What led to your first opportunity in show business? When did you discover editing and realize you could make a career out of it? What film or TV show has had a lasting impact on your life?

These were some of the questions answered by four of today’s top TV editors when they joined Gold Derby’s special “Meet the Experts” group roundtable panel with 2022 Emmy contenders. Watch our full group chat with Robert Martinez (“Lucy and Desi”), Jamie Martin (“RuPaul’s Drag Race”), Melissa McCoy (“Ted Lasso”) and Felix Black (“Welcome to Earth”) above. Click on each name above to view that person’s individual interview.

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“I was a senior portrait photographer,” Martinez says with a laugh when thinking back on his start in show business. “I had a creative itch and no direction. I helped on [my wife’s] sets for student films. I quickly figured out that there was a creative outlet there. I did not like being on set though. It gave me a panic attack. I don’t want to be on the set. I don’t want to necessarily paint the picture, but I can say what I don’t like about the picture. Editing turned out to be the right move. I went back to school in my late 20s or early 30s and was ready to get into it.”

Martin discovering her love of editing in high school while working on a student project. “I was very interested in how little changes in pace and tone affected how my audience viewed what I was doing,” she says. “I enjoyed being the link between what happens on set and how the audience processes the emotion of it. That’s what sparked my imagination in that way.”

When thinking back on how her love of TV started, McCoy remembers, “Every day I had my lineup. I loved feel-good movies that made me laugh. I saw ‘Clue’ a bunch of times. I remember loving ‘Soapdish.’ I loved all TV. In my day it was ‘Family Ties.’ I loved ‘Golden Girls.’ What a wonderful time of television and just great characters. And the movie that made me want to go to film school was ‘Good Will Hunting.'”

Black recalls some of his favorite films that impacted him as a child, beginning with “Star Wars.” “That was such a vast, massive world that seemed almost real to me,” he says. “But one of the biggest impacts was actually being taken to the theater by my parents when I was little and seeing Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ with the original cast back in the 80s. That absolutely knocked my socks off. Those performance and the music. The thrill! Then a few year’s later Tim Burton’s ‘Batman’ came out. That was such a big deal to me. I lived and breathed ‘Batman’ when I was a boy.”

Martinez was an Emmy and American Cinema Editors nominee for “The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart.” His career has also included “Mole Man,” “The Apollo” and “Pavarotti.” Martin has won three Emmy Awards among five nominations for “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” Other projects have included “10 Things You Don’t Know About,” “Below Deck” and “The Real World.” McCoy was an Emmy nominee and American Cinema Editors Award winner for “Ted Lasso.” Her career has also included “Beyond Limits,” “Rush Hour” and “Life Sentence.” Black’s work has included “The Beginning and the End of the Universe,” “Trailblazers,” “Nova,” “Volatile Earth,” “My Year with the Tribe” and “Britain’s Fat Fight.”

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Each 40-minute “Making Of” roundtable panel will include a mix of showrunners, cast members, producers, writers and/or crafts artisans.

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