Our schools make lousy places for risk-taking creatives. All through our formative years, we’re pushed to get good grades, get all the answers right. Uh oh, you missed an answer – RED MARK FOR YOU. HOW DARE YOU NOT DO EVERYTHING PERFECTLY.

Seriously, we are conditioned since childhood to strive for the A+, to seek the perfect score and the perfect season.

“Failure is not an option,” intone our coaches, teachers, and parents.

Well, they’re all WRONG.

Not only is failure a very real option at any point, the achievement of success dictates failure to get there. It’s required, and it’s required repeatedly.

As toddlers, how many times did we fall on our diaper-clad butts in the process of learning how to walk? Our parents didn’t yell at us for repeatedly “failing to walk” when we were learning how to do it in the first place.

Yet somehow we grow up, brainwashed into a place where we think that we’re supposed to take on a new challenge and automatically be amazing at it, just like a toddler who attempts walking for the very first time and instantly wins a medal in pole vaulting.

But then we turn on a baseball game, where hitting the ball 4 times out of 10 is considered virtually impossible. Continue reading Why you must be ok with sucking →

Creativity is a tricky thing, right up there with the idea of Talent. Useful scapegoats they are, Creativity and Talent, conveniently and nebulously explaining away engaging and disruptive ideas that otherwise seem to miraculously appear from nowhere.

While I’m the first person to acknowledge the mysterious nature of Creativity and Talent, I’m here to tell you that creative results can often be achieved in ways that are anything but mysterious. Sometimes it’s something as simple as being faced with a problem that prompts you to take two different elements, throw them up against the proverbial wall, and see what sticks. Or in this case, what mashes up together.

The other night, my wife and I were listening to a jazz station on Pandora, and one particular song made us stare at each other in amazement.

The song “My Funny Valentine” was originally written in 1937 for the Rodgers and Hart hit musical Babes In Arms. One of the song’s major early recordings came in 1955 by Frank Sinatra on his album Songs For Young Lovers. Sinatra’s performance stays fairly close to the original melody.

And now for something completely different. Continue reading How Sinatra + AC/DC = Jazz →

Whether they realize it or not, television editors are right in the middle of a game-changing industry shift driven by inexorable forces outside their control. If television editing in a major city that has lots of editors is your only income, you need to build a Plan B right now.

If you’re an independent editor who edits anything in exchange for money, this could be very good news for you. If you’re editing just for fun, still pay attention. It affects us all, in light of our ever flattening world… and an incendiary comment from an editor in Orlando.

In times past, film and video editing was only done by a select few people with access to either complicated machinery, huge studio infrastructure, or both. Technology has now progressed to the point that literally anyone with a modern cell phone can shoot, edit, and upload video to the world with mind-blowing ease.

So the chair in which I currently sit – as an established, Los Angeles-based editor of broadcast television – is a unique and increasingly rare one.

Maybe not to my editing peers around Hollywood, but ever more rare to the rest of the world who now has easy access to real tools. And I’m talking “big boy” gear – 4K cameras, Avid Media Composer, ProTools, and DaVinci Resolve, all ready to spit out air-ready master files or even DCP deliverables.

To the independent editors and content producers: this is very, very good news for you. But you’re not out of the woods yet. Keep reading.

To my professional peers – listen up, because keeping steady editing work into the future is becoming harder, not easier, even for those of us with established credits and professional networks. Here’s why. Continue reading The massive editorial change to YOUR wallet, and what to do about it →

Los Angeles is a music and movie lover’s dream, packed with world-class performing arts venues. The Hollywood Bowl is a fabled venue that’s featured everyone from Louis Armstrong, Judy Garland, and Nat “King” Cole, to Leonard Bernstein, Luciano Pavarotti, Elton John, the Beatles, and countless other legendary musicians.

Heck, I grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons where Bugs Bunny appears on a huge half-moon stage either conducting music or torturing those who perform it. After moving out here, I got a real kick out of realizing that the stage in those cartoons was a real one, just over the hill from Warner Brothers where those cartoons were created.

Some of my most treasured musical experiences happened at the Bowl. I got to see James Brown, the Hardest Working Man in Show Business, scream into the microphone and do the splits in front of 18,000 people at the age of 72.

My wife and I joined a sold-out crowd in thunderous applause as a man on crutches hobbled across the stage, barely able to even walk. Then Itzhak Perlman raised a violin to his shoulder and proceeded to cast a musical spell that left tears running down the cheek of any who heard it. Continue reading Music from the Beatles and Bugs Bunny, music edits from YOU →

Come, editorial friends, to that great repository of cultural insights and general knowledge known as The Simpsons. Once upon a time, many episodes ago, Homer Simpson’s father, Abe Simpson, intoned the following:

I used to be with it, but then they changed what “it” was. Now what I’m with isn’t “it,” and what’s “it” seems weird and scary to me.

