FCP Editors get paid less than AVID editors for the same work.....

i was late to the editing scene. i haven't even got 10 years of editing in so i don't really remember pure editors. i came in thinking that the editor had to be a story teller/ special efx/ DP/ author.

today when you say you are an editor your saying a lot. its just too expensive to pay every department when some can be combined.

really to make a good movie you only need 6 departments in my pocket's eye.

1. you need a really good DP that understands lighting what the Preditor wants wants.
2. a real magyver type to build sets and so on.
3. a strong cast
4. a multi-grip
5. make-up/wardrobe
6. the BEST P.A. this side of the Colorado River

Fortune 500 companies down size. the movie industry condenses.

i will say that it may be the software cost that creates this misconception of pay. people have a tendency to think that what is cheaper is less intensive, therefore they assume the operators are less extensive. ( <-- a jessie jackson moment )

the field is wider and pockets look for the hungry guy that really just wants a chance based on a demo real reviewed by llc members and execs who have never looked at any NLE let alone used one. its all about budget and not value which is where they should really look.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

>>really to make a good movie you only need 6 departments in my pocket's eye.<<

Uh, you seem to have forgotten, amongst others

Writer
Producer
Director
and
Editor

preditor = producer editor

and in some cases they can direct.

but i am with you on the writer althought i have seen actor/ writers before.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

Oh yeah - and the actors can do sound too, of course.

I hate this 'we can do it for almost nothing' attitude. Guess it's everywhere though.

As I've said elsewhere, my rate is my rate. It's not the software making the decisions during the cut.

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J Corbett
but i am with you on the writer althought i have seen actor/ writers before.

Writers: Dead; not quite buried. Producer: We can't do drama? Let's get some idiots like two rich spoiled brats and make some "realty TV." Of course, when the writers went on strike, they shot themselves in the foot, big time.

But what hasn't been said here is being undercut in the market.

I am also a musician, and one of the huge problems has been young players willing to work for nothing just to play out. Rates for the bar scene haven't increased in 20 years.

So it is also in the video market. Most of my students told me that the one thing they wanted/got as a graduation present was a Mac outfitted with either FCP or Avid. These folks, armed with a new sheepskin, some minor contacts they made through doing internships, and an "edit suite" (in their bedrooms in their parent's house, still decorated with spaceships and unicorns from when they were 12), go out and get whatever work they can can. They impact the broadcast market by making shots for small-budget advertisers who would otherwise hire the local station to produce their spot. And you can always tell these spots, too. They're usually awful. Same in the industrial market.

But the new grad made some bucks, the client is happy with having only spent $100, and the entire market was brought down because that's the new "going rate."

ugh.

HarryD

well, it's the going rate for something that looks awful

with a lot of posters here saying they get what they ask for, and presumably what they deserve,
the main thrust of this thread seems to prove that talent IS rewarded.

heck my students had their iMacs in they bedroom before college,
how do you think they survived?!
they're really talented people, and they do GOOD work.
(some of the stuff they had to do wasn't that exciting, but it paid the bills)
hopefully they'll be able to get whatever they ask for too, soon.

Avid or FCP


nick

So, uhhh....

Just askin'...

Does anyone know the record for the longest thread here?

:-)

deb

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really to make a good movie you only need 6 departments in my pocket's eye.

Oh boy, that list is very lite. That mentality sounds like someone we all know who thinks he can make an academy award winning film for a tuna sandwich & a grape nehi

It takes a huge team of experienced people working together as a TEAM. Not "off the shelf" cut-rate department selections from Walmart. A movie is one medium that suffers intensely when the crew is short-handed.

I am with you, Jude...the mentality of "I can make it cheaper" is off the charts lame.

Joey

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

only 3 pages so far debe ... bet its not even close

Oh, I didn't think this one was the longest, but the length of it did make me wonder what the record-holder is.....

