Editing Isn’t Dead — It’s Just Changing (Here’s How to Adapt)

So apparently the film industry is broken. Hollywood is in decline and YouTube is dominating. YouTube is having a huge share of the market, bigger than Netflix and all the major streamers. Does it even make sense to pursue a career in film editing right now? You don't want to be cutting a YouTube video. Well, hold on because I think this is a great time to be a filmmaker to be actually a filmmaker who edits. Film making is about to have a renaissance. That's what I think. just not in the way you might imagine. In this video, I'm going to share three strategies that I apply based on some facts about the industry that will never change. All of this in this video. My name is Sven. I'm an ACCE nominated editor. I cut a 3D IMAX documentary for James Cameron, an Emmy-winning TV show for Joseph Gordon Levit, and a feature film for filmmaker Mark Weber that went to Sundance. — Okay, cool. Scene. — Most of my work is in independent features and documentaries, and I can tell you indies are a great place to be working, especially now. I see so many opportunities. I actually had my best year. I had my hands on two feature films and a huge documentary that I'm still cutting, actually. Fact number one, nothing stays the same. The film industry is constantly changing. In the 90s, it was the boom of the indies. Then it became all about television. streaming. And now we're talking about YouTube, Tik Tok, we're talking about AI. And all that has a tremendous impact. It disrupts an industry. And there are a lot of people that are sort of left on the side. And there are many people that adapt. Your strategy is to look for these dots and connect them early. That doesn't necessarily mean you need to follow every trend. As a matter of fact, being skeptical of trends can often give you a leg up. But there are certain things that will not come back. So, for example, going from an assistant editor to an editor, that opportunity is almost gone. remote working made it so much harder for people to really like get through the gate because physically they weren't there. And now with AI, we're probably going to have so many disruption, especially in kind of the lower tier editing, the more organizational jobs. Your assistant editor now is an AI. So, how are people going to be able to really succeed and break into the industry? Well, don't panic. Stories always survive and the greatest storytellers thrive. When I talk to new directors about their project, I'm so laser focused on just the storytelling aspect. What is the story? What is the vision behind the story? And how are we going to engage an audience? I find that being very passionate about the projects that I say yes to is such a great fuel to do all the hard things when these project last for months at an end. That documentary that I cut I started in January and I'm still working on it. Okay. Hi. So, I'm obviously doing this YouTube video and I thought in addition to sharing some strategy tips, I actually show you that I'm actually working on a project right now and what my workflow looks like. I am cutting a documentary right now that is a nonpartisan film. It's not trying to convince you to vote for one party or another. It's showing the election process and what's working, what's not working. Specifically, how we can create a system that incentivizes good behavior of politicians. Anyway, I can't show too much of this documentary. I can talk about it a little bit, but uh I want to show you my process. I got this in January in Premiere which I'm not a Premier guy but I've gotten really good again on Premiere. It was in team which was one version of Premiere that allows you to collaborate but it has issues and it created a lot of laggginess. So I encouraged to move to production and we hired a specialist to help us with the transition and we're now in production. And what does that mean? Each folder here is actually a project on its own. It's living on in the cloud on Lucid Link. And you can see my fellow editor Dustin is currently working on real three, real four, and the master assembly while I'm in real one. I can't do any changes on real three right now because it's locked. It would I could make a copy of it and then make changes. But I don't want to touch real three until he's done with it. We're breaking up the film into reals because one, we can share we can work at different parts of the film at the same time. And secondly, it just makes it more contained. Then when we deliver the film to sound and color they also keep working in reels and then at the end it all gets put together again. How do I deal with notes? The first of all I have a script. This are

