Finding An Editing Job Today

Dick Wirth, a good friend of mine who helps to run the USC film school editing facilities (including something like 160 editing stations, with Avid, ProTools, Final Cut and more) sent me this the other day.  It’s a job posting from the Avid-L2 group.

For those of you who don’t know, the L2 group, which is a Yahoo Group that anyone can subscribe to, is a fantastic central point for troubleshooting, gossiping and networking for people who use the Avid platform (that means all of the Avid machines, not just Media Composer). Though I don’t contribute, I try and read it religiously, and I’m constantly amazed by the level of Real World knowledge that the posters in the group share. If you have a very specific problem with Unity machines, chances are there’s someone on the group who has already had the same problem and has a solution for you. To see more about it, just click on this Avid-L2 Yahoo Group link.

Periodically you will also see postings of job offers from facilities that want to take advantage of this group and there was one just the other day that Dick sent tome that speaks volumes about what skills a good assistant editor needs to have in today’s competitive world:

From: Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com [Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 30, 2009 9:53 AM
To: Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Avid-L2] [job] Assiatant Avid Editor, Burbank / LA

Assiatant Avid Editor (Burbank / LA)

XXXXXXXXXXX Productions is looking for Freelance Assistant Editor with strong finishing, troubleshooting and media management skills as well as a solid understanding of post production work-flow.

This is an opportunity for a person with Assistant Editor experience (preferably 2 years) on the Avid Media Composer and Unity Media Networks. Avid Experience required. FCP experience is not relevant in our working environment. Experience in Motion Picture Marketing a plus.

Please Fax or e-mail resume AND cover letter (required) to Production Manager for immediate CONFIDENTIAL consideration. Please do not send reels. No phone calls will be accepted.

Let’s look at that in a bit more detail. This job is for a freelance editor. This company, which does a lot of motion picture marketing (trailers, DVD extras, etc.) isn’t looking to hire someone for a full-time/forever job.  They are looking for someone to come in and help them out of jam. They are looking for assistant editor, which is a great job for someone who wants to get deeper into the editing world (since there aren’t a lot of people handing out decent paying jobs as editors to people who don’t have a lot of editing experience). But they don’t want to hire someone and teach them.  They are looking for someone with skills already in place.

And what are those skills?

“Finishing, troubleshooting and media management skills.”

I see a lot of students who are fascinated to learn about color correction; I even meet a bunch who love talking about codecs and input/output formats. I also see people who are excellent at working the machines, which is a good first step towards being able to troubleshoot. But I see very few people who are interested in media maangement.

What is media management, you may ask? It’s the ability to organize all of the footage (whether it’s picture or sound, camera-shot or visual effects created, and more) in a way that makes it easy for anyone else to find and use it. That means that original material is sorted and saved in bins and folders in a very specific way for an assistant editor who is working on a show with a lot of visual effects, but entirely differently for the editor on that show. It means creating and executing a workable system that is appropriate to the personnel and the project that you are working on. A music video should be organized differently than a commercial, which is set up differently than an action film or a television show.

It means coming up with naming conventions that easily identify every day’s shoot, or subclip, or edited sequence. That means, for instance, that you should never ever see an edited sequence with the default name “Untitled Sequence” as you can see in the image to the left — above the record monitor on the right side, which is pulled — shockingly — from the otherwise excellent magazine put out by the Motion Picture Editors Guild (and which I’d heartily recommend you whip out your checkbooks and subscribe to Right This Minute).

In short, it means that you need to know what the project is that you are working on, what the potential problems will be down the line (in terms of delivery, as well as working process), as well as what the individual preferences of your editor/s are going to be. Then you need to be able to come up with a system that will allow you to answer any question anyone may throw at you with an answer. And “I can’t find it” isn’t a good answer.

This is a huge job skill, and one which most independent editors never get a chance to learn (Hey, if you’re creating your workspace for yourself, does it really matter if you call your last three cuts “Final Edit,” “Really Final Edit” and “Final Final Final Edit”!) But the reality is that no one stays working by themselves forever, and most project are done with collaborators than not. So, it’s important to have a “a system” that works.

In the olden days, of 35mm film, there was a well-established system or two (that I actually documented in my book THE FILM EDITING ROOM HANDBOOK, which I’m now rewriting since it’s so out-of-date), but those days have gone the way of rotary telephones. And with the easy availability of NLE’s it is now possible to be editing before you know how to assistant edit.

But one glance at that want ad above will tell you the folly of avoiding good organizational knowledge.

The question of how to get these skills is something that I’ll leave for another week, if you’re interested. Next week I’m going to be in Fabulous New Orleans, attending the conference of the University Film and Video Association, which is a group of college film professors from all over the country. It’s actually way more fun than you’d think. I’m running a panel on how we use scenes from certain films to teach editing, and giving two talks on how making little adjustments in the editing of a scene can give a whole new story.  So it should be fun.

And then there’s New Orleans also.

See you in a few weeks!