laughs. “I was like, okay—this is a sign.”
As EditMentor’s Director of Education, Cara supported educators with varied backgrounds—including teachers new to media instruction—in bringing practical storytelling into the classroom through a new cutting edge, interactive platform. In this podcast episode she discusses what it was like to build curriculum at the college level and how to design curriculum for software that is still under development.
Designing Curriculum Backward at First
When Cara began teaching at Point Park, she inherited a curriculum of broad outcomes like, “learn a nonlinear editor, cut a short scene, understand basic theory,” but few detailed materials like lesson plans. After doing her best to survive during the first year, she rebuilt her courses using backward design in her second year: define what a graduating editor needs to learn, then scaffold each class before it so it both builds on the last and can stand on its own if a student only takes one or two courses. Afterall, not all students were taking film as a major.
A key shift was introducing professionally shot EditStock footage to freshman and sophomores. Students worked with realistic short film dailies and learned to handle the amount of footage and storytelling challenges they’ll encounter on projects in their junior and senior years. Those who stayed for just one semester had the experience of editing a real project. The emphasis: teach storytelling skills that outlast any tool—structure, pacing, point-of-view, performance, and problem-solving.
She also set milestone deadlines (half film, rough cut) to encourage good pacing. Who doesn’t have students that try to cut an entire film in one day? Students practiced organization, time management, and scene-by-scene building—so when Production III arrived, stress was manageable and the work improved.
Interactive challenges are the hard—and essential—part
When building EditMentor courses and lessons, “writing the text is the easy part,” Cara says. The challenge is creating truly interactive, hands-on activities—beyond “drop a marker and answer a question” within the software constraints we had at the beginning. EditMentor’s curriculum team began by defining what students must understand, then designed challenges that make those choices interactive: select the best take, trim a scene for point of view, or spot a 180-degree violation. These skills are better taught by having students trim, arrange, and delete clips within a timeline than they are by showing videos or reading PDFs along.
Designing challenges first, then filming the footage
Some concepts are best taught through mistakes. For example, our broadcast course commissioned footage from students and professionals with intentional rule-breaks and varied line readings. In many cases, they wrote challenge requirements first and captured footage to match, ensuring every activity taught exactly what it needed to.
Working with subject matter experts
Courses with subject matter experts (like Doug Green, Stephen Mark, Sven Pape) required different approaches to “extract” expertise. With Stephen, think-aloud edits while cutting a scene revealed his creative decisions in real time; Doug’s classroom experience brought student-ready explanations; Sven’s YouTube craft translated into thoughts that gen Alpha could already understand. Cara’s curriculum team acted as “first students,” using their own confusion and aha moments to shape lessons.
Storytelling first (not software)
Cara’s team realized they need to de-emphasize “editing” terminology. Many schools already teach software like Adobe Premiere. EditMentor focuses on storytelling, the concepts that transfer across tools, platforms, and projects. That includes teaching subtext, character perspective, and camera dynamics: what characters think they’re saying versus what the camera is really communicating.
Product and curriculum, evolving together
Weekly, Cara would propose, “It’d be amazing if a challenge could do X, Y, Z” ideas to the tech teach. The tech staff would build and ship what was feasible; the rest went into a development backlog. Over time, core teacher needs—student management, activity tracking, grade viewing—shipped as features. Her team also recorded user tests, and pre-release courses to classrooms helped find the rough spots in the curriculum; weak challenges moved to the “cutting-room floor.”
AI and the future of learning
New tools—from screen-shared NLE prompts to AI copilots—can help with buttons. But real progress still demands student motivation, teacher guided practice, and critical thinking to make narrative judgments. There’s no silver bullet to learning video storytelling; the craft remains a human decision-making process.
Why it matters
Video spans news, streaming, social, and branded content, creating many pathways beyond LA and New York. Cara is candid with students and parents: no program can promise a job, especially one that can meet rising costs within the economy. But students who craft strong portfolios, meet deadlines, and build human relationships do land roles. Many of her alumni are now working editors and assistant editors in New York, Hollywood, and of course Pittsburgh.
Listen to the episode, explore EditMentor’s teacher resources, and see how EditMentor curriculum helps students practice the real decisions storytellers make.
