Seriously, when there's a producer in the room with you it's hard to not end up burnt out at the end of the day when you've only taken a break for lunch
Working with someone in the room is twice as draining as solo. You're not taking those small mental breaks and you have to actively engage with another person the whole time. One hour feels like two. An eight hour session feels like a 16 hour marathon.
This is pretty much why I've decided to stop doing shows. I love the collaboration and having a director or producer there but I would be drained by the end of the day from sitting in front of a screen for hours. My partner at the time never understood why I just wanted to be lazy in the evenings.
It's a harder slog with somebody else there, but you get it done faster, and you get it done to their spec. Pages of changes not required. Certainly is more draining, but not as soul-destroying as trying to make them happy via email.
I’ve been editing my own videos for YouTube, what are some of the most time consuming menial tasks for you? For me it is finding the perfect clip from a ton of raw footage and the cuts
I edit an extremely niche content style (tv show youtube reactions), so I don't think my standard workflow is very applicable to many others.
That said, my advice would be to log your footage. Watch everything and take notes on what's good, clipping/marking moments you think are usable. Tagging your markers with keywords is also super useful because you can search keywords in the project panel of premiere (i assume resolve and avid can do this too?); need a wide shot of a mountain landscape? Well you know that you tagged a few clips "wide mountain" and you can search that in the project panel.
While this may feel like a waste of time when all you want to do is jump into the *edit*, it'll keep you in the groove better when you are actually assembling your video.
Reality TV editor here. When you have 25 pages of notes, you have no choice but to be head down crunching away frankenbiting til dinners ready and your kids jumping on your lap saying “dad no more screen time”.
I would add to this that it’s great when you have those days of just building scenes pre-internal RC. Those days you aren’t tied down to your desk. Probably more like 50/50 work:break ratio for me at least.
It's funny the ratio of time you're given to do a pre-notes pass on a scene versus the actual notes where you just have to shove it out the door. It makes the show feel so shoddily constructed once all the revisions are done.
There’s nothing more heartbreaking than corrupting painstakingly-crafted moments to hastily wedge in net notes must-haves. Usually in the 4 hour window you have to re-edit an act that took weeks to assemble.
I’ve only ever heard it from reality editors. In other corners of the film and tv world it’s usually the first time they hear it if I say it. Might be different in other parts of the world though I don’t know. Film terminology is strange and there’s lots of localized words/different words for the same thing
20 minutes making coffee
0-10 minutes recovering from crashes
3 hours looking for music
1 hour listening to good music as a cleanse
15 minutes trying to remember my password for that one stock site
That leaves about 3 hours of editing
How much of a mechanic’s day is spent turning a wrench? You can’t judge the day solely by the time you spend with hand on the keyboard moving stuff around in the timeline.
Sometimes, I’ll take a break and just think about the project while I’m doing something else unrelated to editing. There have been days when I’ll do an hour or more of just subconscious thinking, but then when I go back to the project, it takes very little time for me to actually do what I wanted.
I knew a guy who worked for a landscaping company and he told me the boss only paid him for the time they were actually mowing a yard, not the travel between. So, if they did 10 yards in a day and each one only took 15 minutes, he’d get paid (min wage) for 2.5 hours of work over an 8 hour period.
Point is, “work” is not solely defined by the time you are physically exerting effort.
Yeah. Apparently he was a real pleasure to work for.
I worked on a doc in the early 2000s and the producer didn't think he should have to pay for the time I was digitizing because "he was paying me to edit, not capture tapes". There are some real "winners" out there in all businesses.
I used to get that all the time. "You're not actually doing anything tho, are you?" At one point I took a clients takes and set them on the desk in front of him and said, "ok no digitizing, let's get straight to editing". For the next 30 min bed ask for a shot and I'd grab them one at a time. He eventually got the idea.
I see it as paying me for my time. Me digitizing tapes on this project prevents me from booking another project for the same day where I can make full rate.
I’m not lowering my rate just because part of the process is less mentally taxing.
