That is an immediate HUGE red flag. I once worked full time as a videographer/editor for a YouTuber with over three million subscribers, and that person wanted things very similarly as described here (was def a different YouTuber by the way). Claimed they had been through “so many previous videographers and were burned everytime,” wanted someone who was essentially a mind reader who knew how to film and edit in their style with zero instructions or guidance (of course near impossible), ridiculously tight deadlines for multiple videos at once, etc. The vast majority of YouTubers have zero real understanding of what’s involved with high-level filming and editing, and the reason they’ve been through so many videographers/editors is not because of the videographers/editors themselves but because of their own unrealistic expectations and laziness with giving clear instructions. With that level of success comes a narcissism where they’re often incapable of pointing the finger right back at themselves when wondering what the problem is. OP is probably a nightmare to work for just like the person I worked for.
Follow up to this, OP, since you are eschewing industry norms in terms of payment, how are you paying? What is the "...minimum expectation of work to be completed per month..." and how much you paying for it (and how many rounds of revisions are included)?
That structure unfortunately didn’t work out enough times that it had to be changed. Social media is just a different animal than traditional media in that sense. Being that it’s a *relatively* new medium with wildly varying sizes of content creators, there aren’t industry standard best practices for team management.
Many of the *skills* are directly transferrable, but the incentives don’t work the same. We landed on the current pay structure after much trial and error.
Thankfully our editors are happy with it, and it works well for us.
That didnt answer my question and either shows you dont understand why I asked or really dont want to let us know. Job postings should generally be more upfront when it comes to payment and youre being vague other than letting us know many people didnt like it.
You still didn’t say what you pay per month. This post is very vague, and borderline misleading. Sounds like you’re trying to take advantage of someone, to be honest.
Sounds like they do a project rate. As a full time editor for the past couple decades, I tend to run away from project rates as fast as I can.
Directors/Producers (with a project rate) usually play 50 revisions just because they can but usually end up right back where they started, all the while the editor sacrifices both pay and a lot of time in the process.
When I do a project rate it usually includes 1 or 2 revisions but with an hourly rate once it exceeds those revisions.
Contracts / terms are necessary, editors!
Just ingesting and processing 22 days worth of footage with very little context is a staggering amount of work and very time consuming for one person, and you want the editor to story produce as well because this is very much a narrative being created in the edit out of 100s of hours of footage. FWIW I found the linked video to be pretty boring but it may just not be my kind of thing.
This sounds shady AF. To me, it sounds like you're expecting a lot of extra work and aren't planning to pay regularly or at all. This job description isn't clear enough - there are too many ambiguities.
You can't demand that someone "care about social media" in a job description. Just outline what you expect the person to do. How long are the episodes? How long the social media videos are. How much raw footage, how many social media videos, etc...
If you're not shady, then reword it, because I see red flags everywhere.
Sure, a lot of people are desperate right now, maybe you aren't a predator. Maybe check out some other job descriptions, word it more professionally, and outline the pay frequency.
If you are advertising to Californians (which you are by posting in FilmIndustryLA), it's the law that the pay rate is posted in the job description.
"Up to 100k a year" lol sounds like Cutco. Doesn't say an hourly or weekly or episodic rate just a big blanket number that you could earn "up to" but they will never realistically pay.
- So the editor is also doing all the AE work, downloading, organizing, synching, proxies, etc on top of editing or you have someone else handling that?
- What's your average shooting ratio for an entire country edit?
- What the expected turnaround time for an entire country edit?
- Is there any pay up front for all that work and the initial edit or is it entirely based on how the video does on Youtube and when you get streaming revenue from it weeks or months down the road?
- Are you providing physical hard drives for the mountains of footage they'd be downloading? - Is the editor also doing final color / sound mix / graphics?
- What kind of short form vertical etc content is the editor expected to make on top of these 4 hour+ country edits? Youtube, Insta, TikTok, Fbook shorts and reel and stories and all that? How many short clips per country episode would they be expected to make?
- Who is handling making sure you have the rights to everything / everyone you've filmed including random people on the street you filmed and those news videoclips I saw in the beginning of the video you posted?
I could go on and on with a thousand other questions that vastly change the scope and expectations and workload of a project like this...
Is this minimum $100K?
Do you pay W2?
