An estimated 85 percent of 2025 Sundance Film Festival films used Adobe Creative Cloud tools, so it was no surprise Adobe introduced new Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects and Frame.io innovations the day before the festival kicked off.
“We’re passionate about empowering filmmakers to tell their stories and realize their creative vision,” said Ashley Still, SVP and GM of Adobe Creative Cloud. “These innovations will bring time savings and career support so they can focus on inspiring and captivating audiences worldwide.”
The updates are geared toward streamlining post-production and accelerating time savings for video pros, and include:
• In Premiere Pro, the updates give filmmakers the ability to quickly identify content within shots, look up footage faster and go global in seconds. The latest features include Media Intelligence & Search Panel (an AI-powered tool that searches by automatically recognizing clip content, including objects, locations, camera angles or metadata); Caption Translation (a native caption translation in 17 languages).
• In After Effects: Improved caching, allowing for playback of an entire composition faster than before, and improved HDR support.
• InFrame.io: expanded Camera to Cloud (C2C) support for Canon allowing customers to automatically upload and access high-quality footage directly from Canon EOS C80 and EOS C400 cameras.
Films showing at this year’s Sundance that relied on Adobe Creative Cloud applications include Opus, By Design, Train Dreams, Bunnylovr, The Alabama Solution, Bucks County, USA, The Legend of Ochi and Perfect Neighbor.
“We cut Opus in Adobe Premiere Pro using Productions. My offline editorial philosophy is to get everything outside the picture edit — sound, VFX, color, etc. as close to final as possible. Premiere Pro and After Effects really allows us to do this seamlessly with a small team, making the process more fun and efficient,” said Ernie Gilbert, editor of Opus.
Viridiana Lieberman, editor of The Perfect Neighbor, added: “The magic of Premiere Pro is how easy and seamless it is to work with so many different types of media. All our sources were different frame rates, sizes, colors, you name it. The solutions were embedded in the application to make these elements work harmoniously and made swift work on things like a temporary blur and to lighten up some rough darkness in night footage.”
Adobe also announced it was investing another $5 million into the Adobe Film & TV Fund, which goes toward supporting underrepresented creators and filmmakers in finding career opportunities. The Adobe Foundation is also supporting the Los Angeles creative communities impacted by the recent wildfires with a $1 million charitable grant.
“When it comes to storytelling in film and TV, diversity is crucial and ensures that audiences feel represented and heard,” said Stacy Martinet, Adobe VP of marketing strategy and communications. “It’s not just optics, we also need unique voices and visionaries behind-the-scenes in the roles of creators, directors, and industry leaders telling the diverse stories that reflect the world we live in.”
