is there a career in video editing ?

[rh71]

I've been trying to find something I really love doing... I can't see myself doing web programming for the next 30 years. So I put some thought into "what would I actually love doing?"...

I dab a little in video editing/conversion/etc. and really love it. I'm a perfectionist and sometimes anal so tweaking things is in my nature.

Anyone know if there's a career in doing that kind of thing ? I'm sure I'd have to go back to school for experience in "industry tools and standards" but I think I want a change in my career (better now than later) and I'm not too far removed from using the same type of technology anyway.

If you know anyone in the industry, please tell me of their experience/salary range/turnover/etc.

 

[Injury]

well... the wider you make your skillset, the better chance you have at suceeding.

And to be perfectly straightforward, it's all about connections. You get jobs and clients based on word of mouth more than anything.

The "friend of a friend" deal is always your biggest customer base unless you are part of a studio.

Editing in itself is boring, tedious and requires a lot of patience to do on a daily basis. Dabbling in it can be fun, but just wait until you sit in front of a computer for an 80 hour work week looking at the same 30-60 minutes of video over and over, then turn around and have do it again with a different project the next week to meet the strict deadlines that many people require. This is why you want to expand your skillset. If you can shoot video, rig lighting, and know a bit more about production than simply chopping up the video into whatever the producer wants, then you are less likely to get bored fast.


All in all... it's exhausting, but you can wind up doing a lot of cool things.

 

[woowoo]

I work for a PBS member station
We run two "AVID" suites here at my location.
Avid and FCP are the two major players
A good knowledge of after effects helps a lot.
Vegas, Premier, Speedrazor are minor players
Both of our suites, and our graphics room, are mac based.

(These are state jobs in KY.)
30K-35K to start, depending.../ no turnover

Do you have any "Post" houses in your city?

You can get a copy of avid's "free DV" to learn the interface

Both of our "Editors" Learned their craft OJT.
They were internal promotions

My only advise?
Stay away from news.....

 

[Steve]

My sister works at a post-production house, their bread and butter is commercials. She started at around 36k, has been there a little while and is making 40k. She started after several years in graphic design.

 

[mrrman]

My friend is into this as a hobby, spent $30K on computer stuff,cameras etc but when asked to do a video frfom friends they want it for free. Even some of his friends paid $10K for a wedding photographer and the pics looked bad, he asked to do it for $5K and they said no. He even does all the editing, burning to the DVD and adds sound tracks. If you do this as a business, dont do it for your friends, they seem to be the cheapest.

 

[WhiteKnight]

Two of my friends and I all are self-taught video editors. One of those friends is a freelance videographer in the DC area and he manages to pull in over 100k/year. He graduated from college in 2002 and while he had a rough start finding a job, since he started freelancing the work pretty much comes to him.

 

[Gibson486]

It depends where in the industry you want to work.

Do you want to actually do video editing on a low end level (just using AVID) or do you want to do it on a high end level (actually code stuff).