Do you remember the elation of getting your first full-time editing job?

How do we start doing what we love?

The office wasn’t much to talk about. A few edit suites on a mezzanine floor of the building; thin windows near the ceiling; old carpet with older desks.

What mattered most, though, was the Mac Pro tower sitting at each station.

I sat down, a big grin on my face and a bigger realization in my mind.

I was an editor. Full time. Making my living editing videos.

For many of us we started editing for free. Maybe it’s figuring out Sony Vegas in our mom’s basement, or using Premiere 6.5 at the church, or an early version of Final Cut Pro at a fellow video-geek’s house.

When we finally get that first paying job, and realize someone is willing to pay us to edit every day full time—it seems to good to be true. “Nobody tell them I would do this for free!”

If you’re not in that place, it can be easy to wonder, how do you get there? How do you start doing what you love?

There are two crucial aspects

• Skill

• Attitude

When I hired editors as a manager, the first thing I looked for was the quality of their work. Do they know the program? How do they edit shots together? Do they pay attention to details?

Next I wanted to know about them. How do they work on a team? How have they solved issues before? What are their values?

If both were a fit, they were hired.

How do we do it for a long time?

Getting the job is one thing. How do you make a life-long career out of it?

The first job is one thing. But can we do this for the next three decades? Projects increase in complexity. Budgets and pressure to deliver mounts.

Cultivating your skills and maintaining a helpful attitude never go away. But more things must be added to it:

• Process

• Experience

• Relationships

Like a band that keeps producing great music, we need to reliably create great work. It's not perfection, but consistency. Knowing the process—knowing your process—helps that.

The more genres we edit, the more videos within that genre we edit, the more we are able to fix problems, even anticipate them. Every video we edit builds our library of solutions.

At the end of the day, we work with people. Other editors, producers and directors who hire us, clients and businesses who need us. Each of those people are relationships that need to be valued and nurtured.

Some of those people will give us work and we’ll give them work. But it does us good to remember that while jobs may change, people remain.

Skill, attitude, process, experience, relationships.

These are the essentials of a long-term career.

If you feel stuck today in your editing, look at these five things. If you want to advance in your career, look at these five things.

If you are still trying to get that first job, be encouraged. It is possible to do what we love, and do it for a long time.

Links for Editors

• 4 things that support the essentials

• An amazing short documentary, and how they made it

• A simple way to meet people

That's a wrap

Thanks for your patience in this latest issue! Holiday travels keeps things excited over here.

Are you doing what you love? I'd love to hear how you got your first job.

Have you been editing for a long time? I'd love to hear what has helped you.

Keep cutting,

- Jesse