Plan Ahead and Move Up
You have joined the union, landed yourself a job within the genre of your choice, and are successfully making contacts. You continue to keep a journal and hone your skills as an assistant editor. You have moved from point A to point B. During the second year of your career, you have gone through the process of dailies to online many times on a television show and once or twice on a feature. You are confident. You are paid great sums of money, and you have medical insurance and a pension plan. It is time to start planning part C of your career path for the next couple of years. If you stay the course, you will move that much closer to the day you move up to editor.
Hopefully, you still enjoy the genre in which you have chosen to start your career. It is not uncommon to be curious about the other paths you have yet to explore. If you prefer to work in a different venue, now is the time to make the change to the other genre. New contacts have to be made to crossover. More donuts need to be bought. The final goal during this time period is to find yourself assisting on a show that allows you to become ready to move up to editor if the opportunity should arise. Changing venues might delay this upward mobility, so think carefully before you make the move.
Perhaps you are happy on features but wish you had some experience on dramatic television. It is always a good thing to have a season of TV under your belt. If you are working on a television show and want to explore features, it is best to try to switch as soon as possible. Sometimes it is harder to land a feature gig when you have been working on TV than it is to get a TV job after working on features. This is true for the assistant as well as the editor. Remember to look for work while you are still employed!
Here is a list of some goals to reach by the end of your third year:
• Work on a union job.
• Hone your assisting skills.
• Cut every day.
• Work for an editor who is supportive of your editing goals.
• Expand your network base and meet directors.
• Work on a show that will lead to an editing position.
Because you are in the union and receiving those wonderful paychecks for the first time in your life, you might be tempted to buy lots of expensive toys. Cars. Cha-ching! Another monthly bill comes in. Entertainment centers filled with 60-inch LED screens and multiple channels of high-def reception. Chaching! Label clothing, fashionable adornments, furniture, vacation resorts, and restaurant and club hopping. Cha-ching, ching, ching! This is a big mistake. All of these toys will go on your credit card, and you will be in debt before you can say, “in sync.” Your career choices will now be incredibly limited.
When you have credit card debt, you limit your choices as to what jobs to take because your decisions are based on financial needs. With golden handcuffs—possessions and debt—you will not be free to turn down a job, or stay out of work to look for that right position in the genre of your choice, or make it through the months of unemployment that generally follow each gig.
As soon as you start to earn a good salary, pay off your student loans and car payment as quickly as possible. It is expensive money. It is also important that you start an individual retirement account (IRA) because the pension fund from the union will not be substantial enough to support you in retirement. Putting away at least $42 a week adds up to $2000 per year and will have exponential returns for you when you reach retirement age.
To help you budget, a good rule of thumb is provided in Table 14.1.
First week salary |
Should equal your monthly rent |
Second week salary |
Goes to bills |
40% of third week salary |
Pays off student loans and car payment |
20% of third week salary |
Put in savings account for when you are unemployed |
20% of third week salary |
Automatically deposit into IRA |
20% of third week salary |
Put in savings account to buy a house (if you have debt from student or car loans, this percentage of salary should be applied to the loan payments until they are gone) |
Fourth week salary |
Fun money: Toys and vacations (the more you save of this money, the greater number of career choices you will have) |
If you are able to follow these general rules of banking your salary, you will have the best control over your career path. Money should not be the deciding factor for the job you choose. Remember, there will be unemployment between gigs, and you must have a nest egg to survive these times. Your savings will free you to take the time to network with colleagues, to look for work, and wait for the job you really want. It is essential to have savings for hiatus so that you can stay your course.
Amortize your salary to make sure you are not overextending yourself. For example, if you work on a television show with a full season of 22 episodes, you will probably average 10 months of work, with a 2-month hiatus. To know how much your amortized monthly salary is, divide your annual income by 12 months. Now you can approximate how much you can afford to pay for rent. Your hiatus will be much less stressful if you are prepared for downtime. You will be able to choose when to take your next gig.
SHINE NOTE
Always volunteer for extracurricular activities and partake in social functions with the Editors Guild and ACE. You must participate! This is one of the secrets to being a successful assistant editor.
14.3 Perform at Your Highest Level
Stephen Lovejoy, A.C.E. shared this wisdom at the Internship Lecture Series in 2009:
These are the standards you need to set for yourself in this business. What happens is that when you get into a working environment you are going to have a few other assistants that do not abide by these rules. Do not become like them. Avoid becoming the lazy assistant or the assistant who only does something when asked instead of anticipating what to do. I’ve seen this decline in standards happen time after time. Never allow yourself to adopt that negative attitude. If you have an internal desire for excellence you are an invaluable asset to the editor. If you don’t possess it, I don’t have time to teach it to you. When I was growing up people really cared about their quality of work and how they treated people. A lot of that has disappeared from our society and our world altogether so when you meet people with that burning desire to be the best they can possibly be—just give me that person. I can do something with that person.
