§ 1 — The Call
September 2014. Jil Hardin — a producer I'd worked with the year before on a Lady Gaga video, alongside an editor named Dustin Robertson (AVIDDIVA) — called needing an on-set cutter. Joseph Kahn's usual guy, Chancler Haynes, wasn't available. They needed someone fast.
I was a staff editor at the New York Jets. Most days I was logging touchdowns and finding the right angle on a sack. At 26, still figuring it all out.
Project codename: "Project Maverick." A few days' notice. I said yes before I knew what it was.
§ 2 — The Day
Oheka Castle. Huntington, Long Island. Early call.
Someone waved my 2002 Mustang through the production gate. My dad had given me that car as a wedding gift a few months earlier — Steph and I had just gotten back from our honeymoon. On the call sheet, the Mustang got logged as a production vehicle. Nobody noticed.
I didn't know it was Taylor Swift until I pulled up.
Inside: Joseph Kahn directing. Taylor on her seventh costume change before noon. I kept my head down and my drive plugged in.
§ 3 — The Cut
Halfway through the day, Joseph called me over. Someone wanted to see what I'd cut.
Taylor sat down at my monitor. She watched it. She said something kind — I was starstruck — and the specifics don't matter because I don't trust my own memory after eleven years.
At the end of the shoot, I went to her trailer. She lent me her laptop — grey MacBook — so I could transfer the file. BS-RoughCut.mp4. I was so locked in on the status bar that I didn't even think to look at her wallpaper. She loved it. Hugged me. Thanked me.
I went back to the Mustang. That's all I remember about the next ten minutes.
Three things I can tell you:
My actual phone is in the video. The scene where she's lying in Sean O'Pry's lap — that's my phone. Joseph just grabbed it.
The deer were CGI. The horse was real on set — she stood on a table next to it and the artists composited the rest. The dogs were real.
The car-wrecking scene was CGI too, which meant Taylor had to act out destroying a hood with nothing there. She nailed it. Somewhere there are bloopers from that.
"Taylor watched the cut. Then she showed her mom."
— On set · September 2014
§ 4 — Prague
The next spring, Joseph called again. Maybelline campaign — Gigi Hadid in front of the camera, Joseph behind it. NYC. I showed up.
Then he called again. Liquor commercial. Prague. Two weeks.
I said no.
He called again a couple weeks after that. Same shoot, different start date.
I said no.
Here's where the story is supposed to end with me taking the offer and changing my life. It doesn't. I had a commitment to the Jets. I had a nervous system that had only just stopped vibrating from the Oheka day. I wasn't ready to be the guy whose phone rang for Prague.
Maybe that was the right call. Maybe it wasn't. But it was my call.
§ 5 — The Pivot
A few years later I left broadcast for good. Left music videos behind too. Started Tonemedia — wedding and brand films out of north Jersey. Then Noblepost — post-production for filmmakers who needed their weekends back.
Nothing strategic about the name. Someone at the Jets started calling me Tonetime in 2012 — a sanTonio Holmes thing that stuck. Alex Darcey rolled it into Tonemedia. I just printed the business cards.
People ask if I regret saying no to Prague.
I have three kids under five. A wife I actually see. Two companies we built together. The regret would've been saying yes.
If you're a young editor and someone calls with a "Project Maverick" — say yes to the day. That's a gift. But you don't owe anyone your whole life because one famous person was kind to you for an hour.
The chandeliers were beautiful. But the basement edit suite is where the work lives.
