By Samuel Cabrera Márquez and Eleanor Adler

What is the Assistant Editor’s Toolkit?

The Assistant Editor’s Toolkit is our new resource to support Editorial Trainees and Assistant Editor’s career progression in the cutting room.

The Toolkit can be downloaded here.

Why did we create the toolkit?

Eleanor Adler (2nd Assistant Editor) started developing this project after chatting with colleagues about the challenges Editorial Trainees and Assistant Editors face when entering the TV & Film Industry. Conversations focused on how the nature of our work and lack of standardised training leads us to develop varied skill sets by learning different skills on different jobs in different teams.

We also found that:

Editorial Trainees are often hired on jobs for shorter periods of time and may only be present for part of the post production process which means they will learn skills in isolation from each other and may not be aware of how they fit together into the post production workflow.
There is a mystery surrounding the role of the Assistant Editor and what it involves, which can make it challenging for new entrants and students wishing to break into post production to know what they need to learn.
We learn new skills through training on different jobs with different team members which can make keeping track of what we have learnt from job to job difficult if we don’t keep track of it ourselves as we have many Supervisors
We can lack confidence in the skills we have learnt as we don’t have a clear list we can “tick off” to acknowledge and be proud of our progress
The fear of not knowing what we don’t know can contribute to a feeling of imposter syndrome and can prevent us from taking opportunities to step up to 2nd Assistant Editor or to 1st Assistant Editor

After these discussions, Eleanor introduced the project to The Rough Assembly Committee and it was further developed with Committee members Paschalla Sharpe (1st Assistant Editor), Ellie Stiles (2nd Assistant Editor) and Samuel Cabrera Márquez (Editorial Trainee). Their aim was to create a resource that could help address these obstacles, as well as to find ways to support training in the cutting room.

During its development, the Toolkit was tested and reviewed by Editors, 1st Assistant Editors, 2nd Assistant Editors and Editorial Trainees who gave us invaluable feedback and notes. We would like to take this opportunity to thank our wider team who reviewed the Toolkit during its development. After these revisions, we had our first version of the Assistant Editor’s Toolkit.

The Assistant Editor’s Toolkit is made up of two complementary documents, The Skills Guide and The Review Guide. The Skills Guide allows Assistant Editors and Editorial Trainees to keep track of technical skills they have learnt from job to job, whereas the Review Guide is a document to support Editorial Trainees and Assistant Editors in reviewing their progress on their current job, or if they are responsible for training their team members, to review their team’s progress.

What does the Toolkit do?

For 2nd Assistant Editors and Edit Trainees:

It empowers you to build a roadmap for your training and professional development
Keeps track of what you have learnt across different productions
Provides clarity on what makes up an Assistant Editor’s skillset
Contextualises tasks as part of the overall post production process
Builds confidence in the skills you have learnt
Encourages gradual, self-paced and steady learning through your career

For 1st Assistant Editors and 2nd Assistant Editors responsible for training:

It details a thorough list of skills that make up an Assistant Editor’s skillset
Aids workflow design and team management
An easily accessible resource for training team members
Gives you a list of tasks your team members have learnt on previous jobs
Supports delegation of tasks by identifying team member’s strengths
Provides a template for reviewing your team member’s progress

For Post Production Supervisors:

It promotes cohesion and consistency between cutting rooms
Allows new team members to integrate more quickly into busy cutting rooms
Supports smoother transitions from education or other careers into editorial
Encourages mentorship and camaraderie within the department

We hope that the Assistant Editor’s Toolkit will prove to be a valuable resource for not only Editorial Trainees and 2nd Assistant Editors but also for 1st Assistant Editors and Post Production Supervisors.

LAUNCHING THE TOOLKIT

Eleanor presented the Toolkit at our launch event which was well attended by Assistant Editors, Editorial Trainees and Post Production Runners.

During the presentation, we explained what the Toolkit is for, why we created it and gave real-life examples of how we can use it in the cutting room.

Attendees found the presentation informative and many praised how useful the toolkit would be for them and the industry.

“The Assistant Editor’s Toolkit is the most useful resource I’ve found as someone trying to break into scripted Assistant Editor work, and Eleanor’s talk did a great job of highlighting how comprehensive and versatile it is.”

- Guy Chadwick, Edit Assistant

“Came for the resources, stayed for the company. I had a fabulous evening at the Toolkit launch. It was great to meet so many people at such different stages of their careers. The presentation was very insightful and I've found the Toolkit really helpful in getting a good read of my position and progress, and have already used it to help prepare for an interview. I left the event feeling more familiar and oriented in our corner of the industry and what it's like working in it as an Assistant Editor.”

- Joe Wells, Editorial Trainee

“Eleanor’s presentation on the Toolkit was instructive as well as inspirational. She not only showed how the Toolkit can be used to help veterans train their teams and to refresh previously learned content but also how it can aid new entrants who aspire to enter the industry. It was a marvellous event.”

- Idoia Hernández Colorado, 2nd Assistant Editor

The Toolkit has been used in cutting rooms including The Crown, Slow Horses, Beetlejuice 2, House of the Dragon and The Witcher: Blood Origin and has been further promoted at networking events such as Blue Collar Post Collective and Making The Cut in London with overwhelming interest.

FURTHER RESOURCES

If you would like to share your knowledge and get more involved in the development of further Toolkits for other roles, in particular for Assistant Sound Editors, VFX Assistant Editors and Assistant Editors in Factual please email us at committee@theroughassembly.com.