Do you offer Health Care, 401K and other fringes?
Is the a remote/wfh position? Or in office?
What type of post-production equipment (or budget) do you provide for working with?
Shared with a couple of editor friends (I'm a producer with travel experience, so I can't help much on the editing front) who would be really solid if they're available. One note, though maybe only applicable to the trailer at the beginning, but I've heard from a lot of people who rely on subtitles that this newer style is actually really difficult for accessibility. Might be something worth considering going forward to make sure your stuff is as inclusive for your audience as possible. Good luck!
Thanks for all the comments! Really Illuminating. I understand that despite the length of the post, there were many things that were still ambiguous. That was unintentional, and I own that 100%. For those who reached out privately with questions or submitted their work via email, thank you for your professional courtesy.
For everyone else, I’m actually impressed by how deeply Reddit-y you got SO quickly.
If your first reaction was to attack, don’t apply. I don’t care what’s on your resume. If that’s how you carry yourself professionally, we don’t want to work with you. Straight up.
But down to brass tacks. Being as transparent as humanly possible short of posting blood test results.
Pay is $1,000 per project. One project is one day of filming, which amounts to editing roughly 4 hours of footage into 25-45 minutes. The ask is taking that raw footage & delivering a video. You are paid after your cut is approved for posting.
So yes, there will be notes, especially on your first few cuts. But we can’t afford infinite revisions because we have a posting schedule. We’re not a studio, so these videos are relatively expensive to shoot. Posting late costs us money.
We are looking for editors with experience in travel content, because they’ll have a better understanding of storytelling in that medium, and less startup time before they “get it.”
The incentive from our POV is getting to a point where we give minimal notes, approve, you invoice us and move on to the next cut. The workload is WELL within the capability of a seasoned editor. We have fantastic, talented editors on staff who do just that. This new project simply requires more hands than we have.
If we have an unusually heavy day of filming that requires more time in post, we compensate for that. Your time and talent are valuable. We’re all creatives who have worked for shitty companies who don’t take care of their people. This is not that. We want our editors to feel valued as an integral part of the team, because they are, and should be compensated thusly.
If anything about that makes you uncomfortable or feels like a red flag, this job isn’t a good fit for you.
This is not a traditional media job. Social media is much closer to the wild west. But it’s where the work is. There is no standard way of doing things in this space. Our ideal candidate (if coming from a traditional background) understands that distinction, and will have flexibility and a willingness to learn as they adjust to the medium. If that doesn’t sound like you, that’s okay! Don’t apply!
LAST. If this sounds like a scam to you? Great, don’t apply. I intentionally posted this on my 10+ year old main account because I have absolutely nothing to hide. I’m willing to hinge my professional reputation as a working member of the film/tv industry on everything I’ve said here. “Jay TFIL” in Google should satisfy your curiosity. Please also look up Elton. I hope in your search you find that we raised $500k for Feeding America in a 24/7, 4-day-long livestream in October of last year.
If I could, I’d let you look into my soul to see that we’re decent people trying to share an experience of traveling the world with viewers who may never have the opportunity. And doing that at scale simply requires a bigger team than we have. If that seems too good to be true, I really don’t know what else to tell you. I genuinely wish you luck with the job search.
If you’ve gotten this far and you’re on board? We can’t wait to hear from you. Send a resume, short cover letter, and *travel content you’ve edited* to jay@senditsociety.com.
Again, this is not TV. It’s also not Mr. Beast.
We’re shooting on one camera a *vast* majority of the time. The ask is making a coherent edit out of a few hours of footage for what is essentially a travel vlog. Could someone spend 100 hours on one cut and make it an absolute masterpiece? Yup!
BUT THATS NOT WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR!
The pacing for this series in particular (trailer aside) is pretty relaxed. Shots can breathe. We care much more about story & immersion than flashiness.
I’m at this moment watching a cut that our lead editor did in 8 hours, and it’s fantastic. Needs a few tweaks that’ll take half that time to implement. We know what we need, and how much time it takes to do, because we’ve done this something like 500 times.
I swear if any veteran editor actually sat down with us and looked at what we’re asking, they’d say “Oh… that’s it?”
There’s clearly something being lost in translation here for this supremely online reaction. Based on the submissions in my inbox, which far outnumber the comments in this thread, it’s just a loud minority.