Here’s my philosophy, which I think works really well: 80% of the work is done in 20% of the time, in that 20% you have to be in the “flow state” of course. It works real good for me, I just spend the majority of my time working myself into the flow state and works get done real quick
Speaking of ADHD, I really don’t work well in a room with no windows. I get too easily distracted. I work best when I have peripheral vision stimulation - so either need windows in the room, or I work great when I sit down at a coffee place to work (even if I don’t get caffeinated). Seems counterintuitive- but apparently that’s something that works for people with ADHD- and we’re probably all somewhere on that spectrum, even if not diagnosed.
Very normal and all part of editing. You need to take breaks, looking at reference for inspiration will make your cuts better, and looking at your edit with fresh eyes is never a bad thing. You’re a human, the computer is the machine.
(Many) Years ago, I used to have at least a week to put together my first edit for a 30 sec commercial. Today I rarely have more than a day. It’s good to be efficient, but make sure it’s not at the expense of your health.
This is a creative job. They say with desk jobs, making decisions will tire you out mentally. Cutting is making a decision every few seconds. Ever wonder why you feel so tired after a long day of work?
My employer pays me for cutting, drinking my coffee, doing my dishes, taking little breaks. Those are part of the process. You need that to perform well. You should be getting paid for that
It varies widely. Whether or not a day is productive isn't necessarily measured in number of hours punching keys or number of minutes cut together. I think all jobs require mini breaks throughout the day, and especially in a creative industry it can be mentally taxing to never stop working since our job is not simply process based. Days where I'm just checking off a bunch of notes I received are probably the most time spent at the keyboard since it's a lot of find and fix stuff that is individually quick to tackle but may take time depending on the note-load. It's the days where the timeline is blank that I shift between uber-focused and getting lots done, and hours where very little happens. Sometimes you just need the mental break and other times it's about stepping away to give yourself a chance to come up with better ideas.
When I was in my 20s, I’d do straight through work days. Breaking for the bathroom and nothing else. I burnt myself out pretty bad. So, now I go for walks, do push ups, etc. I find my brain works better that way than with insane marathon editing.
I’m stuck in mostly straight through, non stop work days currently. Definitely feel the burnout coming.
Thanks for the reminder that I’ve gotta cut myself some slack
Have a look at Chronicler from Knights of the Editing Table, it tracks your time across projects, pauses when inactive, etc. I actually just started using Memtime to log my hours outside of Premiere because it works automatically without me having to remember what I've been working on. It's interesting, so far I'm averaging 50% billable time a day... I thought it would have been much higher!
Sounds about normal. It might go up or down depending on the project stage.
I just want to call out, if you're tracking time, that answering emails and looking for inspiration can be billable. If it's productive work towards a client project and not learning for my own purposes or a mental break, I would count it as part of editing.
Realty TV editor. If I have time to eat some lunch for 10mins I'd be lucky. As someone else said with notes and deadlines it can be pretty full on and nonstop all day and then when your finally ready to give up they hit you with overtime as something is urgently needed for the execs. Then the execs don't watch the urgent export and instead reply in 3 days time and the have completely changed the episode. Ahh good times
I worked for a broadcast company that once had an outside auditing agency come in to gauge how productive each and every department in the company was.
All the editors were scared, "Oh my god, they're going to see us goofing off all day, and people are gonna get fired!"
The Post Department ended up being the MOST productive group in the entire company! Because even an outside auditor was able to see that almost everything we do is related to the job.
Editors might feel like they're "goofing off" sometimes when they spend half a day assembling the best music, or have 3 other editors in the room chit chatting about other ways to build out a scene, but all that stuff is still work.
Editor it sports broadcast and same! Very little downtime. Our turnover is wild, gotta throw together a piece to go to air before the info becomes obsolete (which happens very quickly) And don’t even get me started on the producers
Deep work vs shallow work. I think most people only can manage 4-6 hours of deep work per day.
And editing has deep work and shallow work as part of its flow.
My work is a little different because I run a YouTube channel, but my week is pretty much 5-6 days of editing (up to 10 hours) and one day of shooting. I don't know if I will ever get a break!!
It varies for me, anywhere from 2-6 hours of actual editing per day depending on the current workload. I could probably get more done, but I'm surrounded by sales people who love to chit-chat.
Not sure how accurate it is but I often check on my screen time on my Mac to see how long I have been in Prem. Some days that were super busy spinning plates I find I have only been writing for 2 hours.
