
By Christine Bunish
Most of us strive to achieve balance in our professional and personal lives, and Ali Greer appears to have succeeded balancing her inside work as an Emmy and HPA Award-winning editor with her outside work as an urban farmer in Los Angeles.
Greer has followed paths in both visual arts and nature throughout her life. She grew up in Minnesota where her father ran an advertising agency and her mother was a photographer and everyone was taking pictures. She graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder where she studied film and skiing and worked as a ski bum for a year before moving to Portland, Oregon. There, she joined an ad agency where she directed and edited commercials, began urban farming then got a chance to work on Portlandia. She served as an assistant editor on the series for a year before becoming its editor for four years and co-directing an episode in its final season.
I've always been interested in all parts of a story, and what was special about Portlandia' was that they kind of allowed me to go wild, says Greer. I could do what I wanted to find the most fun, creative and interesting way to tell the story.
Portlandia brought Greer to Los Angeles where she fell into editing other comedy shows, racking up credits for Dream Corp LLC, Black Monday, Schmigadoon! and HBO Max's Hacks, the latter earning her 2021 Emmy and HPA nominations. Editing comedy is the most fun job you could ever imagine having, she says.
Lately, though, her work has taken a darker turn with Bill Hader's hitman-turned-actor Barry for HBO and a new Amazon limited series debuting in March. Greer won Emmy and HPA Awards last year for cutting the Barry season finale, Starting Now.
The challenge with Barry' is to really focus on the story and sometimes cut out a joke if it's not moving the story forward, she explains. It's been a very cool experience - always interesting to see where to fit in jokes in such a dramatic show.
It's also been a blast working with Hader, whom Greer watched on Saturday Night Live! when she was growing up. Bill writes, directs and produces the show. We do an editor's cut then he comes in and sits with us. We work super closely together - he'll even call on weekends with ideas. It's very fun and collaborative and really a pretty streamlined process.
Greer hopes to keep exploring creative opportunities that grow out of her editing career. She enjoyed being part of the writing process in the writers' room of Dream Corp LLC and directed some reshoots for the upcoming Amazon series. I'm able to understand a lot of different pieces of the puzzle then piece it together in the edit - that keeps things interesting, she says.
Greer edited Portlandia on Final Cut Pro and some movies and shows in Adobe Premiere but now works primarily on Avid and After Effects. Technology is always progressing and changing, so the important thing is not to be afraid of it and fight it but to keep your tools sharp. Figure out the new software updates early in the season so you know their quirks and how to work around them.
Greer values HPA's role in cultivating community and recognizing creative work. I was honored to win the Outstanding Editing award for Barry' and really appreciate that acknowledgement of my work, she says. I'm pretty community focused and think the HPA is a great way to bring everyone in this business together.
Community plays a big part in Greer's work outside the edit suite. She and her husband, Eric Tomassini, run Avenue 33 Farm in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of LA, an example of what a production farm looks like in the city.
I've been urban farming since college, so I've been interested in growing food for 15 years now, Greer says. It's an amazing way to learn about the food system and climate and eat really well! It's currently root vegetable and leafy greens season on the farm. Though what I do sitting at the computer is entertaining and interesting, it's important to remember that nature exists far beyond our focus on media, she says.
During the pandemic Greer and Tomassini provided farm boxes for customers; now they sell wholesale and distribute produce to the neighborhood. Given climate trends, future plans call for devoting part of their farm to land that doesn't need to be irrigated. As our climate moves more from Mediterranean to desert, we're looking at how other countries adapt to that situation, she explains.
Greer's career as a visual storyteller may just merge with her career as an urban farmer someday. Urban farming would make a great narrative, she muses. I'd love to find a way to incorporate it with my inside' job. It would be a dream come true!
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
02/05/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
01/05/2026
January 5 2026, 18:30 (PST) NBCUniversal's Peacock to Be First Streamer to ...
01/04/2026
January 4 2026, 18:00 (PST) DOLBY AND DOUYIN EMPOWER THE NEXT GENERATON OF CREATORS WITH DOLBY VISION
Douyin Users Can Now Create And Share Videos With Stun...
12/03/2026
Techex, a global expert in live video solutions over IP and cloud, announces the appointment of Matt McKee as Senior Director, Sales, Americas, further strength...
12/03/2026
KOKUSAI DENKI Electric America has appointed Mondae Hott as Regional Sales Manag...
12/03/2026
At the 2026 NAB Show, Interra Systems will showcase its latest advancements in a...
12/03/2026
The 15th National Games of China concluded after a two-week celebration of athletic excellence and regional collaboration. Held from Nov. 9-21 across Guangdong,...
12/03/2026
Live-production academic program Butler Sports Live produced a total of 40 fall-...
12/03/2026
The University of Nebraska's HuskerVision has completed the second phase of ...
12/03/2026
Grass Valley and integration partner Tab M Solutions have completed Phase 1 of a...
