The World's Worst Editor
Somewhere out there, there exists the world's worst digital video editor. Don't worry, it's not you, dear reader. The most frightening thing about this is, that editor has an appointment with a client tomorrow morning. Let's examine what this hapless hack is doing to earn the title World's Worst Editor, and learn exactly how we can all avoid being anointed with this most shameful of all awards.
Sure, digital video editing gear is complicated, but our incompetent cutter (let's just pick an arbitrary name and gender -- how about "Ed," short for editor) hasn't quite learned how to use his particular kit, or any other for that matter. As his frustrated clients helplessly watch their money flow down the time drain, ineffectual Ed calls tech support to find out exactly how one would create a dissolve. Uh-oh. It's going to be a long day.
Ed has another problem. He wants to talk when there's too much work to be done, and he clams up when it's time to talk up a storm. When crunch time is nigh -- when there's only thirty minutes until air time and there's forty minutes of editing left to do -- it's not time to start talking about your new snowmobile, Ed. But when the client visits Ed during his down time to help plan an upcoming edit session -- oh, no, Ed has some very important Web browsing to do, and can't talk right now. Gee thanks, Ed.
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Next situation: The client is at a loss. There seems to be nothing that will fix this segment. Does Ed have any ideas? "Uh," says Ed. "I can't think of a thing." Thanks, again. But earlier, when the client had a sequence completely planned out, shot from storyboards created by a committee at the ad agency over a week's worth of meetings, Ed the editor was full of goofy ideas, none of which were worth a tinker's damn. Sometimes an editor has to spew forth suggestions and creativity. Other times, stick with the script.
Ed sees himself as a detail man. Yep, it says so right there on his job description -- "must pay attention to detail." But Ed makes no distinction between one detail and another. He takes an extra hour to make sure the shadow underneath the bottom-most layer in a 10-layer comp is a soft shadow, and goes through seven levels of undo to make sure it is. We won't see that one, Ed! We'll never see it. "Yeah," says Ed. "But I'll know it's there." On the other hand, sometimes Ed creates an audio edit, where before the first source has faded completely into the second, the first cuts off. "Nobody will hear that," explains Ed. Yes, they will. Ed can't figure which details to pay attention to, and which to let go.
Which brings up Ed's next shortcoming: He thinks audio isn't all that important. Wrong again. Like most amateurs, Ed treats the audio as an afterthought. And, Ed is not very good at telling if the audio has slipped a frame or two, or even if it's completely out of synch. He's not too observant -- the kiss of death for an editor.
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