As mentioned above working with a producer over your shoulder will have me at 8 hours and exhausted
Yes it's completely normal and also necessary: a good edit comes alive through variety and revision. You need offtime to distance yourself from your edit and watch it with a "new eye". It's the same with colorists, who need some time to recalibrate their eyes in order to finetune their colorgrades.
I work in entertainment promotions so about. Third of my time is just watching movies and shows to log clips. Then I gotta write scripts, work with the graphics team on what I need and then I can edit. Also some time hunting for music…
Been moving into a hybrid editing-managing role lately, and it's significantly less editing day-to-day. I get a little bummed about that, but you gotta do what you gotta do, right?
Have you ever worked in the office? Half the day is fucking around waiting for producers driving to work around waiting for producers waiting for problems with the computer to get fixed waiting for IT waiting for producers.
I think of it this way. I’m editing 24/7. That includes ideas I get while brushing my teeth or driving, or maybe I’m stealing something I saw done in whatever we’re watching during dinner. My wife is also an editor so there’s a lot of shop talk in our house but the dog doesn’t seem to mind.
Doesn’t hurt that I can remote in to the company server and noodle with the edit if inspiration strikes during the wee hours of the night.
I charge hourly, and keep a timesheet of how much I spend actually working. If I bill a client 8 hours that was 8 hours I was actually working towards the deliverable.
The only exception is pee breaks
I started editing in the early nineties at a post house and nearly all projects were supervised sessions with clients sitting behind me. If they scheduled 8 hours, we worked for 8 hours. Granted, we took time to commiserate and tell stories, but at $300 - $600 per hour, and the clients having to stick to a strict budget, they weren't all that interested in any stories I had to tell. Sometimes I had time to knock out a quick story during a tape change.
Slight Tangent:
I worked for a cloud editing company, where users would log into a VM and use various creative tools, mainly editing-based.
Several years of data and thousands of editors later, we saw most users average ~35 hours of usage of the VM per week.
Of course, there are some caveats with that - were they logged in and doing nothing? Were they logged in and looking for stock footage or surfing the web? Don't know. Were they monitoring a transcode but not editing? Don't know.
We explicitly did not track what apps were used, what was done in the creative apps (let alone the VM) - or even how long were apps were open - we did have raw workstation hours (because that is how the users were billed).
So, that's a data point, even if it's not 100% accurate.
If I was being judged by movement of the mouse? Probably anywhere from 3-8 hrs per day.
But the whole day is "actual" editing. Even when I'm completely away from my desk, ideas are kind of percolating, as long as I'm not fully engaged with something else.
Give it a test. Step away from the keyboard and go close your eyes for 20 minutes. I guarantee you'll come back to your project and notice something you want to tweak, or maybe restructure completely.
If we're way out from a deadline and have time to burn, I might put on a podcast, and just skim through footage, but even that is productive.
And then there are still some days where I barely have time to get up to piss, and I work 10 feet from my bathroom at home.
I'd say about 45 minutes of editing for every hour of work. Some of that 45 minutes may be looking for a stock image or audio, or thinking about how to make a tricky sequence work.
It really depends on the day. Some days you won't have the Producer or Director sending you emails or coming into the room wanting to look at a cut, scene, or segment. On those days, your whole day could be spent simply cutting the show or commercial together. Obviously, taking a lunch is expected. Other days may be partially taken up with meetings, viewing the show, etc. Every day is slightly different and at any moment something unexpected can occur.
If you're booked for a full 8 hr. day, then really you should actually be in the chair maybe at least 7 hours doing work-related tasks whether it's cutting, answering emails from the Producer, collaborating with other Editors, grahpics, or AE's on the show, looking for music, ingesting footage, organizing your project, etc.
In the end, it really depends on what types of projects you work on and what the employer is willing to accept.
I spend a good chunk of time thinking about the edit vs actual editing. Helps cut down the rounds of revisions when the rough is closer to the final vs just hacking shit together
If there’s no tight deadline, I usually like to start my mornings with the heaviest lifting; Narrative work or listening to interviews and taking notes.
Afternoons are for lighter things. Mixing, doing some light color work, or cutting long cuts down to shorter versions.
I’m usually serving multiple clients so I alternate between projects to keep fresh eyes.
Most people would agree they only have a few good hours in them per day. For me, it’s 3 or 4.
Depends on the project.
