How much money do film editors make

A film editor is responsible for taking video or film images and arranging them so they tell a story. These editors work with both film and mske images, taking the original footage and assembling it into an edited work. These workers can be found wherever film needs to be edited, creating everything from motion pictures to industrial and educational films. Salaries for film editors vary widely. The U. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that there were about 17, film editors in the United States in

What’s the average cost of making and selling a Hollywood blockbuster?

Overview Salary Outlook All Careers. Salary for Film and Video Editors. Master the art of closing deals and making placements. Take our Recruiter Certification Program today. We’re SHRM certified. Learn at your own pace during this week program. Access over 20 courses. Great for those who want to break into recruiting, or recruiters who want to further their career. Are you an aspiring film or video editor? Want a new opportunity where you can earn a higher salary? Create your free film or video editor job alert today and take control of your future. Recruiter makes it easy to find out about new jobs for film and video editors. Create your job alert and learn about new openings in your area. The annual compensation for this career has gone up since Salaries have increased by an average of Film and Video Editors tend to make the most in the following industries.

Average Pay

In general, they earn less within the industries below. Other Services except Public Administration.

Your Market Worth Over Time

B ehind every great film is an amazing editor. But how much does a film editor make? Experienced film editors are able to make a good living, but it takes time to reach that level. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics , film and video editors in the U. The more you work , the more experience you will have for future jobs. Combining various clips and audio together to create a cohesive vision is the goal. They often look over a wide-range of projects to make sure there are no errors or inconsistencies. There is a lot of back and forth when it comes to their work and their clients.

“We’re going to need a bigger boat”

Often working in tandem with the director, they either splice film or combine video to turn as many as hundreds of hours of clips into a movie of three hours or less. Historically, they were on 35mm celluloid film but today most countries use a hard drive with a specially encoded digital video file called a Digital Cinema Print DCP. This could be for a number of reasons including the higher cost of advertising in America, the temptation to spend more in the country which studio execs actually live in and because the US is often the first place a movie is released and the media enjoy reporting on huge opening weekends and decrying massive flops. Matthew Prince July 11, at pm.

Popular Employer Salaries for Film / Video Editor

If a movie’s number one in its opening edtors, does that mean it’s automatically a hit? Some of the other costs involved eitors making and releasing a film include…. Perhaps because of piracy or the popularity of Netflix, DVD sales aren’t keeping pace with ticket sales any. Stephen Follows July 1, at am. So the data may be skewed. Q3: How important is the international market, compared to North America? H Thank you for being so intellectually curious that you proactively pursue these studies. Thanks. Stephen Follows July 16, at am.

Where can a Video Editor earn more?

This is an article I have wanted to research and write for a long, long time. I finally had a moment to sit down and crunch the numbers — I hope it helps in the understanding of Hollywood economics. Almost as long as mooney have been movies, Hollywood has relied on huge-scale productions to bring in the big bucks. The Extra-Terrestrial As the films have grown, so too have the spoils on offer.

The starting point for working out the final costs of releasing a movie is to look at how much it cost the studio to shoot the film i. This includes…. Budgets have been rising in recent decades, well above inflation. In the following ten years this rose to The information available online is normally a mix moneh true figures which have leaked and educated guesses by industry experts.

The studios often try to hide the true cost of a movie, in order to make themselves seem thriftier, smarter or more in control than they actually are. I performed a quick check for the 29 blockbusters I have inside data on compared with esitors budgets listed on Wikipedia. Some of the other costs involved in making and releasing a film include….

Mojey give you a little more detail and context, below are some notes on each of the main cost areas…. Judging the correct number of prints and units to manufacture is a key part of the planning done by the studios. Ediyors they order too few then cinemas and stores will have to turn away customers in the all-important first few weeks of od. If they over-order then their costs increase and they are left with annoyed cinema owners and large quantities of unsold units.

Giving these people a share of the income is a good way for the studio to hedge against poor box office performance and it also defers the moment they have to pay up.

On the flipside, studios have got rather good at using creative mske techniques to show that they made a loss on paper in order to get out of paying moey fees. Fortunately, Hollywood is rather good at squeezing every penny out of a movie, ensuring that the target customer is given many chances to pay to see it. Movies may start in cinemas but they are far from the only place they earn money. Each stage at which a movie reaches a new type of platform i. Of the 29 Hollywood blockbuster movies I studied, 14 generated a profit and 15 lost money.

Note: The following discussion of profit uses this mae all revenue received by the studios from a particular movie minus all costs they internally attribute to that production. The smallest movies within kuch dataset i. Would you have made a smart investment? And I am sure this is a fairly low return for that fulm of cash. The only problem is — how do you spot the hits? Hollywood currently employs the smartest, best informed and most profit-focused people in an effort to exclusively make profitable movies and yet half of their movies lose money.

In fact, their combined best efforts only produce a 3. Yes, but only by a very small margin. The average Metacritic score i. Similarly, IMDb audiences rated the profitable films an average of 6. However, we can say that, yes, movies with the biggest marketing budgets do seem to gross the highest amounts at the box office. Added to this, studios are less likely to make missteps on their home turf as they can be on-hand to scrutinise everything to a greater extent.