12/03/2026
The broadcaster expands its campus-production model as the university handles tw...
12/03/2026
Disney has announced the addition of March Madness - the NCAA Division I Men...
12/03/2026
Apple TV's Friday Night Baseball MLB doubleheader series returns for its f...
12/03/2026
The senior from New Jersey is making his mark in South Bend, both on the mic and behind it...
12/03/2026
After a relatively quiet January, the month of February was jammed packed with l...
12/03/2026
Long-time production partner Echo Entertainment is producing the broadcast, while Cosm played a vital role in the collaboration...
12/03/2026
By Jessica Herndon
We love kicking off each year by introducing the world to po...
12/03/2026
Samrat Chakrabarti, George Basil, Kiran Deol, Katie McCuen and Vishal Vijayakumar attend the 2025 Sundance Film Festival premiere of Didn't Die at the Lib...
12/03/2026
In Latin America, women are shaping music and defining its future. To kick off t...
12/03/2026
En Am rica Latina, las mujeres est n moldeando la m sica y definiendo su futuro....
12/03/2026
Let's turn back the clock 20 years: The music landscape was a world away fro...
12/03/2026
Bad Bunny is no stranger to Spotify's Billions Club. In fact, he has a whopp...
12/03/2026
Spotify was at the London Book Fair this week, joining conversations across the publishing industry about how people can make reading part of their daily lives....
12/03/2026
Mastering tool improves mono compatibility
Tokyo Dawn Labs' Ohlhorst Digital range is a series of mastering-focused plug-ins developed by Jan Ohlhorst, ...
12/03/2026
Wave FX processor integrated into four products
Lewitt have teamed up with Elgato to create a new processor for the company's Wave Next product range, i...
12/03/2026
Free tool for annotating audio files
Mix Notes is a new, free iOS App that provides users with a simple way to annotate their audio files. It's been cre...
12/03/2026
Side-chain ducking tool gets an upgrade
Devious Machines' popular side-chaining and envelope-shaping tool has just been kitted out with an improved enve...
12/03/2026
Ceremony to take place on 16 April 2026
The MPG (Music Producers Guild) have revealed the full shortlist for this year's MPG Awards, which will be takin...
12/03/2026
Emulates three classic dbx 160 variants
The latest arrival to Overloud's Gem Series plug-in range faithfully recreates not one, but three versions of th...
12/03/2026
New granular soft synth announced
Said to be their most advanced software synthesizer to date, Baby Audio's latest release has been built on a new granu...
12/03/2026
Latest version now live!
Edit 11 March 2026 - Bitwig Studio 6 is now live, and available for all to download!
The latest version of Bitwig's DAW softwa...
12/03/2026
Latest free eBook now available!
Designed for recording engineers, audio-technology students and technically minded musicians, our latest free eBook deliver...
12/03/2026
AFL and NITV partner to launch new First Nations led program Inside the Huddle&...
12/03/2026
Rohde & Schwarz Cybersecurity expands SITLine network encryptor portfolio - more...
12/03/2026
Rohde & Schwarz to showcase future-proof EMC testing solutions at EMV 2026 Rohde & Schwarz will participate in EMV 2026, Europe's premier trade fair and c...
12/03/2026
Johannesburg, 11 March 2026 - The 19th Annual South African Film and Television ...
12/03/2026
MELBOURNE, Fla., March 11, 2026 - L3Harris Technologies (NYSE: LHX) and Shield AI have successfully demonstrated a first-of-its-kind integration combining L3Har...
12/03/2026
The incorporation of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning into modern, converged all-domain systems is enabling true Joint Electromagnetic Spectrum Oper...
12/03/2026
MELBOURNE, Fla., March 12, 2026 - L3Harris Technologies (NYSE: LHX) today announ...
12/03/2026
Modern media operations demand a platform that unites automation, orchestration, and human oversight without compromise. In this post, we explore the six key te...
12/03/2026
A deep dive into the platform
Architecture The Blue Lucy platform follows a distributed microservices architecture, meaning the overall operational capability...
12/03/2026
Orchestration platform enables broadcasters to deploy multiple AI models safely with full auditability, rights protection, and regulatory oversight.
LONDON, En...
12/03/2026
Cost pressures, switching intent and demand for savings and credit products are ...
12/03/2026
For the first time, Nielsen breaks out demographic information about FAST and AV...
12/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/03/2026
Appear's high-performance, ultra-low latency encoding platform augments LTN's fully managed global IP network and orchestration platform
LTN, a leader ...
12/03/2026
2026 NAB Show Exhibitor Preview
April 18-22
Las Vegas
Booth C3519
Summary:
At the 2026 NAB Show in Las Vegas, Boland Communications will be showing the bro...
12/03/2026
Riedel Communications today announced the continued expansion of its Managed Technology Division in the Americas and the appointment of Jan Schaffner as Vice Pr...