And it’ll happen to you.

I’ll admit it. I’ve been feeling differently about that quote recently than I used to. When I first got into post-production as a young assistant editor, an established editor asked me one day if I’d make an output of his sequence to the VHS deck hooked up in his bay… because he didn’t know how.

My jaw almost dropped on the floor. How could any self-respecting editor not know how to route a composite video signal through a timecode generator, set audio levels to match reference tone, and hit record on a VHS deck and play on the Avid? I mean, really??

I never knew how easy I had it. I cut my assistant editor teeth in the not-so-distant days when my main job was shoving tapes into a Beta SP deck and copying footage from one physical drive to another.

These days? Have an assistant editor start talking to me about decomposing the multi-group into the project with the correct frame-rate because the AMA just will not link to the original media so we’re transcoding to blah resolution for the XML output, and my eyes instantly glaze over. Exactly like that guy who after poking around the video router in his Avid rig finally gave up and asked me to make that VHS output.

To all the professional assistant editors out there: you ladies and gentlemen are FREAKING AMAZING. I assure you, the vast majority of the editors you support have absolutely no clue how to do what you do. We would be incapable of doing any actual editing if we had to do your job, which changes with every new update to software and operating system, and every new codec from this month’s shiny new digital camera.

And for all the content creators out there who have to be the assistant editor, post sup, AND the editor (and the colorist, and the mixer, and DVD author)… it’s a brave new world with technology constantly changing.

I’m happy to confirm, though, that while the way we create content constantly changes, other things remain the same:

MESSAGE… channeled through specific Media to a specific Market by specific creative Methods. The editor’s function as Technician, Creative, and Psychologist.   Story structure. Character arcs. Continuity of images and ideas. Tension. Release. Emotion. Collaboration with people. All working together to create intangible connections to deeply rooted psychological triggers in the hearts and minds of anyone who experiences your work. Messages that cause people to unexpectedly snort coffee out their nose. Or wipe away a tear sliding down their cheek.

Mastering those kind of ideas can feel even more intimidating than the tech stuff. And it should – tech stuff can be fairly easily mastered.

But the intangibles of communication? Those can take years, decades, or even a lifetime to master. I’ve spent the last decades studying them, and distilling them into a collection of ideas which has been receiving rave reviews from amateurs and lifelong Hollywood professionals alike.

If you’re up for the idea of expanding your storytelling mind, check this out here.

And in the meantime, keep your virtual Grandpa Simpson at bay by joining likeminded folks here at The Power Edit on FB.

Now, before you end up like this:

To those considering the idea of Hollywood editing paychecks: they ain’t what they used to be. And paychecks are FAR from the only reason to edit… but to those of us who do it for a living, they’re a big deal. And they could end up being a big deal to you too.

I always thought feature film editors made a bunch of money. Like $300k, half a million per picture, etc. Well, that was much more common in the 1980’s and 90’s. And per a discussion that happened this week in The Power Edit on FB (a group that you should join), a handful of editors still command those prices. But that’s for big studio stuff.

The vast majority of feature films that get made today are not big or studio. According to first-hand knowledge posted on the string:

Average weekly pay for editors on indie features of $1M-2M: $1500-$2000/week.

Weekly editor pay for indie features $500K-$1M: as low as $1000/week.

Editor pay for indies under $500K: IOUs and cold pizza.

And for the scripted TV world…

Average editor pay for first season network scripted show: $3100/week. Also comes with 60-hour weeks and usually significant political drama with decreased creative autonomy.

Compare to the average weekly pay for unscripted television – doc series, semi-scripted, reality, studio competition, etc.:

$3200-$3800/week. Usually 50-hour weeks or less. Equal potential for political drama depending on the show and producers, but significantly more potential for creative contribution and autonomy.

In my discussions with international editors, these numbers tend to hold true around the world in Europe, Australia, and Canada.

I realize these numbers speak to a very specific niche of editors – and to earn these numbers at all in the US, you usually have to live in Los Angeles or New York. And life here in LA is expensive. What might seem like big fat paychecks disappear quickly if you’re not careful. Plus these jobs are almost exclusively freelance, so you have no guarantees of regular work compared to being on staff somewhere.

But what about everyone else who edits for individual clients outside major media centers? That, my friend, is a no-man’s land of feast or famine, more likely famine. Why? Because the barriers to entry are lower and lower as technology marches forward. The client’s kid can “shoot something on his cell phone that looks just as good as what you charged me $5000, and it’s only going up on the web anyway.” A whole other frustrating discussion for sure.