this is the script. This is probably 200 pages or more of just every beat in the film. And the first version of this film was 6 hours long. And that was two weeks before the late deadline for Sundance and then we had to spend two weeks to cut it down to 2 hours 20 minutes. Okay. So, how do I That's number one. I read the script. Number two is I use something that also is owned by Adobe. It's called Frame. io. And Frame. io has whatever the latest real upload is here. And then the producers give notes on every little beat that they want to have a change on. So, for example, right here, ending is great. Those are my favorite notes because uh obviously then I don't have to change anything. Okay. What's another note right here? It's this one. Is there a better, more general comment from Scott to swap out here? This is too in the weeds. So, I found a different one. All the ones that have a green check mark I already addressed and I'm currently working on this one. Let's go try panel here of every state on election day. So, let's look at this real quick. Okay, I'm gonna show you how I address this note in just a minute, but let's go to strategy number two. Here's fact number two. Work attracts work. If you're not working, get working. And you might say, "How? I don't know what to do. Nobody is calling me. I'm sending out resumes and nobody's answering me. " If you don't have a client that's paying you to work, find a client paying you something or find a client that's willing to give you a chance for free. Yes, I know it's hard to work for free and if you do it for a long time, you feel like you get taken advantage of. But most of my great jobs started off with me offering some free value. I cut a film for James Franco and the way that I got the job is I offered that I would take a week and cut one of the most difficult scenes in the film. It was like an re-edit and the film had a lot of trouble and I suggested a way how to fix that scene. And I said, "Just give me the footage and I'll cut it for free. You don't have to hire me. " That created a win-win situation. He had nothing to lose. So, he said yes. And then ultimately, I got hired for that film. — Yes, I'm lucky many times, but I'm lucky because I'm in the right place and I try to be as prepared as I can be. If you're new and you just have nothing on your resume, you need to start building proof of concept. You don't need to have body of work necessary. Body of work is like this great film that was in this amazing festival that did so well in the theaters. Yes, that's further down the road when you are more established. But at the beginning, all you need is proof of concept. And in this video, I'm going to show you a way how you can cut it short right now, guaranteed. And I'll give you the footage. So stay tuned for that. Want to cut it short or meet some of the top working editors in the industry? Then buckle up because we got Editor 2025 coming November 20th. — Are you ready to go jogging? — Yes. — A free event and the ultimate online editing summit for the fourth year in a row. Meet industryleading editors. learn their secrets and discover how they stay ahead. Kicking off on November 20th, join our stellar guest lineup. Emmy winning editor Simon Smith, ACCE, Michael P. Shava, YouTube editor Rachel Kisla, and Emmy nominated Patrick Tuck, as well as Josh Beal, ACCE. Pardon? — It's about what this guy wrong. — They all share insights, offer feedback, and show you how to thrive in this new era. I'll present an editing challenge where you get to cut a scene from the comedy jogging leads to ice cream. You get access to the entire dailies pack and have a chance to win some amazing prizes. Plus, get feedback from our pros. We'll have exclusive Black Friday deals and one more surprise you can't miss. Are you ready for Edrave 2025? Well, then click the link in the description and secure your free pass while we still have spots. Do it now. Do it. You need to always be working. If you don't have a client, work on your own stuff. Find something to do for yourself. You're real. A short to learn the craft and then show it to people because that will do two things. First of all, you grow so much better if you have an audience that tells you suck. You also put yourself in a position where suddenly you became visible and somebody might really like what you're doing. Even though it's small and it's like this one thing, it might still connect with the project that they're working on. Well, you cut a comedy. We're working on a comedy over here. I really like your sensibility that you brought to that project. Would

you be interested in cutting our short? Shorts are still a great way to get into becoming feature film editors. The bottom line is no matter where you are in your career, you should always be working. Most of the time when I'm not getting a phone call, I'm so busy with other things like doing this YouTube video. Whatever it is, I'm always on a project. The best way to learn is working on a job and being challenged to solve problems fast. This documentary I cut, I had to learn a new skill and leverage up. And this all compounds into a career. Fact number three, every editor cuts differently. And the best editors, when you see them show you a scene, you can tell that they are exceptional. So, so editors, they're just slamming shots together as they were written in a script without really understanding how to make a scene work, how to pace it out in a way that the audience engages and is asking the most important dramatic question, which is, will something happen? Will something happen that matters to the audience? understand that you bring a value to the project that is beyond your technical skills. It's even beyond your storytelling skills. It's the whole package. The way that you talk to a director, the way you listen, the way you take notes, handwritten notes is what I do. the way that you address them. Sometimes there is disagreement. The way that you handle it by not arguing, but actually executing and showing the director what's working, what's not working in a way where they can make the decision on their own whether it's working or not. Okay, I want to show you how I address notes. And I'm currently working on this one. Let's go try panel here of every state on election day. So, let's look at this real quick. So we see this little moment. I'm going to show you something here. — Advance to — And as this guy is talking, we want to see a tri panel of the different states doing this. And this is currently what I'm working on right here. This is me already starting to put in some panels of the different states where volunteers are going doortodoor door knocking. — Seen so many state campaigns and ballot initiatives advanced to November to give. So, this one I actually stole this template that I built for another scene and the producers liked it so much. This is from that previous scene. I'm going to replace the shot with a shot. Let's see which ones they suggesting. They say Idaho, Montana. Now, I remember I cut that scene where this guy, he's like the grassroots leader in Idaho. His name is Luke. And that scene lives in another project in my cuts. So, I'm going to go back into my cuts right here. And I'm opening this up now. You can see how big this project is. It's like 50 close to 50 terabytes. All right. This is now open. You can see it right here. And I'm going to current cuts. This is where I keep all my sort of initial cuts that I did before we built the real. This is where we probably would see Luke doing uh some signature gathering. They are door knocking. I really want the main guy. I want to show him. There we go. That's him. I'm going to grab one of these shots right here. This is a great shot. So, I'm going to grab this shot right here and I'm going to put it to replace this shot. This shot is over here. Boom. What I'm going to do is paste this thing that I just copied over here. That is I'm going to make it exactly the same length as this guy down here. I'm going to copy the attributes, put them in here that it whatever that movement is there, that's going to be my starting off point. So, and then I'm going to replace it. See, now it's over there. Let's see how that works out. We've never seen so many state campaigns and ballot initiatives advance to November to give voters an option of — it's maybe not quite optimized yet, but I just want to fill this — advance to November to give voters option. Never seen so many state campaigns and ballot initiatives advance to November to give voters an option of rem. — We're going to add one more state here which was Montana. So, Montana opening cut. Let's look at that. — So, this is our main guy here in Montana. And I'd love to see him like to see his face. — There we go. That's him right there. That's the shot. — But it's folks like these. — So, I'm going to copy this shot over. And again, I'm going to do the same thing that I did over here. Let's just find a good timing. — Never seen so many state campaigns and

