Last night i saw some tweets popping up from a Film Editor in LA… i follow her for quite a long time now…i kinda have a good chat with her every now and then. I really love her insides about Editing, the Business and the life in LA 🙂 She is quite active on the twitters.
Nancy Forner a Film Editor from Los Angels: Recent credits include Law&Order:SVU, A Gifted Man, The Vampire Diaries.
Here is what she had to say about “How to Become a Film Editor” … (i took all her 140 character tweets and made one big quote out of it. (with here kindly permission of course)
” I have received many tweets from young students who wish to become film editors….asking for my advice on how to go about that…so I will take a few moments here to try, in 146 characters, address that question.
First, I say…get a college degree….study art, music, painting,read poetry, read great books, look at comic books too….take classes in literature and creative writing….watch movies and tv…go to the theater….do everything you can to UNDERSTAND STORY….coz when it all boils down to it…editing on a series like I do….(editing MTV is different) but editing a dramatic movie or tv series it all boils down to understanding how to tell a story.
Plain and simple it is that….all the technical stuff comes later….but the basis of a good editor is that they know what the story is and how to express it….rhythm and timing is important too…that is why I say listen to all kinds of music, from tribal to classical to pop to punk….look at paintings notice the composition and light and structure…
Ok after that….after you have immersed yourself in all that…the best way to get a job is to get an internship with a film company or a studio or a production house….if you google the major studios in LA and the networks, they all offer great internship programs for college students. There are also many trade film colleges in LA that cater toward the nuts and bolts of film production, but that I would recommend after a four year college where you learn about story and art and music first.
also, I recently wrote an article about editing … http://magazine.creativecow.net/article/style-emotion-vamping-on-the-vampire-diaries… it has some info. on how I started…. “
So thanks to Nancy for these tweets …
...a NonLinearEditor's Blog 
What about a person who is in his early 40’s, no time for college, but has the talent for editing?
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