What is the best path for starting a video editing career? – Requesting advice from professionals.

[Mark Suszko]

if you search this forum you will find variations on your question answered multiple times, with different schools of thought on college vs. self-taught vs. a trade school. The advice can often be contradictory because there are multiple paths to success, but also because times change and keep changing from when a lot of us faced your problem ourselves. So what worked for us may no longer work for you.

You should narrow your field a little and decide what *kind* of editing you want to do, and what you like to do/have an aptitude for. Do you want to edit broadcast programs? Commercials? News? Sports? Training? Stage/performances? Weddings and events? Documentaries? Theatricals? Corporate? What?

In my day the best path would have been 4 years of liberal arts and sciences with a Bachelor’s degree along with loads of practice as an intern or a student worker in a school studio. Joining the local cable access station would also have been a great resource.

But this is not the only path, by any means. Numerous COW members were auto-didacts and graduates of Hard Knox College, or got tech and media training in the armed services, or just went out and absorbed every book, tape, and DVD they could find to learn what they wanted to know. And the internet makes this easier than ever before. There are also trade/tech schools out there like full sail or flashpoint academy and others, all of varying quality.

So, many paths, some traditional, others less so. What kind of people are facilities and business *hiring* today? Well, thy generally pay low wages because of a huge glut of qualified applicants. They ask for long hours and they expect you to be well-versed without needing a lot of on-the-job training.

Something I stress with the young people is: learn how to CUT, rather than getting too deep into any one brand of editing system for cutting. Systems come and go: the underlying principles are what you study how to master. Those don’t become obsolete.

You should also be well-rounded human being, with a variety of skills and background to draw on. Some kind of understanding of music will help you as well as classes in image composition and art in general.

Throughout your process, you should be actively working every day to add to your demo reel in some way; to build a portfolio of projects you went out and did, with whatever equipment you can gather and afford. Go out and shoot thins, then edit them. Every day. Then keep re-editing them until they are perfect.

[Evan Thompson]

Thanks for the reply Mr. Suszko.

The kind of editing I would be interested in is more on the cinematic/theatrical side, although for now I’d do whatever odds and ends I can get.

From what you’ve experienced in your time and from what you see today, would you say a degree is a great help, making it worth it?

I do have experience in other fields, such as graphics and image processing. But it is almost all self-taught. I am wondering whether a good course would be good for teaching me the “official” and “proper” ways to do things, as well as filling any gaps that I might have missed, if I can find one.

I am trying to get a demo reel going here soon.

[Mark Suszko] “Something I stress with the young people is: learn how to CUT, rather than getting too deep into any one brand of editing system for cutting. Systems come and go: the underlying principles are what you study how to master. Those don’t become obsolete.”

That is great advice! I do know the principles enough to make somewhat quick switches to foreign programs or systems. But I will keep that in mind and not get too attached to or biased about one brand of editing software (especially with this new Adobe Creative Cloud that will probably force me to make difficult decisions in the future.)

I guess one of my biggest problems is whether or not more professional clients (or any clients) would accept me as an editor when I have no degree but am still pretty well experienced.

Thank you for your advice.
-Evan

[Mark Suszko]

Well, what I hear facility owners say time and again is, “I want to see a reel”, more than “what school did you go to?”. But that doesn’t men formal schooling is worthless, not at all. if you take the right courses, that will mold you into the best kind of editor: a generalist with a little knowledge about a lot of subjects, who can tap that background to inform his or her editing decisions.

Let me put it this way: I went to a good Liberal Arts University in Chicago, and another guy in our shop eventually got a GED. We both did editing, but over time, his edits never got any better. He had learned what buttons to push to get a result, but nothing about aesthetics and WHY and WHEN you push that button. He also had no easy way to converse with clients about their needs in any kind of depth. For music cues, for example, if you told him “I’d like something Copeland-esque here”, he wouldn’t have a clue what that meant. He didn’t have any knowledge of typography or principles of layout and design, beyond knowing the difference between a sans-serif and a seriffed font. He didn’t understand how to use a color wheel and what triadic complements are and how you could use than when deciding on the font colors.
So his color choices would often be horrible. He’d use dissolves and wipes interchangeably without any regard for the established meanings of each regarding time and place. He didn’t understand an L-cut.
I could keep going on, but it would start to sound like I made him up. He’s a successful guy in t he biz today but he’s not an editor.

So if you go the college route, for the 4 years you spend in a school, what you are doing, hopefully, is learning HOW to learn, to adapt, to seek out and integrate disparate facts and bits of learning into a base that you can tap to make good aesthetic decisions.

