The scope of an "editor"

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driverrodeshotgun

Hi everyone,

I've been making films for awhile and have always edited my own. But in regards to color grading/correction and sound editing, I always use someone who specializes in those areas, and the results have been great. I know there are editors out there that can do literally everything. I've just never taken the time to learn color and sound because there's so much detail and specialization involved and I feel it's good to focus on what you do best, which for me is figuring out how to best tell a story, when to cut smoothly and make sure continuity is correct, etc

Recently I've been editing some films and scenes for other filmmakers who have been happy with my work. These are filmmakers that were looking for an editor, and then have plans to take the locked picture and have a colorist and sound editor work through it. My question here is centered around what people expect from an "editor." I've seen countless ads looking for an editor who can edit, color correct, sound edit. Then I see ads who are just looking for an editor who does what I do, and then they have plans to get color and sound done.

With professional and semi-professional films...an "editor" are those that handle the narrative aspect correct? And then there's a post production team that handles color and sound. Or is the scope of an "editor" supposed to be someone who can do literally everything? I know one is more employable if they can do everything and are a one man army, but I'm just curious on people's opinions on that. When I edit I sync audio, I pay attention to sound, I pay attention to color and know how I want it to sound and look, so I'm aware of this stuff, it's just doing it myself...is something I don't do, but I convey it to those that do it. Am I less of an editor because of that? Does Walter Murch and Thelma Schoonmaker and Michael Kahn do everything?

Lately I feel like calling myself an editor is hypocritical when I see ads asking for someone who can do everything in the book, even including vfx.
 
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GuerrillaAngel said:
The next film IS going to be somewhat different after taking in some of the things I've learned from marketing the current one. One you mentioned is a larger audience. Preferably people with money. A film about dentists is an example.
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It's not just about finding a demographic with money but one which spends money buying/watching films. If you make a film for the general public with a budget of say $500k and 0.1% of the general public pay to watch it, you're going to be a rich man. But, with the same budget and a film targeted at dentists, even if you get double the percentage of your target audience to pay to watch it (0.2%) are you ever even going to break even? Plus, a highly educated demographic is likely to be more sophisticated in it's tastes and have higher production value expectations than say a target demographic of teenagers, so maybe you'll need a bigger budget, which is even more difficult to recoup. Also, how easy/expensive is it likely to be to effectively market to dentists?

I realise you're probably joking about a film whose target audience is specifically dentists, but you can exchange "dentists" for any other demographic, the basic principle still hold true. Aiming at a single, relatively small demographic, budgeting to meet/exceed the expectations of that demographic and then getting a high enough percentage of that demographic to pay to watch your film in order to make a profit is an exceptionally tough equation to balance. Generally, the amount of budget required exceeds the likely/realistic percentage of the demographic who will pay to watch the film. And, those demographics and genres which appear to offer the prospect of an easier balancing of the equation, for example, genres with lower budgetary requirements and a sizable paying demographic, are generally where one finds the most amount of product (competition).

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