But in the meantime, beware of that Greener Grass syndrome. If you aspire to edit feature films because you think they’ll make you rich, you may need to come up with a Plan B.

In all seriousness, consider reality/unscripted television. Hundreds of channels of TV need a never-ending supply of content, and those shows need editors who can tell stories well, often with less-than-stellar source material. But that’s the ongoing challenge, and those do edit well get paid very well.

Fair warning: cutting unscripted content requires a whole other set of skills that you will hardly ever learn in film school or anywhere else other than on the job. Or by picking the brains of successful editors, either in person or by checking out books like this one.

To reiterate an idea: don’t get into editing just for the money. So many more things factor into it than that.  But you can absolutely end up making a really good living in the process – if you want it badly enough.

We had an interesting string about developing one’s editorial style this week in The Power Edit on FB – which, if you’re interested in improving your editorial and communication craft, is a group you should join.

One group member – whose permission was obtained for referencing him here – wrote that he just wrapped editing on a reality show and asked for feedback from his producers. (That right there is a very enlightened thing that more people should do, by the way.)

They told him that while he did a good job, he should work to develop his own editorial style. Hence the question: how do I develop my own style? It’s a pretty vague thing, completely dependent on where and who you are and what you want.

Some experienced editors offered some very wise advice. And it got me thinking about style and creativity in general.

I remember the time when I was a kid in elementary school, and I was playing one of the pianos at my church.  One of the older ladies who played piano informed me that I needed to learn to “play from your SOUL.” I thought that was pretty dumb.  Plus I didn’t really like the way she played piano anyway, so what did she know?

Well… a decade and change of mental and emotional growth later, I eventually realized she was right.

Not too many years after that, I was out in Los Angeles beginning my first job in post-production. As an assistant online editor, I saw every piece that was edited for the show, and I started predicting who had edited them based on the style of the edit. Some I could pick apart and recognize sloppy elements, others I just shook my head at how effortlessly the piece flowed. I had no idea how to accomplish what I saw, but I just kept watching, talking with the editors, going from show to show, and actually adding bits of all that observation into my own cuts.

What was the connection between playing piano “with my SOUL” and developing my editorial style?

One word: influences. On top of my classical piano studies, I started listening to jazz, blues, and Top 40 music. My current style of piano playing is a mix of all of that. Editorially, I started paying attention to scenework, visual style, and storyline development in TV shows that I watched on TV or helped edit, and in movies I saw in the theater.

For better or worse, the things you put in your mind shape what comes out of it. As my friend Micah Yost writes in his newly released e-book “Rhythm: How to Make Great Things Happen”:

“You will never see a change in your results until you shake up your influences.”

Curation of influences is only one element of an entire equation that Micah has detailed in his book, which is a step-by-step guide on how anyone can achieve creative outcomes in their field, even if they don’t think they’re “a creative.”

Think you or your project are too stiff or structured?

“Structure and creativity have the same parentage. It is structure that enables creativity.”

HECK. YES. Also:

“You can’t get creative from simply reading about somebody else’s ideas. You have to develop a plan that works for you – a plan you are convinced by evidence will produce results.”

I couldn’t agree more. Micah’s book offers a specific yet flexible plan to do exactly that, without taking 400 pages to say it. It’s not a pie-in-the-sky treatise on what other people think, it’s a concrete, easily applied set of steps for YOU to achieve the creative and stylistic results YOU want.

It’s available now on Kindle, brand new as of this writing. You should pick up a copy.

Do eyeballs matter? Short answer: yes. It would suck to edit without possessing eyeballs.

So if I was actually talking about the number of eyeballs watching your project, would that matter? Well, that depends.

As of this writing, I’m editing on American Ninja Warrior, a wildly popular obstacle course competition show that airs in the US on Monday nights on NBC, watched by millions (5.74M this past Monday). A producer and I were recently chatting about the show.

“Let’s face it,” he said, “the number of eyeballs on this show is more than the last 11 shows we’ve both worked on.” Somewhat hyperbolic, but closer to being true than not. Implicit in his statement: a higher number of eyeballs on your show is automatically better.

I used to think that was the case. Early in my career, I wanted to edit bigger and more popular shows simply because they seemed more prestigious, more likely to get an Emmy, pay more money, etc. Then I got to my first network gig and realized, “Yeah, this show is being watched by 8 million people instead of 800,000, but it’s pretty much the same thing I’ve been doing.”