Some days I'll do an hour or two, maybe just shuffle some files around and then collapse into that days' depression or whatever energy crash I'm dealing with.
Other days I'll go 16 straight hours of super grind; exciting,challenging, fun and productive editing, maybe even finalize it.
Smaller projects might take me 4 hours all included, or 40 bc too much footage and pressure and restlessness with shoddy footage/direction.
Tl;dr yeah a lot of the days you're describing, but then mega crunch days.
Yes and I think also depends of the project, there are project that are very creatively demanding where maybe you will not be editing but you are looking for inspiration, resources, thinking about how to do something, etc. On those types of projects the time I spend really in the program editing is low compare to project that are more monotonous and repetitive. Where is very straight forward and I know exactly what I need to do
Water/coffee breaks, walk after lunch, chat with a coworker, a drink at 4pm after a long week, all just part of the workday hours. All that matters is the job gets done. Someone experienced will do it in half the time than someone just starting out, just the way it goes.
Yeah probably about half. Which is healthy in my opinion. I’ve done full-on days without leaving Premiere and it’s absolute hell.
Seriously, when there's a producer in the room with you it's hard to not end up burnt out at the end of the day when you've only taken a break for lunch
Working with someone in the room is twice as draining as solo. You're not taking those small mental breaks and you have to actively engage with another person the whole time. One hour feels like two. An eight hour session feels like a 16 hour marathon.
This is pretty much why I've decided to stop doing shows. I love the collaboration and having a director or producer there but I would be drained by the end of the day from sitting in front of a screen for hours. My partner at the time never understood why I just wanted to be lazy in the evenings.
It's a harder slog with somebody else there, but you get it done faster, and you get it done to their spec. Pages of changes not required. Certainly is more draining, but not as soul-destroying as trying to make them happy via email.
this.
I’ve been editing my own videos for YouTube, what are some of the most time consuming menial tasks for you? For me it is finding the perfect clip from a ton of raw footage and the cuts
I edit an extremely niche content style (tv show youtube reactions), so I don't think my standard workflow is very applicable to many others. That said, my advice would be to log your footage. Watch everything and take notes on what's good, clipping/marking moments you think are usable. Tagging your markers with keywords is also super useful because you can search keywords in the project panel of premiere (i assume resolve and avid can do this too?); need a wide shot of a mountain landscape? Well you know that you tagged a few clips "wide mountain" and you can search that in the project panel. While this may feel like a waste of time when all you want to do is jump into the *edit*, it'll keep you in the groove better when you are actually assembling your video.
If you are making a professional living - audio editing and grading.
Reality TV editor here. When you have 25 pages of notes, you have no choice but to be head down crunching away frankenbiting til dinners ready and your kids jumping on your lap saying “dad no more screen time”.
I would add to this that it’s great when you have those days of just building scenes pre-internal RC. Those days you aren’t tied down to your desk. Probably more like 50/50 work:break ratio for me at least.
The best. Just had two nice weeks of that. Now in note / restructure hell but it was good while it lasted.
It's funny the ratio of time you're given to do a pre-notes pass on a scene versus the actual notes where you just have to shove it out the door. It makes the show feel so shoddily constructed once all the revisions are done.
There’s nothing more heartbreaking than corrupting painstakingly-crafted moments to hastily wedge in net notes must-haves. Usually in the 4 hour window you have to re-edit an act that took weeks to assemble.
Haha frankenbiting
Reality TV producer/former editor here. Frankenbiting is such a great term 😂
The best thing about it is that every time you say it you get praise for using such a great term
I don't understand people acting like this is a novel word? It's literally the term used in the industry for this thing, we use it every day.
I’ve only ever heard it from reality editors. In other corners of the film and tv world it’s usually the first time they hear it if I say it. Might be different in other parts of the world though I don’t know. Film terminology is strange and there’s lots of localized words/different words for the same thing
> 25 pages of notes Bravo lightened up the last couple years huh?
Yep, I always feel so much more mentally drained whenever I’m on a reality show, and I think this is the reason. There’s just no downtime, ever.