Here, in no particular order is a list of applicable courses that will help make you not just a well-rounded editor, but a well-rounded functioning human being:

You’d want some photography, some art history, some music appreciation or theory, enough to identify what a 4;4 beat is, at least.

Some introduction to principles of design. Some drama or stagecraft, theatre appreciation, dance appreciation, so when they tell you: “cut wide on the pas-de-deux” you know what they said.

Take some science, some physics, learn about acoustics, electronics, optics, chemistry.

Take a foreign language, Spanish of course, but maybe also one other, one of the Asian languages could prove very useful.

Take some sculpture, it will improve your 3-d compositing skills by learning to think and visualize in depth.

Take all the history of Film and Film appreciation courses you can, learn all the tricks from all the pioneers and masters who came before you.

Take some English Comp, so you can work with script copy on a set or in a suite and not look inept. Take math, take computer languages, take some basic business courses so people can’t rip you off easily. Take some marketing and some psychology, because the second thing the guys hiring want to see after a killer reel is just how well you can relate to clients working in a dark cave for hours at a time under deadline pressures.

And take some philosophy, so you can figure out how it all fits together.

You should be out every weekend with a friend or two, writing, shooting, and editing your own little projects, using whatever tech you can afford. Do NOT wait for someone to give you permission to go out and be creative; be creative TODAY. And you should merciless re-visit and re-edit your work as you go along, revising, upgrading, improving. Pick a concept and LEARN it thru this practice of trial and error. Create your own exercises, replicating things you’ve read about from past masters of film and TV. Don’t just imitate them but de-construct them: take them apart to understand how they are put together.

Or… you can go to button school, become certified in version xyz of software ABC. But don’t let them get away with just teaching you that alone. I can train a second grader to make simple edits in final cut pro. What takes longer is training someone to be able to tell a great STORY, visually and with sound, working together to reinforce each other. THAT is what an editor ultimately is: the one that brings all the elements together and turns them into the story, making MORE of the elements than just their sum, while solving problems, covering mistakes, and inventing things that were never shot or recorded because suddenly you need them to exist.

Learn compositing, learn color timing, learn how to make music with loops and how to record and cut audio. Learn some 3-d CGI, using free apps like Blender.

All this sounds like a lot of effort, and it is. The business is hard, the pay is low for most, the competition is high, there are many more applicants than jobs and the cloud will have you competing against people on third-world salaries. To survive, you have to love this job for itself, ahead of any consideration of profit. This has to be a thing you would do for free in your spare time, you love it so much. Only that kind of love for the work, and a single-mindedness of purpose, can carry you through the low times and hardships to the point you can make a living at it.

[Evan Thompson]

Thank you for all of that information.

I really couldn’t do a full scale college at this time, but what would really benefit is a good video overview course that gives terms and techniques etc.

There are terms I don’t know about or have never heard, but I still know about the technique and use it, just didn’t know the name.
That is the type of stuff I am looking for, to fill in the gaps.
I just don’t know where I would find that type of course.

I really appreciate your experienced advice.
Thank you for all of that knowlege.
-Evan

[Mark Suszko]

Then start with film history and appreciation courses at the local community college, or pull up those terms at Amazon and start buying and reading used copies of books on film history and theory. You can also buy used college TV textbooks on the cheap. Also, read all the books by Walter Murch. That’s a good start.

[Evan Thompson]

Thank you for your advice.
I appreciate it very much!
-Evan

[Simon Roughan]

Mark, you are indeed a very selfless fellow!
In The Blink Of An Eye by Walter Murch is one of the most insightful books I have ever read, on any subject.

Evan, I can only reinforce what Mark has already explained. Just like language, pictures have composition and grammar rules. They must first be learned and understood, before you go breaking them. Where and how they are learned is up to you.

You know I’m born to lose, and gambling is for fools, but that’s the way I like it, baby. I don’t want to live forever!

[Evan Thompson]

Simon, thanks for the book recommendation and the advice.
I’ll look into that book and see what I can get out of it.

Thank you,
-Evan

[Roy Schneider]

Evan Mark is really on point with his answers. I might also add that no matter what you do in editing, it isl always smart to study Marketing and Business, because though we are all in the business of creating, we are all in BUSINESS to earn a living.

Roy Schneider
Long Live Da Cow!

[Evan Thompson]

Thank you Roy for your advice.
I appreciate the knowledge all of you are giving.
Keep up the good work!

Thanks,
-Evan