;p

deb

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jude
I hate this 'we can do it for almost nothing' attitude. Guess it's everywhere though.

when opportunity is scarce people come up with ways to survive. sometimes that means doing a 10k commercial for 7k. i wish it was a solid standardize pricing but we all know that is impossible.

to be specific i produce a sd dvd magazine. i sell 30sec spots (1 cam, no 3d, no overheads or hd format) for $650. i spend maybe 1hr filming and about 3.5hr in concept and edit. if they tell me that they are intent on using this for tv broadcast it jumps by 1k. i mainly do this because of the extra work you have to put in to get it to a broadcast sd quality. In a lot of cases i dont have to do the xtra work because it is fine as is as said by comcast.

if i wasnt doing the dvd i would have to work for someone as an apprentice and most of my suggestions would fall to death ears. i use to work for a couple of people who were just like that. now with what i am doing they say "WOW, i didnt think you had it in you."
whats even funnier is that these are the same ideas that i told them about 6 years ago before my st fcp class.

i dont want the market to fall but it did need some shaking up.
-------------------------------

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joe
It takes a huge team of experienced people working together as a TEAM. Not "off the shelf" cut-rate department selections from Walmart. A movie is one medium that suffers intensely when the crew is short-handed.

what got me so excited about the film industry was 1 movie, The Blair Witch Project. these folks took 16k and made well over 300mil. their crew was quite short and mostly depended on the actors. i could be mistaken but they had a crew of 9.
later i saw markie marks movie 'Gerry' with him and the youngest aflec brother. this movie was made with a crew of 16 pre and a crew of 5 post.
--------------------------------
the vets here in the forum sometimes forget how inspiration can lead you to do something for little of nothing just to prove you are capable. i dont have a demo reel and i dont think it would realy help since my strongest attribute is telling the story or get a fell across. how many hiring execs do you think would sit down and watch 2or3 9 minute shorts.

my graphics have just started reaching into an are where i can say i have my own style. ( thanks to pointers from joe and johan ). when i look at the demo reels it seems that it is more for the graphics people than the story teller. i would hope that i am not throwing the market for a loop though i know people who are a lot more inexpensive than me.

for my market i would say that i am mid-range for the 30sec spot.

here is a sample of one of my commercial spots this is about a year old but we run it still.

web spot

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

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Joey
It takes a huge team of experienced people working together as a TEAM. Not "off the shelf" cut-rate department selections from Walmart. A movie is one medium that suffers intensely when the crew is short-handed.

2 friends of mine have Oscars sitting on their desks for documentary work. I think the max size of the crew was about 3, usually 2, sometimes 1 (for B-roll). They have a small but efficiently organized office that has a core staff of 3, and a few interns floating about. The Oscar-winning project was a 13-year longitudinal work, and over the course of its duration I'd say there were no more than 50 people who worked on it (not including the HBO folks who came in and altered the program after its completion).

It's always about the quality, but what does that mean? In this case the content - a very compelling story.

[harrydebusk.blogspot.com]

HarryD

30 second spots $650?? $1,000 for Broadcast??

I apologize...but that is ridiculous. I believe you should set your own standard instead of giving your services away. Do you feel you're worth that much?

Increase your output quality = Increase your rate (unless you are comfortable working for next to nothing).

I'm probably gonna get bashed for this, but "Blair Witch" was a fluke. It was shot in the woods with almost no equipment & made 30 million because of distributing...otherwise it would have been just another student film. When I was 14, me & a bunch of friends in NY went up the local mountain with a 8mm camera (no lights) & a keg of beer & shot the same kinda scary improvised stuff...we just never had distributing deals (darn it).

Joey

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

> I'm probably gonna get bashed for this, but "Blair Witch" was a fluke.

You won't get a bash from me. It was indeed a fluke. Now, I don't agree that a technically rough piece can't be loved by the public (I always bring up Clerks) and make a name for itself. But Blair Witch's success was due largely to marketing and exploitation of the maturing internet as a medium for word of mouth. And you can see, the sequel was a giant bomb and the actors and directors haven't exactly been able to replicate the success.