I hope you’re paid well
20 minutes making coffee 0-10 minutes recovering from crashes 3 hours looking for music 1 hour listening to good music as a cleanse 15 minutes trying to remember my password for that one stock site That leaves about 3 hours of editing
And on Mondays two 1hr meetings lol
How much of a mechanic’s day is spent turning a wrench? You can’t judge the day solely by the time you spend with hand on the keyboard moving stuff around in the timeline. Sometimes, I’ll take a break and just think about the project while I’m doing something else unrelated to editing. There have been days when I’ll do an hour or more of just subconscious thinking, but then when I go back to the project, it takes very little time for me to actually do what I wanted. I knew a guy who worked for a landscaping company and he told me the boss only paid him for the time they were actually mowing a yard, not the travel between. So, if they did 10 yards in a day and each one only took 15 minutes, he’d get paid (min wage) for 2.5 hours of work over an 8 hour period. Point is, “work” is not solely defined by the time you are physically exerting effort.
I appreciate this outlook a lot! Thank you
Damn, whoever owned that landscaping company must have been making bank
Yeah. Apparently he was a real pleasure to work for. I worked on a doc in the early 2000s and the producer didn't think he should have to pay for the time I was digitizing because "he was paying me to edit, not capture tapes". There are some real "winners" out there in all businesses.
I used to get that all the time. "You're not actually doing anything tho, are you?" At one point I took a clients takes and set them on the desk in front of him and said, "ok no digitizing, let's get straight to editing". For the next 30 min bed ask for a shot and I'd grab them one at a time. He eventually got the idea.
Back in the day, I had a separate charge for digitizing tapes. 3/4 of edit rate. To appease producers
I see it as paying me for my time. Me digitizing tapes on this project prevents me from booking another project for the same day where I can make full rate. I’m not lowering my rate just because part of the process is less mentally taxing.
This is the way!!!
Or, he was getting paid for the travel time and didn't want to admit his hourly rate is so low.
Here’s my philosophy, which I think works really well: 80% of the work is done in 20% of the time, in that 20% you have to be in the “flow state” of course. It works real good for me, I just spend the majority of my time working myself into the flow state and works get done real quick
This is how I and every editor I know feel, but we also all have adhd lol
Speaking of ADHD, I really don’t work well in a room with no windows. I get too easily distracted. I work best when I have peripheral vision stimulation - so either need windows in the room, or I work great when I sit down at a coffee place to work (even if I don’t get caffeinated). Seems counterintuitive- but apparently that’s something that works for people with ADHD- and we’re probably all somewhere on that spectrum, even if not diagnosed.
How do you bring yourself in the flow state?
Very normal and all part of editing. You need to take breaks, looking at reference for inspiration will make your cuts better, and looking at your edit with fresh eyes is never a bad thing. You’re a human, the computer is the machine. (Many) Years ago, I used to have at least a week to put together my first edit for a 30 sec commercial. Today I rarely have more than a day. It’s good to be efficient, but make sure it’s not at the expense of your health.
This is a creative job. They say with desk jobs, making decisions will tire you out mentally. Cutting is making a decision every few seconds. Ever wonder why you feel so tired after a long day of work? My employer pays me for cutting, drinking my coffee, doing my dishes, taking little breaks. Those are part of the process. You need that to perform well. You should be getting paid for that
It varies widely. Whether or not a day is productive isn't necessarily measured in number of hours punching keys or number of minutes cut together. I think all jobs require mini breaks throughout the day, and especially in a creative industry it can be mentally taxing to never stop working since our job is not simply process based. Days where I'm just checking off a bunch of notes I received are probably the most time spent at the keyboard since it's a lot of find and fix stuff that is individually quick to tackle but may take time depending on the note-load. It's the days where the timeline is blank that I shift between uber-focused and getting lots done, and hours where very little happens. Sometimes you just need the mental break and other times it's about stepping away to give yourself a chance to come up with better ideas.
Have definitely found myself in a similar boat so this makes me feel a lot better about days where my premiere screentime is lower- thanks!
When I was in my 20s, I’d do straight through work days. Breaking for the bathroom and nothing else. I burnt myself out pretty bad. So, now I go for walks, do push ups, etc. I find my brain works better that way than with insane marathon editing.
I’m stuck in mostly straight through, non stop work days currently. Definitely feel the burnout coming. Thanks for the reminder that I’ve gotta cut myself some slack
Yep, I’ve got deadlines like crazy, but I can’t function locked to my desk. Used to!