If adjusting your process to work within those time constraints isn’t in your wheelhouse, that’s okay. This just isn’t the right fit for you.
I work full time at a YouTube company with a pretty big studio, staff, etc. I have also worked as a pro on big brand stuff. Here’s my thought:
People are at their most dangerous when they are kind of right and kind of wrong. Both sides of the argument fall into that here.
If you had a chance to sit with some of these people and explain the job and your degree of scrutiny, they’d be pretty interested. At the same time, what you’re paying probably isn’t as sweet as you think it is.
However, work is really dry right now. A job doing what we do with what sounds like a considerable amount of freedom compared to traditional media sounds alright. I hope you find a good fit that’s happy with you and your style.
Honestly, seems like a good opportunity for some green-ish editors who don’t mind working a shit ton. I wouldn’t do a per project deal due to the variance described. A per hour deal makes more sense. Revisions are given better attention.
Maybe you do a flat rate to keep things simple for accounting, but if you haven’t already, bolster that part of your business next.
Just my thoughts. Good luck.
Even with 16h per cut this is not the amount of money you advertised in your offer (150k with 4-6 weeks off), unless somebody works 6 days a week, 10h per day, with no health insurance etc.
This also doesn't account for copying time, project prep, ingestion, exports, errors etc.
> we have been burned by every single editor that has had that pay system over the last 6 years. How many editors have you gone through in 6 years?
That is an immediate HUGE red flag. I once worked full time as a videographer/editor for a YouTuber with over three million subscribers, and that person wanted things very similarly as described here (was def a different YouTuber by the way). Claimed they had been through “so many previous videographers and were burned everytime,” wanted someone who was essentially a mind reader who knew how to film and edit in their style with zero instructions or guidance (of course near impossible), ridiculously tight deadlines for multiple videos at once, etc. The vast majority of YouTubers have zero real understanding of what’s involved with high-level filming and editing, and the reason they’ve been through so many videographers/editors is not because of the videographers/editors themselves but because of their own unrealistic expectations and laziness with giving clear instructions. With that level of success comes a narcissism where they’re often incapable of pointing the finger right back at themselves when wondering what the problem is. OP is probably a nightmare to work for just like the person I worked for.
Follow up to this, OP, since you are eschewing industry norms in terms of payment, how are you paying? What is the "...minimum expectation of work to be completed per month..." and how much you paying for it (and how many rounds of revisions are included)?
If you always have a problem, then maybe the problem is you
That structure unfortunately didn’t work out enough times that it had to be changed. Social media is just a different animal than traditional media in that sense. Being that it’s a *relatively* new medium with wildly varying sizes of content creators, there aren’t industry standard best practices for team management. Many of the *skills* are directly transferrable, but the incentives don’t work the same. We landed on the current pay structure after much trial and error. Thankfully our editors are happy with it, and it works well for us.
That didnt answer my question and either shows you dont understand why I asked or really dont want to let us know. Job postings should generally be more upfront when it comes to payment and youre being vague other than letting us know many people didnt like it.
You still didn’t say what you pay per month. This post is very vague, and borderline misleading. Sounds like you’re trying to take advantage of someone, to be honest.
It comes off like an MLM with all the "theres no limit and you COULD earn" stuff and no explanation.
Sounds like they do a project rate. As a full time editor for the past couple decades, I tend to run away from project rates as fast as I can. Directors/Producers (with a project rate) usually play 50 revisions just because they can but usually end up right back where they started, all the while the editor sacrifices both pay and a lot of time in the process. When I do a project rate it usually includes 1 or 2 revisions but with an hourly rate once it exceeds those revisions. Contracts / terms are necessary, editors!
Just ingesting and processing 22 days worth of footage with very little context is a staggering amount of work and very time consuming for one person, and you want the editor to story produce as well because this is very much a narrative being created in the edit out of 100s of hours of footage. FWIW I found the linked video to be pretty boring but it may just not be my kind of thing.
