ASK & DISCUSS INDEX

10 years, 6 months ago - Michael Lebor

Where do you live? I need an assistant editor.

If you live near Romford then you've got the job :)

It depends on what you ultimately want to do. I started out as a runner on commercials and all the time, I told people I edit and asked do you have anything I can help with? Eventually after 3 years of running I had enough clients who called me for editing not running.

My best clients (10 years on) are the ones I met as a runner.

It's not glamourous but it gets your name around. There are always low paid jobs to cut your teeth on from Shooting People but if you want to go down hardcore TV/commercials post production then you need to get in-house running jobs in Soho and SLOWLY work your way up.

10 years, 6 months ago - Rachel Kosminsky

Hi Paddy, that's really not an option. To even be an assistant editor you need all sorts of experience I can't get (believe me, I've looked). Which is why I was hoping to offer freelance editing and build up my own showreel. But I'm wondering if anyone will even take a chance on me without much to show yet. Its a catch 22 type situation I feel.

10 years, 6 months ago - Christian Schmeer

These guys do networking events in London, if you're going the freelance route:
https://www.facebook.com/Creative.Media.Collective.London

10 years, 6 months ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin

Such is the industry, I'm afraid. It's massively oversubscribed, and getting any showreel together is hard without showreel. If you're not getting AE work, look at tape room work, runner work, intern, whatever? I can think of a couple of smaller post companies that would be pleased to have someone make them tea for free on the night shift, for instance. People need to see you're hungry to work. An email asking if there are any jobs going is easily ignored, calling up offering to make tea for free for x weeks gets more attention. Someone will relent if you persist. It's hardly ideal, but with colleges pumping out another few thousand starry-eyed media graduates each year it's going to take decisive action to break clear of the noise.

Maybe you can find a different way, but bedroom editing of short films for free puts you right in the centre of every other media graduate with a copy of final cut, so one voice in thousands. If you can find a way to stand out, maybe a voice in dozens. Then you might get lucky.

I don't know, lots of luck involved, huge amounts of persistence, but remember however nice your showreel it all comes down to contacts and dogged determination in the end.

10 years, 6 months ago - George Brian Glennon

What Paddy says is accurate. It's like this in most creative arts. You need to be absolutely relentless, and it is a catch 22.
There is a real developed skill to being at the right place at the right time. I don't know if there is an Editors Guild or professional organization you could join to network, but if there is then do it. You've got to expect to spend some money in getting going, and for "Being in the right place at the right time". You make your own luck.

Coming from music I can tell you that a major London university that puts out recording arts graduates by the hundreds per year, that in the class of a friend of mine, ten years out, there are only two people out of several hundred from that class actually in the recording industry proper. Only two and he is one of them, and that is only one class year.

Thousands of kids are paying mad money to be trained to fill dead mans shoes. It's quite nuts. But then again this is a film forum where what, 3% of all actors make a living??

The major studio I was trained in received 50-100 inquiries a week for runner positions. A week. I got in by showing up every day and not taking no for an answer. I wasn't going away and they knew it. I was young enough then to pull that off. They could see I wanted it more than anyone else. Then I made tea and cleaned toilets for 6 months before I saw the inside of a session.

Relentless networking to the right people, knowing who the right people are, and spending some money (even if it means getting a second job to pay for it) to showcase your work, are the best bet.

10 years, 6 months ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin

How about going to a post house as an assistant editor for a while, get your hand in logging and syncing and maybe doing assemblies etc so you're in the right place when someone asks them for a deal price, which they then get the AE to work on...

Just a thought...

10 years, 6 months ago - Lee 'Wozy' Warren

Build a reel with 'fake' client work. But obviously don't claim to a new client that they were from real clients. Just that you have put together a sample of what you are capable of. I did this years ago and it got the ball rolling. If you do motion graphics for example, its easy to make up a 30 second spot on something. Try this approach maybe?