“Go West, Young Man” — Getting Work In Editing.

I’ve just gotten back from the 2008 UFVA conference in Colorado Springs, where over 300 film professors around the country got together to show films, deliver papers, sit on panels, and talk talk talk. That accounts for the one day delay in posting this — something about being in the film bubble for a week makes you completely forget time.

But something kept coming up — both in panels and in those hallway conversations. Now that there are about seven million film schools out there, how do all of these people get inside a job in Hollywood.

This begs of the question of whether they should go for a job in Hollywood at all, but we’ll address that in a moment.

There are a number of things that you need in order to get a job in editing. Let’s look at them one by one.

1. The first one, the one that so many people think is the ONLY one, is proficiency on the equipment.  It’s why there are so many Final Cut Pro, Premiere and Avid classes out there. And, while I won’t ignore the fact that most directors like to work with someone who knows how to push the buttons than someone who doesn’t, my bet is that anyone who really wants to be an editor already knows that. The reality, however, is that I’ve never worked with a producer or director who thinks that that is the most important thing. (And I hope I never do.)
2. Another thing that is important is a sense of how the business is run. If you’re doing episodic television, it helps to know that the showrunner controls the vision of the show, not the director. If you’re working in any professional editing room, it helps to know not to cruelly shoot down the comments from anyone, especially if you’re working as an assistant editor. If you’re working on a feature, it helps to know how to organize the large amounts of material that you’ll get so you will be able to more effortlessly find and edit material and hand it over to the sound people when you’re done editing. In short, knowing how the machine works is one thing, knowing how the world of editing works is quite another.
3. A third great thing to have is a fantastic sense of editing. You don’t want to experiment with every single cut and it would be nice to know, when you look at one, just how to reshape it to make it better. That means you should have good taste, experience and great aesthetics.
4. Another major asset would be empathy. You’re going to working in close proximity with a whole bunch of people, in an industry that is completely built on fear (you know — the I will never work again if I don’t do this right type of fear). Everybody will be nervous and tense. It helps if you’ve got a bit of psychiatrist in you, and you can realize how people react under pressure and can adjust your own reactions accordingly.
5. A final thing that you’ve got to know is how to find the people who you can trust and who can trust you. You need to build a network of professional friends who know that they can trust you with their work.  That may be one of the biggest assets you can get.

So… now, let’s take a look at what you can get from film school from this list.

1. Clearly, film school can expose you to the Avid, Final Cut, Premiere editors, as well as film, tape and HD formats that mimic what is happening in the marketplace. Not every film school is capable of doing all of these with equal degrees of competency, so it would be good for you to get a sense of equipment and level of expertise of the instructors before you jump into a school.
2. This is where many film schools fall apart. First you need to ask yourself what place in the film industry you’d like to situate yourself.  If you’d mostly like to work in your home country or local town, then a local film school or an internship where you live would work best for you. If you want to find out how the “Hollywood professionals” (and I use that term broadly) work, then this limits your choice of program. More and more outlying schools are hiring instructors from the traditional filmmaking hubs of New York, Chicago, Hollywood, London, etc. I personally met people from the Hollywood world who are working in Savannah, Florida, San Francisco, North Carolina and more. However, you should check how recently they’ve worked in the big cities — technology and workflows have changed drastically in the last several years.
3. How do you learn the craft of editing? It certainly doesn’t come from learning which buttons to push on the NLE. You learn in many ways, depending on who you are. In my experience, almost everyone in this business learns by doing projects — and they learn more when they do more projects. I’ve also found many self-taught students who really had taught themselves editing all wrong. Without people to guide them along, they have nothing but old habits and intuition. I learned handing film trims to great editors. If you can’t do that, then check out the editing instructors at the film schools you’re interested in.
4. There is no way to learn empathy except by maturity.
5. I say build your circle of trusted friends. This is something that film schools are particularly good at. In addition, there are 48 hour film contests, local film clubs, and joining up with others to make movies in whatever way you can. Most of my students also do these things. And then there’s the alumni network. USC has a great collection of alumnae who are usually only to happy to meet with people who were they were when they were starting. You need to find people just like that in your own life.

I interviewed an agent once who asked me to make a list of everyone who I knew who I could call if I wanted an introduction  to a particular person or information on a project. The point of this exercise was to determine just how big your circle of trusted friends was. I’d recommend you do the same. If your dentist is someone who knows the local director at a television station, then put him or her on the list. If you work out at a gym and know someone there who works in media — then put him or her on the list. Then, when you’re done with the list, make sure you contact each and every person on it. Don’t ask them for jobs, ask them for information. Ask them to give you advice. Send them your resume and ask them for feedback on how to strengthen it.

Ask to meet with them. And, before you walk out of the meeting, ask them for one or two more names of people you could contact to do the same.

Expand your network. That’s how you get to move West, whether West is Los Angeles, New York, Montreal, Paris, Shanghai or any city where they create media.

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Extra Special Added Content (added 8/22/08)

Jen McGowan, who blogs on FilmIndustryBloggers under the section “The Indie Filmmaker” has a column on almost this exact topic this week (hers was out before mine, so I can’t claim Intellectual Property violation).  It’s actually really incisive and works as a great complement to this column.  Give it a read, it’s called “How To Make It Big In Hollywood Baby!”