Well, it depends on which part of the process you look at. Below you editos see the origin of revenue and costs for the blockbusters in my dataset.

As you can see, the majority of the money collected at editorw box office does indeed come from countries outside of the US and Canada. However, studios spend a higher proportion of their marketing money in North America. This could be for a number of reasons including howw higher uow of advertising in America, the temptation to spend more in the country which studio execs actually live in and because the US is often the first place a movie is released and the media enjoy reporting on huge opening weekends and decrying massive flops.

Together, they mean that only 12 of my 29 movies made money at the domestic box office, whereas 20 made money at the international box office. Alongside this, the losses at the domestic theatrical market were much worse than internationally. So Hollywood looks to the international market with glee because….

Q4: Is there a rule of thumb for guessing which Hollywood blockbusters are in profit? They reached this conclusion by studying the full financial records of the movies they were involved with and also checking their hypothesis with independent professional film financiers. Using this rule, I was able to correctly identify all of the profit-making films and correctly identify ten as loss-making, however, this system incorrectly marked five loss-making movies as being profitable.

Not as reliable as one might have liked and way below the accuracy the BFI found when the rule is applied to smaller films but certainly interesting.

So there you have it — a rather long sorry! The biggest question some readers may have at this stage is — how did he get this data? I was also helped by a few well-placed friends in the industry who were able to fill in the blanks and edktors the veracity of some of the data points. I am completely confident that the information in this article is a true representation of how these Hollywood blockbusters make money. The purpose of this site is educational and my sole intention is to help explain how our industry works.

In the past, I have been contacted by lawyers for various monye, trying to prevent the sharing of key data points relating to their business.

So far, I have editogs to avoid lawsuits and also to avoid having to take any articles down, but if I were to offer the full figures as a download or details of how to do the same piecing together I have then I suspect I would get the wrong kind of attention.

So, if you want to know any more about these movies, please add your question in the comments so. Very informative and great info as. Thank you, Stephen for some scintillating reading. When is someone offering you a book deal? Great work Stephen — thank you. And related to this can you demystify the roles, eeitors and compensation for these various kinds of producers? Very helpful. Re the mcuh on books sinceour volumes Global Hollywood and Global Hollywood 2 are more recent than the one.

They are also available in Chinese, Turkish, and Spanish. Stephen, please, please put all of this marvellous stuff in a book. Thank you for this amazing work! Can you clarify here? Thanks. Marketing and avertsing are not included, save maybe for the on-set photographer and a publicist who shows journalists around the set. This mohey particularly important for things like tax incentives, which almost never include publicity and distribution costs when calculating how big the budget is.

Both have a makee claim to be correct. The budget is a real document created in pre-production which covers the cost of physically making the film. Before internet streaming as we know it now, Pay Per View PPV was commonplace, in hotel rooms and eo encrypted satellite and efitors channels. As VOD has grown up, the newer services have become their own new window but the old way of accounting for the older services were retained.

So strictly, the idea of digital delivery of video on demand to the viewer appears within three windows! Just two questions about the average costs graph: 1. Instead of being included in costs? The opacity occurs for a number of reasons but most are to do with hiding embarrassing or unattractive practices, because they can and because there is no benefit from being open.

Wow Stephen. Scary stuff. I want to break down the costs and show how they differ between products. Thank you Steve for your informative article. The research that went into it must have been enormous as it covered mojey much of the movie business including distribution.

I was really interested in the DVD sales figures mzke the overseas theatrical markets deitors the advertising would be. Thank you for your info!!! Michael L Edwards. Mqke you say the swing on that? Stephen, thank you for your informative detailed article. Fiilm is the sort of thing the internet would ideally be used for, instead of widespread trolling. Keep up the good work. Thank you for the information and the analysis you have performed.

The real numbers are never released, nor should. Nobody in the industry pays those numbers. At the end editorz the day, the important numbers and analyses come from what the windows revenue figures are and their relationships. As for profits… do magicians reveal their tricks? Hey Adrian. Glad you found it useful. This allowed me to compare the true cost to that of the public figure in this case from Wikipedia.

Hi Stephen, thanks for the excellent analysis. Do you have any data to support or contradict these numbers?

Highest Paying Video Editing Jobs

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After reading this, you will be able to make a decision if working as a Film and Video Editor will suit your financial goals e. One of the most popular questions we get from our readers here at OwlGuru is how much do Film and Video Editors make per year and what is their hourly wage. Just like any other job, editods salary of A Film and Video Editor will vary based on your education and experience level. We wanted to make it easy for our readers to compare the salary of A Film and Video Editor to all the other careers out.

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So we created Salary Rank. This compares the salary of all careers and we give them a rank of A, B, C or D depending on how high or low is their average salary. After comparing how much fllm Film and Video Editors make with other careers, they have a salary rank of B. Interested in the career of a Editprs and How much money do film editors make Editor? Find the right schools that can help hiw to hwo one. This service is free thanks to our sponsors. One of the easiest way to increase your salary is to change industries and find a higher paying one. Another simple way to boost your pay as A Film and Video Editor is to move to a higher paying state. This is because the expenses at CA may be 2x higher than where you are currently living at right. You can now find a college with the major you want Over 1, students have found their college. Have you? OwlGuru Rank C. Job Description.