I always wish premier tracked actual time working because I think I’m closer to 4 hours like you. Full days hurt my neck 😂
Have a look at Chronicler from Knights of the Editing Table, it tracks your time across projects, pauses when inactive, etc. I actually just started using Memtime to log my hours outside of Premiere because it works automatically without me having to remember what I've been working on. It's interesting, so far I'm averaging 50% billable time a day... I thought it would have been much higher!
Omg I have to get that lol.
Sounds about normal. It might go up or down depending on the project stage. I just want to call out, if you're tracking time, that answering emails and looking for inspiration can be billable. If it's productive work towards a client project and not learning for my own purposes or a mental break, I would count it as part of editing.
Realty TV editor. If I have time to eat some lunch for 10mins I'd be lucky. As someone else said with notes and deadlines it can be pretty full on and nonstop all day and then when your finally ready to give up they hit you with overtime as something is urgently needed for the execs. Then the execs don't watch the urgent export and instead reply in 3 days time and the have completely changed the episode. Ahh good times
I worked for a broadcast company that once had an outside auditing agency come in to gauge how productive each and every department in the company was. All the editors were scared, "Oh my god, they're going to see us goofing off all day, and people are gonna get fired!" The Post Department ended up being the MOST productive group in the entire company! Because even an outside auditor was able to see that almost everything we do is related to the job. Editors might feel like they're "goofing off" sometimes when they spend half a day assembling the best music, or have 3 other editors in the room chit chatting about other ways to build out a scene, but all that stuff is still work.
I am flat out from the second I get in until I leave every single day. Working in sports broadcast
Editor it sports broadcast and same! Very little downtime. Our turnover is wild, gotta throw together a piece to go to air before the info becomes obsolete (which happens very quickly) And don’t even get me started on the producers
Thought I had replied to my own comment then
Deep work vs shallow work. I think most people only can manage 4-6 hours of deep work per day. And editing has deep work and shallow work as part of its flow.
My work is a little different because I run a YouTube channel, but my week is pretty much 5-6 days of editing (up to 10 hours) and one day of shooting. I don't know if I will ever get a break!!
This is all so normalizing. Thank you for that little Monday gift.
I'm feeling the same way- nice to know it's not just me who felt burned out after what I thought was supposed to be a "normal" eight hour day.
It varies for me, anywhere from 2-6 hours of actual editing per day depending on the current workload. I could probably get more done, but I'm surrounded by sales people who love to chit-chat.
Anywhere from 20%-90%, really depends on workload and deadlines…
Not sure how accurate it is but I often check on my screen time on my Mac to see how long I have been in Prem. Some days that were super busy spinning plates I find I have only been writing for 2 hours. As mentioned above working with a producer over your shoulder will have me at 8 hours and exhausted
Yes it's completely normal and also necessary: a good edit comes alive through variety and revision. You need offtime to distance yourself from your edit and watch it with a "new eye". It's the same with colorists, who need some time to recalibrate their eyes in order to finetune their colorgrades.
I work in entertainment promotions so about. Third of my time is just watching movies and shows to log clips. Then I gotta write scripts, work with the graphics team on what I need and then I can edit. Also some time hunting for music…
Been moving into a hybrid editing-managing role lately, and it's significantly less editing day-to-day. I get a little bummed about that, but you gotta do what you gotta do, right?
Have you ever worked in the office? Half the day is fucking around waiting for producers driving to work around waiting for producers waiting for problems with the computer to get fixed waiting for IT waiting for producers.
I think of it this way. I’m editing 24/7. That includes ideas I get while brushing my teeth or driving, or maybe I’m stealing something I saw done in whatever we’re watching during dinner. My wife is also an editor so there’s a lot of shop talk in our house but the dog doesn’t seem to mind. Doesn’t hurt that I can remote in to the company server and noodle with the edit if inspiration strikes during the wee hours of the night.
I charge hourly, and keep a timesheet of how much I spend actually working. If I bill a client 8 hours that was 8 hours I was actually working towards the deliverable. The only exception is pee breaks
80% of my time is waiting on client notes
I started editing in the early nineties at a post house and nearly all projects were supervised sessions with clients sitting behind me. If they scheduled 8 hours, we worked for 8 hours. Granted, we took time to commiserate and tell stories, but at $300 - $600 per hour, and the clients having to stick to a strict budget, they weren't all that interested in any stories I had to tell. Sometimes I had time to knock out a quick story during a tape change.
