Video Editing Self Taught from Author Ben Bryant


In 1992, with a partner, I founded Video Casting Source, a service for actors, and was more or less forced to learn hands-on

video editing.

Here’s an excerpt from Chapter 29 of Waiting for Elizabeth.

“Shooting on Hi-8 we needed a way to create edit masters and make dubs. We were signing up enough actors to convince our financial backer to put up a final $5,000 and – on advice from Denis [Robert, my Canadian Video Guru] – we bought a Sony EVO 9700 Hi-8 (cuts only) editing system which cost upwards of six Gees. Between the camera and the edit system we now had over $8,000 invested in equipment. And I had to learn how to use the EVO 9700.

Sony EVO 9700 My 1st Video Editing Machine

Sony EVO 9700

“Just off the main area of Ed’s studio [where we had our office] there was a small storage room with a desk in it. When the edit system was delivered I unpacked it and set it up on that desk. As I was doing this an actress, one of our discounted helpers, asked what it was. When I told her she said, ‘Are you an editor?’ To which I replied, ‘Ask me again in a week.’

“I sat in that room for ten hours a day for the next several days until I could comfortably execute the basic tasks required for assembling our reels. …

“Not long after I had mastered the editing system I began to assemble the next distribution tapes. …

“Mike Hodge was an actor I had met screening our reel. He didn’t sign up [for VCS] but he asked if I edited actor demos. At that point in my career as an editor all I had done was our VCS demo and reel assemblies but I said yes. I figured it wouldn’t be too hard. The hard part was knowing what to charge. I stalled him for a day or two and got a friend to call a couple of places that did that kind of work to find out their fees and from those data I formulated my prices.

“So Mike hired me to edit his reel. We screened his stuff and made choices about what to use and the order, titles etc. I figured out how many hours it (should) take and gave him a flat price. I did not want him sitting with me as I taught myself  how to do it. After transferring all his stuff to a Hi-8 ‘source’ tape I and began to edit. It took maybe half again the number of hours for which I was billing him but I was developing a new skill. There was more to editing an actor demo than there was to merely assembling a reel so some of that extra time was spent studying the manual and experimenting. The end result was a win for both of us. He was pleased with the work and the price plus I had successfully done my first actual edit.

“I date my career as an editor – which continues through the day I’m writing this – from that little job. Thank you, Mike. By the way, Mike went on to be elected and re-elected SAG New York President. I doubt that the reel I cut for him was instrumental in that success.

“In Circumstances Beyond My Control I told of the many occasions when I came home – after shooting in the rain all day, or freezing my ass off on the Brooklyn Bridge in February or spending twenty-two straight hours in a sound stage – and said to Elizabeth, ‘In my next life I’m coming back as an editor.’ As it turned out I didn’t have to die and reincarnate.”

Read many more video editing tales when you click here to get Waiting for Elizabeth.

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