The Emmy-winning editor behind Undercover Boss and The Night Stalker on how Quickture lets him work as a one-person story team across his latest productions.
When James Carroll opened the project files for his latest docuseries, he was staring down over 150 characters, interviews running three to four hours each, and a problem familiar to anyone who's ever produced unscripted television: not enough people and not enough time.
Carroll - an executive producer, editor, director, and cinematographer whose credits include Netflix's The Night Stalker, the Emmy-winning Undercover Boss, and the acclaimed documentary The Seven Five - has spent two decades in the trenches of nonfiction storytelling. He's cut on Avid, Premiere, Final Cut, and Resolve, so when he encountered Quickture, the AI-powered editing engine that integrates directly into professional NLEs, he didn't flinch. He put it to work.
Carroll was first introduced to Quickture in early 2025 while serving as executive producer on Narco Mennonites, the three-part true-crime docuseries for Crave that investigates how a quiet Mennonite farming community in Canada became the epicenter of a North American drug empire. The series, produced by McGillivray Entertainment Media and Last Word Entertainment, premiered in January 2026 and was covered by Deadline, which noted the show's unprecedented access to an underworld that had never been documented on this scale.
On Narco Mennonites, Carroll used Quickture primarily for discovery and assembly - pulling string-outs, flagging trailer moments, and surfacing the most compelling material from hours of raw footage. "I was utilizing it in the entire scope of the project," Carroll said. "I would use Quickture for trailer moments and just finding shots, and it was really great. I was impressed by it."
Since Narco Mennonites, Carroll has continued to lean on Quickture across subsequent projects - including productions where he served as both executive producer and editor, often without a dedicated story team behind him.
"I was blown away by what it can do," Carroll said. He developed a hands-on workflow with the tool: scripting episode arcs first, then using Quickture to process marathon-length interviews into targeted sequences. The key, he found, was staying in the driver's seat. "I would always communicate with it. I wouldn't allow it to just do whatever it wanted to do. I would push it and ask to recut scenes, always have a beginning, middle, and end and create this kind of emotional tension. And it really delivered."
The impact on his timeline was significant. "I was pretty much all alone - so having Quickture meant I could move through the material at a pace that would have been impossible otherwise."
One detail stood out to Carroll about Quickture's design philosophy. Unlike AI tools that try to replace the editorial process, Quickture felt like it was built by people who understood it.
This resonated with Carroll precisely because he's worked both sides of the glass. He started his career digitizing tapes at a production company in the early 2000s, earned back-to-back Emmys editing Undercover Boss, and went on to produce and direct critically acclaimed projects for Netflix and major networks. He knows what editors need, and he recognized that Quickture was designed to serve the craft rather than circumvent it.
Carroll is candid about the resistance he's encountered from other editors when it comes to AI. He sees it as shortsighted. Carroll's argument is that in a contracting industry, the professionals who master new tools first will be the ones who survive.
"Some editors are so against AI, but we should take advantage of a tool that makes our life easier."
He draws a parallel to the broader transformation hitting the entertainment industry - one that has less to do with AI than most people think. The shift in viewing habits, the migration from cable to streaming, the rise of YouTube and TikTok as competitors to traditional television - these forces are reshaping the landscape regardless of what tools editors choose to adopt.
Carroll is currently wrapping his latest project and has up to several new shows in development.
"As soon as we go to post, I'll have Quickture on all the machines," he said. "And we'll be utilizing this."
Several editors from his Narco Mennonites team have already used Quickture and are set to carry it forward into his upcoming productions - a sign that once editors experience the tool firsthand, adoption tends to follow naturally.
"You guys are on a track, and you guys just continue to build - this thing is going to be huge," Carroll told the Quickture team. "Quickture's going to be everywhere, and everyone's going to be utilizing it."
About James Carroll James Carroll is an executive producer, and Emmy award winning editor, director, and cinematographer. He is represented by WME. jamescarroll.com
