You Are Here: An Action List for New Editors

Last night I was lucky enough to be able to attend an open house at Rough House Editorial in San Francisco. They are a leading post production facility in the Bay Area and have been around for 20 years. Ironically, that is how long I've been in the industry but after talking to some of the best in the business last night I felt like I was just starting out.
Their online editor Marc Cebrian was giving a clinic on the finer points of color grading in FCP. Yeah, that's right - just using the FCP 3-way color corrector, garbage mattes and chokers he was achieving looks that most people would assume were done with Color, Colorista or Magic Bullet Looks.
I was also finally able to see a Flame demo up close an personal. Their Flame artist Gavin Mills (Curse of the Golden Flower, Andromeda) told me how as an Avid editor he was able to get access to a Flame and teach himself how to use it. Now 11 years later, besides being a highly sought after Flame artist he is a certified instructor and VFX plug-in developer. I guess it's time for me to start piling on more lynda.com tutorials.
But it made me think about new editors just getting started in the field or people wanting to make a career change into media production that often ask me for advice on breaking through. Below I have listed an actionable game plan for people trying to start a career in editorial. This is not necessarily a typical scenario at all, but just a general trajectory of the journey from novice to expert video editor. There are countless variations and mutations.

1) Create a demo reel if you haven't already. If you don't have any real world projects then use school projects.

2) Put this reel online. It's best to have the reel on your website. But if you don't have a website then put the video on You Tube or Vimeo. On your resume put the url link to your demo reel at the top under your name and address.

3) Get cards printed up that have your cell number and email address.

4) Network at as many industry events as you can. Join your local Final Cut Pro user group and any other user group that pertains to content creation. Talk to establish editors and find out the situation on the ground for the type of content you want to edit. What is the pay range for corporate / news / commercial / film editors in my market? What are the skill sets required and in demand? What is a typical post-production time frame that videos are expected to be delivered? Create a list of 10 questions that you memorize and ask working editors in your market an online.

5) Get some kind of edit system at home (preferably Final Cut Pro).

6) Start doing spec projects. Look for jobs at: mandy, media-match, indeed and craigslist. And don't just look for projects that originate in your geographic area, a lot of editing jobs can be done remotely nowadays thanks to You Send It and Skype.

7) Do a great job on these projects and you can start charging. Clients talk and after word gets out that you have decent chops, potential clients will start calling you.

8) After 6 mos or so of doing this, re-cut your reel using a lot of the real world projects that you have been doing. It really helps when people recognize the content / brands / celebrities in your reel. Once you do this it increases the likelihood that you will be taken more seriously by post houses / tv stations / corporations who will be willing to give you a shot.

9) Your first few jobs will probably be pretty non-creative (asst. editing, dubbing, duplicating, coffee making) and insanely hectic but it will give you access to a place that has cool tools. If you are allowed to use these tools during off hours (read: weekends and overnight) then you can take your skills to the next level, especially if you are allowed to shadow a senior editor. Eventually you will be given a shot on a major account because the lead editor is to busy / sick / left for another job, etc...

10) Kick butt when you get this big break.

I hope this has been helpful to those out there that want to run with scissors. And for working editors that have been around the block, what is other sage career advice you can give those starting out?