How To Become an Editor

Become an Editor

What is an Editor?
Editors work in the Post Production team. They are responsible for meshing together the various recorded film, sound, and special effects to create the final production. Editors can work across a wide variety of productions to include, film, TV, commercials, music videos and more. In this article, we will be discussing the key responsibilities of the Editor and the skills and experience you will need to become one.

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The Lot of the Stay-at-Home Editor

The Lot of the Stay-at-Home Editor

More and more editors are working from home, but is this a good thing for the Editor, the Producer, the Director or the film? Freelance Editor and ProductionBase member, Guy Ducker, takes a look.

As I write, I’ve just had my first day’s work outside my flat in about four months (thank you to the good people of I-Motus). It’s not that I’ve been idle during these months: I’ve just had an unusually long run of jobs where I’ve been cutting from home on my trusty iMac. I’d joined the ranks of the stay-at-home editors (emendator domesticus). This phenomenon is comparatively recent. It’s been theoretically possible for some time: we’ve been able to run Final Cut Pro from a consumer Mac for many years and Avid Media Composer (my preferred weapon) released an affordable ‘software only’ version in 2006. But what has made the real difference is the sudden dominance over the last two or three years of cameras that record straight to hard drive. No longer do editors need hefty tape decks and expensive interfaces to get the pictures in and out of their editing machines. If you have a system set up at home, you hardly need to lift yourself from your chair. The material comes to you on a drive, and the finished cut can be returned on the same drive or via an FTP site. If you like, you can even avoid meeting the producer and director – uploading cuts direct to Vimeo or similar sites, so they can watch them without leaving their homes. Filmmakers might never need to leave the house again.

But is this a good thing?

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The Whole Truth And Everything But The Truth…

The Whole Truth And Everything But The Truth...

This week, award winning editor, Joby Gee, discusses the moral dilemma of showing people in their ‘true’ light.

I like the clip where she says, “He’s not an a***hole”…. can we just take the “not” out”. (From the Facebook page, Edit Suite Stories).

The most frequent question I am asked when I meet non-telly people is the “truth and honesty” one for want of a better phrase. Often, their first question is “why do you spend your days trying to contort people in the film your cutting to create some sort of twisted version of reality for our entertainment?”. Decent, hard working folk assume that it happens to almost everyone (including the Queen).

Well, recently the BBC interviewed me about editing (I babbled on) and I said all sorts of nonsense which hopefully someone can extract into two minutes and make me look like I know what I’m talking about. But it got me thinking; if I was a contributor in a documentary then what should I expect? What will those people who came round to film me do when they get into the edit suite? I’m starting to worry about all the things I’ve said on camera now. Oh my God, what have I done….?

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