One assistant in the audience asked, “How do those crappy assistants get hired in the first place?” Stephen responded, “In terms of the business, there are hundreds of movies that are made every year that never appear in major markets. There is a whole industry that produces them and distributes mediocre product. Because of movies of lesser budgets and quality, people get used to assistants who are kind of lazy and do not wish to excel. There are a lot of people who are threatened by excellence.”
Allow yourself to follow the higher road of standards. Regardless of the venue, the budget, or the scope of the film, do what you really love to do and shine in your job.
The best deposit you can make in the bank of your career is to edit everyday. It is the only way that you will be prepared to make the cut when the time comes to move up to editor. Even when the editor has not asked you to cut, you should take the time to cut as many scenes as possible. Every day. We know you are tired, dailies can be challenging, multitasking and assisting multiple editors is exhausting. It is difficult to retain enough energy at the end of a 10-hour day to begin cutting a scene. We suggest that you come in at the crack of dawn when the editing rooms are empty and quiet. This way you will not be distracted or called upon to answer phones or perform workday chores.
Show your scenes to your editor. Ask for notes and make the changes. Practice makes perfect! If you find yourself in a job where the editors are not willing to mentor you, reevaluate your current job and ask yourself whether your three-year plan is moving forward.
In some cases, it is hard to determine what your chances are of getting moved up to editor, but there are some universal factors that must be in place, including having honed your editing skills while still assisting.
There are several key people involved in moving you up. They are your editor, the coproducer, and the executive producers. You need the support of all of them. During the time that you have assisted on your current show, you have cut recaps, gag reels, and countless scenes. You have developed relationships and laid the groundwork for moving up to editor.
If you have been assisting on a show for three or four years and you know you will not be moved up when a seat becomes available, then you must reevaluate whether to stay with the editor who hired you or whether to stay with the show at all. However, try not to burn bridges if you do leave.
To successfully move up to editor, you should find a new job that offers a more supportive crew who can help you advance. It is also important that there is an editor there willing to mentor you, as well as the possibility of an editing seat opening up. It is often hard to find these safe situations. Do your homework before taking another job, and make sure it is an environment in which you can shine. Ask other assistant editors, film editors, and mentors for advice, and soundboard your ideas with them.
During the course of your career, there will be long-term relationships that develop between you and your editors, other assistants, and hopefully producers and directors. When you find one of the good guys, cherish him. There are a lot of bad guys out there. Our world of postproduction is truly a small family, and we must take care of one another. Never leave a show without giving advance notice, and always suggest and train a replacement for yourself.
On every film, you should take the opportunity to meet as many new people as possible. If your cutting rooms are on the studio lot, there are editors and assistants downstairs, upstairs, and in the neighboring bungalow. Wander down the halls, check out the nameplates, and look them up on IMDb. Introduce yourself. Or better yet, ask your editor to introduce you. Keep broadening your base of contacts and make new friends. There is nothing like networking to guarantee that you will find work all the time.
During your tenure on a show, try to make sure that at least two of your bosses would want to hire you again—the producers, other editors, or someone on the postproduction staff. But always remember that your primary responsibility is to be the best assistant editor possible and to keep your editor happy.
14.7 Gracefully Leaving Your Union Job
Leaving is always an issue, especially when you’ve been a great asset to the show. There are a few good excuses that will not burn bridges or cause your boss to be angry:
• Moving up to editor: Any opportunity to move up to editor is generally understood and sanctioned by all editors and producers.
• Leaving for a feature: It is understood in television that an opportunity to work on a feature is desirable. Understand, though, that each time you leave TV to take a feature, your reputation will follow you, and people will be less willing to hire you in television again.
• Leaving for a longer gig: If your show is ending soon, and you are offered a job that will last longer, your editor will understand if you choose to leave. Most editors do not want to lose their assistant midstream—training a new person is time consuming and hard work—so you need to help out as much as possible during this transition and make sure that no one feels abandoned or annoyed.
• Personal issues: Leaving a position due to personal issues will not burn bridges. However, if you have prior commitments already on your calendar that occur during the course of the shoot, let your employers know in advance. A wedding and honeymoon, new baby, or health issues can be worked around, but full disclosure at the start of the project is necessary.
TIP
The Editors Guild does not have maternity leave for either parent, so oftentimes we have to consider when would be best to start a family. In network television, there is still a fall season that starts around July and ends between March and May, so there are a few months between May and July when hiatus babies are born! In cable TV and features, there is no fall season per se, so scheduling a family is more challenging.
If you have positioned yourself carefully, edited your heart out, networked with others and developed solid relationships, and been lucky enough to be on a successful TV show, your chances for being promoted by the end of your third or fourth year are good. If your goals are set high, then you should certainly be editing by the end of five years. With a little bit of luck, you will be on your way!