Since then I’ve spent a good chunk of my editing career cutting smaller TV shows that air on small cable channels, maybe getting recut and repurposed all over the Internet. I’ve found that those jobs have much lower overall stress, and higher probability that producers will trust me with a deadline, some content to cut, and just let me do my thing. Ahhh… yes. Fewer eyeballs, but definitely higher quality of life.

Oh, and what about all those projects that don’t get seen by hardly anybody? I’ve been hired over and over to cut presentation and sizzle reels that are never seen by anyone outside a TV exec’s office. Or maybe a screening room with a 30-member test audience. Hardly blockbuster ratings in terms of eyeballs.

Stop worrying about how many eyeballs are on your projects. Sometimes it matters, but far more often it just doesn’t.

Focus more on what you want your piece to say. Who you’re saying it to. What you want those people to know or do after they experience your piece. The kind of things we talk about here.

Why? Because those kind of questions are the ones that will bring powerful reactions from audiences of any size.

One of the most treasured pieces I’ve ever edited was created for the sole purpose of asking one question to one person.

She said yes.

 

Countless starry-eyed generations of film students have exited the halls of film school convinced that they will be the next Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, Robert Rodriguez… or Thelma Schoonmaker or Walter Murch, for the would-be editors.

Why? Well, the cockier ones act as if – if not outright say – it’s their Manifest Destiny to be so, because I now have a film degree and that means I deserve to be the next cinematic demigod. Get out of my way, out-of-touch Common People Who Don’t Understand My Tortured Genius. The more humble ones will say that they want to be The Next One because they love movies and want to leave a mark on the world by being great at it. (An honorable goal, I might add.)

But here’s the thing – the educational and professional film and TV worlds have an attitude that perpetuates a whole string of stereotypes that I personally find repulsive:

That some editing is innately better than other editing.

That the editor who edits a studio feature is somehow operating on a higher plane of consciousness than the editor who “only” cuts a scripted drama on TV. That cutting literally anything that originates from a lined script is innately more valuable than anything that is “unscripted.” That no self respecting professional would ever stoop to cut a 2AM infomercial for one of those hyped-up ab machine things. You edit wedding videos? God have mercy on your soul.

And oh, you shoot and edit your own videos at home or on the weekends? That’s so precious. Here, let us pat you on the head while stifling a sarcastic smirk. Maybe one day you’ll do a project that actually means something.

And to those attitudes, I call bullshit. An enormous, steaming pile of condescending, elitist bullshit.

Let me clear up a few things from first-hand observation of editorial life in Hollywood.

Every above-mentioned category of editing requires a very different set of skills. Just because you have the skills to do one does not guarantee you have the skills to do another, going up OR down the stereotypical scale of supposed amazingness.

As a point of reference, the bulk of my career has been in unscripted, documentary, or reality television. As of this writing, I spent a good part of the last 4 years editing an extreme sports documentary promo series that required a very specific skillset. Every single editor on my referral shortlist that came on to the show either said, “Please don’t make me cut that show again, it’s too hard,” or was outright fired.

These people were all accomplished, career editors. And some of these people have cut scripted shows. And feature films.

Now I say this not to prop myself up, but to point out that different gigs require different sensibilities – just because you can cut one doesn’t mean you can cut absolutely anything.

I recently cut on a cable documentary series that had full-on, film style historical reenactments with full dialogue. The kicker: the actors were paid about the same as the set PA. The quality of the acting was, shall we say… uneven.

Having seen locked episodes that demonstrated to me that the standards of acting were lower for this show, I didn’t have to obsess over what the producers would think of my editorial choices for acting performance. Because they just weren’t nearly as big a deal as they would have been, say, in a scripted drama for HBO.

But were that same cable reenactment show an actual scripted drama for HBO, my choices would have been scrutinized much more closely. Maybe my choices would’ve been acceptable, maybe not. I might have even been replaced by an experienced scripted editor, who knows?

Thing is, the number one thing that scripted TV and film editors actively shape is the performance of the actors. And I’ll be the first one to say that the bulk of editors who have spent the bulk of their careers cutting reality TV don’t have that practiced eye for the minute details of what an actor offers.

Why? Reality and doc editors, by and large, don’t constantly need that skillset, if they ever need it at all.

But believe me, reality editors require a very special blend of creativity and problem solving just to do their jobs at all.

Years ago I was cutting a short-lived reality series for MTV. An extra editor came on board and said, “Wow, this show is amazing. This show requires so much more creativity than the scripted show I just cut, I love it.” I had to pick my jaw up from the floor – what is this craziness? Aren’t scripted shows always more creative than reality?