If the makers of Blair Witch parleyed a student film into a multi-million-dollar success, all the more power to them. And every YouTube yahoo "videographer" is probably dreaming about that. Lightning probably won't strike twice. That said, I'd still rather watch Blair Witch than The Matrix Revolutions. At least Blair Witch didn't make me wish Trinity died sooner.


www.derekmok.com

BLAIR WITCH was a fluke. TONS of films like that get made a year and...well, you see how many make it. Blair Witch had a lot of hype...but to tell the truth it wasn't half bad either. I was scared at more than a few moments. But I watched it on Video. If I saw that on the big screen I'd have gotten ill...shakey cam.

But yes, it can be done.

$650? Yeah...for one days work...not counting tape stock. Just BY $1000...making it $1650? OK, I can see that. For a couple days work. Perhaps 3 days. Not too bad really.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

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But I watched it on Video. If I saw that on the big screen I'd have gotten ill...shakey cam.

I could only watch a few minutes at a time (video)...I ended up with vertigo for 24 hours afterwards (I am a bit sensitive to that kind of violent camera motion...guess my dream of being an astronaut just went out the window). I too was scared on a few occasions (inside the house scenes were pretty creepy). It was shot by University of Central Florida film school students. The college is 15 minutes down the road from my house so you can imagine what the hype was like here. Very successful...but idol status = No. Right place / right time = yes.

BTW = $650 per DAY...I can see that. $1650 for 3 days...I can see that.

Joey

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

So that's $650 to meet with the client to discuss their job, write, light, cast, shoot, act, record sound, edit, graphics, music and reproduction? Let's not add equipment costs, electricity, insurance, studio rent, maintenance, tax, holiday pay and so on...

The problem for me is that people who work for nothing pay the people who work for them even less. Or they do all the jobs themselves and steal the job from the other qualified people who would have got it otherwise.

Sometimes it's a good idea to do an apprenticeship. I've got a comfortable business, but I would always jump at the chance of being able to sit at the right hand of someone I look up to as an editor so I could learn how to improve my work.

It surprises me to hear that some people actually found Blair Witch scary. Maybe it's because I dissected horror films right down to the marrow. I didn't find a single scary moment in the film. Affecting moments, yes (I thought the actors did a good job), but the film could've been a radio play like Sorry, Wrong Number -- sound was more than half the story here.

And there were elements like that phony-looking, vague "eyeball" thing she finds in the grass that I felt were feeble attempts at mechanical effects. The film actually would have benefitted if they had been cut. A good case of Joe's point: Very often, if you can't do something properly, don't try.

Okay, so much for our little detour...Jude's point seals it for me. If you don't charge a decent amount for your work, you end up exploiting your employees as well. Remember: Just because you are willing to work for peanuts doesn't mean your employees should. I've worked for countless producers who feel that the editor should give 150 per cent every day, every job, no matter how crappy, because "you're doing it for the team". Again, it's the Chinese parable: You can't expect your army to "Snare birds and dig up mice for food" all the time. If you're always resorting to that, then you're not treating your personnel the right way and it's a matter of time before they kiss off. The companies that give me a proper lunch hour, pass a menu around and pay for it, and have the right number of people working the right number of jobs tend to get better, faster, more jovial work from me. And I'm happy to give them extras if they're in my power to do so. Your team will treat you right if you treat them right.


www.derekmok.com

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The companies that give me a proper lunch hour, pass a menu around and pay for it, and have the right number of people working the right number of jobs tend to get better, faster, more jovial work from me. And I'm happy to give them extras if they're in my power to do so. Your team will treat you right if you treat them right.

A - freakin' - men, D. Couldn't have said it better myself.

Joey

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Or say stuff like this recent gem from a new contracted employer of mine

"We don't want anyone who works for us to feel like they aren't being properly paid or treated. Charge what you need to charge."

You've got to love that as a starting point, because I know they are serious about looking after the people they employ and they know I'm not going to go stupid and charge way too much because it would risk my position working for a company who treats their people right. A very forward thinking group.