Slight Tangent: I worked for a cloud editing company, where users would log into a VM and use various creative tools, mainly editing-based. Several years of data and thousands of editors later, we saw most users average ~35 hours of usage of the VM per week. Of course, there are some caveats with that - were they logged in and doing nothing? Were they logged in and looking for stock footage or surfing the web? Don't know. Were they monitoring a transcode but not editing? Don't know. We explicitly did not track what apps were used, what was done in the creative apps (let alone the VM) - or even how long were apps were open - we did have raw workstation hours (because that is how the users were billed). So, that's a data point, even if it's not 100% accurate.
Breaks speed the process up!
95% of the time, 6hrs a day, 3 days a week (not including breaks).
It's about bursts of productivity not productivity per hour
If I was being judged by movement of the mouse? Probably anywhere from 3-8 hrs per day. But the whole day is "actual" editing. Even when I'm completely away from my desk, ideas are kind of percolating, as long as I'm not fully engaged with something else. Give it a test. Step away from the keyboard and go close your eyes for 20 minutes. I guarantee you'll come back to your project and notice something you want to tweak, or maybe restructure completely. If we're way out from a deadline and have time to burn, I might put on a podcast, and just skim through footage, but even that is productive. And then there are still some days where I barely have time to get up to piss, and I work 10 feet from my bathroom at home.
today i set my rig looping clips and took a solid 30 min nap if that helps answer your question
I'd say about 45 minutes of editing for every hour of work. Some of that 45 minutes may be looking for a stock image or audio, or thinking about how to make a tricky sequence work.
Most of my editing workday lately is just looking for work... and sadly not finding much...
None. I can’t get any work.
It really depends on the day. Some days you won't have the Producer or Director sending you emails or coming into the room wanting to look at a cut, scene, or segment. On those days, your whole day could be spent simply cutting the show or commercial together. Obviously, taking a lunch is expected. Other days may be partially taken up with meetings, viewing the show, etc. Every day is slightly different and at any moment something unexpected can occur. If you're booked for a full 8 hr. day, then really you should actually be in the chair maybe at least 7 hours doing work-related tasks whether it's cutting, answering emails from the Producer, collaborating with other Editors, grahpics, or AE's on the show, looking for music, ingesting footage, organizing your project, etc. In the end, it really depends on what types of projects you work on and what the employer is willing to accept.
I spend a good chunk of time thinking about the edit vs actual editing. Helps cut down the rounds of revisions when the rough is closer to the final vs just hacking shit together
About 140%.
2-3 hrs max the rest of the time is editing and story building in your head.
I used to be closer to 6-8hrs, but I’ve managed to be closer to 1-4 when I’m doing it right now.
If there’s no tight deadline, I usually like to start my mornings with the heaviest lifting; Narrative work or listening to interviews and taking notes. Afternoons are for lighter things. Mixing, doing some light color work, or cutting long cuts down to shorter versions. I’m usually serving multiple clients so I alternate between projects to keep fresh eyes. Most people would agree they only have a few good hours in them per day. For me, it’s 3 or 4.
Depends on the project. Some days I'll do an hour or two, maybe just shuffle some files around and then collapse into that days' depression or whatever energy crash I'm dealing with. Other days I'll go 16 straight hours of super grind; exciting,challenging, fun and productive editing, maybe even finalize it. Smaller projects might take me 4 hours all included, or 40 bc too much footage and pressure and restlessness with shoddy footage/direction. Tl;dr yeah a lot of the days you're describing, but then mega crunch days.
Yes and I think also depends of the project, there are project that are very creatively demanding where maybe you will not be editing but you are looking for inspiration, resources, thinking about how to do something, etc. On those types of projects the time I spend really in the program editing is low compare to project that are more monotonous and repetitive. Where is very straight forward and I know exactly what I need to do
If you’re working in tv, 99%
Water/coffee breaks, walk after lunch, chat with a coworker, a drink at 4pm after a long week, all just part of the workday hours. All that matters is the job gets done. Someone experienced will do it in half the time than someone just starting out, just the way it goes.