Can You Edit This By Tomorrow?

How long should editing take?

This question haunts producers throughout the world. How long does it take to edit something? A day? A week? A month?

To get to the bottom of this, the best people to ask are, unsurprisingly, the editors.

In my life as an editor before starting this collective, post calendars were all over the place.

Two years ago, I cut a basketball docu-series for Showtime. Four episodes. The first three were 25 minutes, and the finale was 45. It took us months to get edit. With 120TB of footage, there was so much story to sift through.

Thankfully on that project, we were given the time to process, discuss, and create a paper edit before starting each episode.

But that isn’t always the case.

In my first job out of college, where I was barely paid by bosses who I don’t think knew how an editing program worked, I’d be handed a project with an insane turnaround time.

On one project, a 4-minute docu-episode (check it out here), I was given the footage at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday and had to deliver it, with sound mix and color grade, plus a 30-second social cutdown, before Thursday morning.

I barely moved for two days, working two 19-hour shifts to get it done. I did it. I wasn’t happy, but I did it. When another project with the same delivery schedule came around, they came to me. When I said I couldn’t do it, they said, “Well, you’ve done it before.” I learned a valuable lesson that day.

Was cutting that video in two days possible? Sure. Was the video any good? You can be the judge of that. Did my mental health suffer? Abso-f*cking-lutely.

Okay, let’s forget the well-being of the editor for a moment. Let’s strictly talk money.

A businessperson or producer may think, “Hey, I can get a cheaper video by having the editor work fewer days. Overtime? Forget it.”

Here’s the issue: your video, your product, your art will suffer.

When’s the last time you wanted your plumber to rush fixing the pipes? Did you ask your doctor to rush the appointment? Your accountant to rush your taxes?

I’m not saying we’re in the medical field. (Could you imagine me with access to anesthesia medicine and a scalpel?)

But anyone with a good sense of quality knows that if you want it done right the first time, don’t rush the process.

This means giving the editor time to digest the footage, the script, the outlines. Allow the process to flow. Any good editor, especially in documentary, knows how important it is to just sit and watch the footage. It’s tedious. It takes hours, sometimes days or weeks. But it is vital to creating the best possible product.

So, my initial question was "how long does it take to edit a video?" The answer to that is this: talk to your editor. Ask them how long it will take them. Trust them. Discuss money, deadlines, the works. It's okay to have a tighter schedule sometimes, just be aware of what that means for the project.

In a world of cheap sh*t that breaks instantly, be the outlier.

Measure twice, cut once.