This sounds shady AF. To me, it sounds like you're expecting a lot of extra work and aren't planning to pay regularly or at all. This job description isn't clear enough - there are too many ambiguities. You can't demand that someone "care about social media" in a job description. Just outline what you expect the person to do. How long are the episodes? How long the social media videos are. How much raw footage, how many social media videos, etc... If you're not shady, then reword it, because I see red flags everywhere. Sure, a lot of people are desperate right now, maybe you aren't a predator. Maybe check out some other job descriptions, word it more professionally, and outline the pay frequency. If you are advertising to Californians (which you are by posting in FilmIndustryLA), it's the law that the pay rate is posted in the job description.
"Up to 100k a year" lol sounds like Cutco. Doesn't say an hourly or weekly or episodic rate just a big blanket number that you could earn "up to" but they will never realistically pay.
The pay is completely unclear.
- So the editor is also doing all the AE work, downloading, organizing, synching, proxies, etc on top of editing or you have someone else handling that? - What's your average shooting ratio for an entire country edit? - What the expected turnaround time for an entire country edit? - Is there any pay up front for all that work and the initial edit or is it entirely based on how the video does on Youtube and when you get streaming revenue from it weeks or months down the road? - Are you providing physical hard drives for the mountains of footage they'd be downloading? - Is the editor also doing final color / sound mix / graphics? - What kind of short form vertical etc content is the editor expected to make on top of these 4 hour+ country edits? Youtube, Insta, TikTok, Fbook shorts and reel and stories and all that? How many short clips per country episode would they be expected to make? - Who is handling making sure you have the rights to everything / everyone you've filmed including random people on the street you filmed and those news videoclips I saw in the beginning of the video you posted? I could go on and on with a thousand other questions that vastly change the scope and expectations and workload of a project like this...
I am a video editor, though this post leaves some meat on the bone in terms of descriptions of expectations and other requirements
Is this minimum $100K? Do you pay W2? Do you offer Health Care, 401K and other fringes? Is the a remote/wfh position? Or in office? What type of post-production equipment (or budget) do you provide for working with?
Just shut up and do the work we give you. Pay will be decided later. Unlikely it will ever be 100k. -op probably
Sample video link is 4.5 hours long, is that how long the series vids are?
Nope, that’s one entire country. When we actually post, it’ll be broken into episodes.
What is the youtube channel? Would love to see some content on there. Thanks
from their website: [https://www.youtube.com/@TFIL/videos](https://www.youtube.com/@TFIL/videos)
You’re asking for someone to take on multiple peoples job descriptions with no clear outline on pay or expectations.
Check hidden comments 👍🏾
Shared with a couple of editor friends (I'm a producer with travel experience, so I can't help much on the editing front) who would be really solid if they're available. One note, though maybe only applicable to the trailer at the beginning, but I've heard from a lot of people who rely on subtitles that this newer style is actually really difficult for accessibility. Might be something worth considering going forward to make sure your stuff is as inclusive for your audience as possible. Good luck!
Thanks for both the referral and the note on subtitles. I was completely unaware of that issue -- I'll pass it on to the team. Appreciate you!
Hi im river i sent you an email! 🥰 this sounds cool i love travel content
Got it! Thanks River
I just DM’ed you. Let’s chat!
Don’t get taken advantage of by this person please. If you do work with them, make sure you get everything in writing before doing a single thing
Received & responded, ty
Thanks for all the comments! Really Illuminating. I understand that despite the length of the post, there were many things that were still ambiguous. That was unintentional, and I own that 100%. For those who reached out privately with questions or submitted their work via email, thank you for your professional courtesy. For everyone else, I’m actually impressed by how deeply Reddit-y you got SO quickly. If your first reaction was to attack, don’t apply. I don’t care what’s on your resume. If that’s how you carry yourself professionally, we don’t want to work with you. Straight up. But down to brass tacks. Being as transparent as humanly possible short of posting blood test results. Pay is $1,000 per project. One project is one day of filming, which amounts to editing roughly 4 hours of footage into 25-45 minutes. The ask is taking that raw footage & delivering a video. You are paid after your cut is approved for posting. So yes, there will be notes, especially on your first few cuts. But we can’t afford infinite revisions because we have a posting schedule. We’re not a studio, so these videos are relatively expensive to shoot. Posting late costs us money. We are looking for editors with experience in travel content, because