Sometimes, yes. Other times… heck no. Consult your lined pages for the circled takes, and assemble your cut like a good little edit monkey. And do exactly as the director looking over your shoulder says. My scripted friends will back me on this.

Can we all agree here, feature films and scripted television do not automatically have amazing things to say simply by virtue of existing?

Often they do. That’s why they so often capture the imaginations of their viewers.

But let me tell you something – when some snooty film student or industry veteran looks down their nose to inform you that you’re falling short creatively by cutting reality television – because all reality is trash, of course – or your own projects don’t really matter, or you ’re not a real editor because you’ve never cut for a national broadcast network, or ever seen one of your sequences projected in a movie theater…

I want you to smile, politely ignore them, and remember this:

YOUR PROJECTS MATTER, AND SO DO YOU.

You do not have to cut a feature film to capture the hearts and minds of your audience. You do not have to cut a hit drama for HBO to revel in the feeling of being creatively engaged and alive.

It can be accomplished by editorially engaging in the psychological process of what makes someone actually willing to buy that funky ab machine at 2AM – and they find legitimate encouragement in the thought that they are taking action to improve their health. And that hyped up, star-wiped infomercial causes them to make changes in their lives that they would never have otherwise considered.

You can get a huge rush of satisfaction when an extra cutaway and music sting you dropped into a reality scene causes your producers to roar with laughter, and you know that the audience will too. And that laughter just might release some of the tension in the audience’s mind and brighten their day.

And you can cut a montage of perfectly selected shots of a bride and groom on the happiest day of their lives, put it to the perfect piece of music, and know that the edit you are building will become quite literally a priceless treasure for those who took part in that event.

You don’t have to cut from a lined script to to introduce a new way of thinking to your viewers.

You do not need an Oscar on your mantle to leave a permanent mark in the hearts and minds of those who experience your work.

You can do all these things, where you are right now.

This is not to say that it’s easy.

But it can absolutely happen, no matter how grand or seemingly humble the project you undertake, no matter if the elitists approve of your work or not.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to have that happen for you, that’s why I wrote this book. It continues to receive rave reviews from beginners and seasoned pros alike.

And if you’d like to join an international, growing group of like-minded storytellers who are helping each other pursue these very things, then I invite you to join us here.

In the meantime, if you do have a burning, insatiable fire in your soul to edit scripted television or feature films, then honor that. You will need that fire to keep you moving forward. Speaking candidly: without it, you will likely fall short of your goal, or decide you don’t want it badly enough. Building a career in the film/scripted world these days is really, really tough and becoming more so. But it is absolutely possible if you want it badly enough.

Ignore the doubters who snicker at your dreams.

Tune out the haters who would pull you down, and press on towards the goal, my friend.

You got this.

This idea, when applied properly, can improve the impact of literally any project you cut. But first, an embarrassing story.

Years ago, a friend and I went to an improv comedy show in Hollywood. I had very little idea what improv was but still volunteered when asked for audience members to come up on stage for one of the skits. I and others were supposed to pretend we were at a party and engage in dialogue that would help the improv actors guess our situation.

My situation: I was eating hors d’oeuvres made out of remnants of animals that represent holidays. As in, Easter Bunny Paté, Reindeer Steak Kabobs, Groundhog Mousse, etc. I figured there was no way these poor actors would ever figure out something that random, so I tried really hard to help them out. Would you believe, they guessed right away at the very beginning of the skit?

I kept offering more hints, not realizing that they didn’t need any more. At that point I had already outlived my usefulness, and I was just displaying my comedic ineptitude. One cast member literally directed me to a corner of the stage and told me to keep “eating your snacks.” It took me a while to realize how truly clueless I had been about that whole thing. Returning to my seat, my friend mumbled something about how at least I was brave enough to go up there, and he’ll be right back after he gets another drink.

The lesson from my failed improv moment that applies to storytelling of all sorts: don’t give out the answers right away. Drop a hint here, show a clue there, and THEN eventually get around to saying what you want to say. It keeps your audience engaged all the way through the piece. Otherwise they get what they came for right away, and they’re done. And possibly annoyed.

I recently saw a seriously cool piece that demonstrates this in multiple stages: wildlife photographer Chris McLennan drove a Nikon camera mounted on a remote control car into a pride of wild lions, and here’s what happened.

Cool, huh? Multiple levels of setup and payoff. And things that make you wait until the very end, images you would never see otherwise unless you were about to be eaten.

It’s all about The Reveal. For a more direct discussion of it editorially, check out the below Power Edit Tip. And feel free to look us up on YouTube and hit the Subscribe button.

If you like these kind of ideas, there are lots more to be found here.