ballot initiatives advance to November. — So, as this is moving, I'm going to move Luke with it and then I'm going to have David from Montana come in. So, David from Montana right now is taking up the whole space. So, I'm going to crop the left of this shot, right? We're only going to see him like this. He's going to start off on the left right here. This going to be our starting position. Set some key frames. And then as this moves November to give the book — to here, David is going to come in. He's going to be here. So Luke is going to go hopefully I set the key frame right here. He's going to go here. These guys are going to move a little bit more towards the left. I'm going to add a black bar here. Make this look all nice. So it's going to take a little tweaking. I won't bore you with this, but this is how I would address this note. And then when I'm done with a note, I go back into Frame. io and I would check off this note. They could actually see online that I addressed it. And then I can move on to the next one. taking all their ideas there and then finding ways to make them better in a way that is non-threatening to the director. You need to be 100% supportive without being submissive or taken advantage of. The greatest editors have a very strong point of view, but they're also super good at handling directors and producers. Now, I shared a couple of things that I think still matter today. Before I share with you how I got my latest job, I want to encourage you to sign up for Edit Rave, which is a free editing summit taking place from November 20th till December 3rd. And every other day I invite one of the pros, an Emmy winning editor like Patrick Chuck who's currently working on the Lowdown with Ethan Hawk on FX, Simon Smith, ACCE who cut Chernobyl and they're going to show you their process answer all your questions that you might have about what keeps them working, how did they break in, what would they advise you to do today to get into the industry, what skills you should be looking at. We'll have a whole session just on AI tools that we're all using today to make our editing faster and more efficient and hopefully better. I'm also interested in finding one of the really great YouTube editors and ask her what her process is and how she can make a living in the current environment. With every session, there's an opportunity for you to learn, to engage. We have an editing challenge that we invite you to participate. And by the way, this is where we'll give you a whole dailies pack of an amazing short called jogging leads to ice cream that uh you will be able to cut, submit to us, and then we'll have one of our editors, Josh Beiel, who just recently cut on the new NCIS, is going to give some of you feedback on the cuts and review them, and we will pick winners. So, join us at editrave. com. It's for free. — So, how did I get my latest job? It's funny that you ask. I was still on a feature film wrapping up. It was actually the fourth or fifth feature I cut with Mark Weber. Someone reached out to me, a fellow editor. He's actually in terms of his status, much higher than I am. Several Emmy nominees working on some of the biggest HBO shows. One of those showrunners at HBO got approached by a filmmaker, documentary filmmaker is looking for a recommendation and that showrunner doesn't know me but he works with uh that editor and that particular editor was busy. So who was the next person that he thought of? It was me. At the time that I had the interview, they looked at me as the editor recommended by that top level HBO showrunner that felt comfortable with me doing this job. I think I had a very good interview in terms of preparation. It's a topic that I'm super passionate about. But the reason I got this job was a referral by someone that was in my circle of influence that thought of me as being their number one recommendation. That skill set of what it takes to become a go-to editor is something we will be talking about at edit drape. Just remember, every film tells a story. The core dramatic question of every scene is, will something happen that matters to the audience? And when it comes to your career, you should ask yourself, will something happen that matters to you? And hopefully the answer is yes. And if it is, go to edit rave, sign up

for free, and I'll see you November 20th. Have a good one. Cheers.