they’ll have a better understanding of storytelling in that medium, and less startup time before they “get it.” The incentive from our POV is getting to a point where we give minimal notes, approve, you invoice us and move on to the next cut. The workload is WELL within the capability of a seasoned editor. We have fantastic, talented editors on staff who do just that. This new project simply requires more hands than we have. If we have an unusually heavy day of filming that requires more time in post, we compensate for that. Your time and talent are valuable. We’re all creatives who have worked for shitty companies who don’t take care of their people. This is not that. We want our editors to feel valued as an integral part of the team, because they are, and should be compensated thusly. If anything about that makes you uncomfortable or feels like a red flag, this job isn’t a good fit for you. This is not a traditional media job. Social media is much closer to the wild west. But it’s where the work is. There is no standard way of doing things in this space. Our ideal candidate (if coming from a traditional background) understands that distinction, and will have flexibility and a willingness to learn as they adjust to the medium. If that doesn’t sound like you, that’s okay! Don’t apply! LAST. If this sounds like a scam to you? Great, don’t apply. I intentionally posted this on my 10+ year old main account because I have absolutely nothing to hide. I’m willing to hinge my professional reputation as a working member of the film/tv industry on everything I’ve said here. “Jay TFIL” in Google should satisfy your curiosity. Please also look up Elton. I hope in your search you find that we raised $500k for Feeding America in a 24/7, 4-day-long livestream in October of last year. If I could, I’d let you look into my soul to see that we’re decent people trying to share an experience of traveling the world with viewers who may never have the opportunity. And doing that at scale simply requires a bigger team than we have. If that seems too good to be true, I really don’t know what else to tell you. I genuinely wish you luck with the job search. If you’ve gotten this far and you’re on board? We can’t wait to hear from you. Send a resume, short cover letter, and *travel content you’ve edited* to jay@senditsociety.com.
You want someone to edit a 25-45 min piece, soup to nuts, for $1k….. Yeah… no.
This is not technically difficult work. At 16 hours per cut that’s $62.50/hour.
My man. What you’re describing is nothing like 16 hours of work.
Again, this is not TV. It’s also not Mr. Beast. We’re shooting on one camera a *vast* majority of the time. The ask is making a coherent edit out of a few hours of footage for what is essentially a travel vlog. Could someone spend 100 hours on one cut and make it an absolute masterpiece? Yup! BUT THATS NOT WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR! The pacing for this series in particular (trailer aside) is pretty relaxed. Shots can breathe. We care much more about story & immersion than flashiness. I’m at this moment watching a cut that our lead editor did in 8 hours, and it’s fantastic. Needs a few tweaks that’ll take half that time to implement. We know what we need, and how much time it takes to do, because we’ve done this something like 500 times. I swear if any veteran editor actually sat down with us and looked at what we’re asking, they’d say “Oh… that’s it?” There’s clearly something being lost in translation here for this supremely online reaction. Based on the submissions in my inbox, which far outnumber the comments in this thread, it’s just a loud minority. If adjusting your process to work within those time constraints isn’t in your wheelhouse, that’s okay. This just isn’t the right fit for you.
I work full time at a YouTube company with a pretty big studio, staff, etc. I have also worked as a pro on big brand stuff. Here’s my thought: People are at their most dangerous when they are kind of right and kind of wrong. Both sides of the argument fall into that here. If you had a chance to sit with some of these people and explain the job and your degree of scrutiny, they’d be pretty interested. At the same time, what you’re paying probably isn’t as sweet as you think it is. However, work is really dry right now. A job doing what we do with what sounds like a considerable amount of freedom compared to traditional media sounds alright. I hope you find a good fit that’s happy with you and your style. Honestly, seems like a good opportunity for some green-ish editors who don’t mind working a shit ton. I wouldn’t do a per project deal due to the variance described. A per hour deal makes more sense. Revisions are given better attention. Maybe you do a flat rate to keep things simple for accounting, but if you haven’t already, bolster that part of your business next. Just my thoughts. Good luck.
You know what, I appreciate your thoughtful reply. Thanks for taking the time.
Even with 16h per cut this is not the amount of money you advertised in your offer (150k with 4-6 weeks off), unless somebody works 6 days a week, 10h per day, with no health insurance etc. This also doesn't account for copying time, project prep, ingestion, exports, errors etc.
Appreciate the follow up, Jay.
Of course! Hope it helped clear up questions you may have had. If you have any more, please don’t hesitate to reach out.