Video editing classes and certificate programs in NYC

When you are learning film editing techniques and theories, you’ll be learning traditions that are over a century old and have been developing since the invention of the video camera. This means that as an editor, you’ll be learning a range of creative skills since the editor is responsible for adding meaning to raw footage, as well as technical skills that are required to create a finished project that is intelligible to viewers. Ultimately, the goal of any good editing job is to be invisible since bad editing is far more noticeable than good editing.

On the technical side, all film editors must understand how to maintain continuity between cuts, ensuring that the illusion of the unbroken action is preserved. This means everything from ensuring that actors don’t jump around between cuts, change locations or clothing, and that everything appears as an unbroken take. In addition, editors will need to ensure that audiences can follow the action of any given scene, cutting properly between individual shots within a scene and transitioning seamlessly between scenes as the focus of the film shifts. Disjointed, confusing editing is a major issue with any project, and it is the editor's job to ensure that the transitions and cuts flow naturally from one to another.

On the creative side, film theory states that the juxtaposition of two images created by the editor produces more meaning than these two images in isolation. This is called the Kuleshov Effect, and it, along with theories of montage, is the foundation of modern editing techniques. It is one thing to know how to cut two clips together, and it is another to understand why cutting them together is a deliberate creative choice that adds meaning to the film. For example, the most common form of montage is rapid cuts between different scenes and actions that indicate a great deal of growth or change in a very short period of film time. Famously, Rocky undergoes an entire training regimen in less than two minutes, and the editing helps us understand what is happening. These are the kinds of creative editing choices that you’ll learn to make in an editing program.

With the rise of digital video production, film editing tools and applications have been significantly more accessible to anyone looking to learn editing. It is easy to forget, but the language of film editing (like cutting clips and working with footage) originated when the editors would literally cut up film strips and edit them together by hand. With digital video, it is easier than ever to make non-destructive edits to video files and work on a computer rather than needing an expensive and cumbersome collection of editing equipment.

The most common commercially available video editing applications are Adobe’s Premiere Pro and Apple’s Final Cut X, which operate on a subscription model and aim to be user-friendly tools that are still robust enough for professional use. In most cases, the choice between the two will come down to preference in terms of things like UI and your OS of choice since Final Cut X will require an Apple device, whereas Premiere Pro runs on Windows. Both are excellent options for new film editors, and students should consider learning how to use the application that best suits their needs.

There is also a range of other film editing applications, including Avid Media Composer, DaVinci Resolve, iMovie, and PowerDirector 365. Each attempts to fill a niche, such as iMovie being stripped down but easier to use for simple editing projects or DaVinci Resolve, including robust animation, motion graphics, and sound editing tools in a single application. Selecting the best application for your needs will require a bit of trial and error and exploration, but there is no shortage of options available to you if you want to work on editing projects.

If you are working on complex projects and opt to work with an application like Premiere Pro, you’ll also likely want to learn some of its sister programs, like After Effects for motion graphics, Cinema 4D for animation and modeling, and Audition for sound editing and mixing. These programs are often taught in certificate programs as part of a robust editing curriculum, so you should look at what aspects of editing are taught when you sign up to ensure you learn all the skills you need.

Editing is a requirement for virtually every video project that is undertaken since it is incredibly rare to shoot single, unedited shots outside of particular projects. A film editor's job is to “assemble footage of feature films, television shows, documentaries, and industrials into a seamless end product.” Therefore, editors must be masters of plot structure, sound mixing, and graphics to ensure the final product is both cohesive and appealing. This means that if video is involved in the project, there will need to be an editor who can cut together the video files to create a publishable project. Video editing skills are most commonly associated with film and television since this is how most video content has been consumed historically, and this association makes sense. Studios and production houses hire a significant portion of trained editing professionals, and you are likely to focus on this kind of editing when you enroll in a certificate program or film school.

Editing is also utilized in most forms of digital content creation, especially as the technology is more accessible and easier to use. This includes companies hiring editors to create digital content for platforms like YouTube and individual creatives who upload their content to these platforms. YouTube, TikTok, and Twitch have made creating and sharing your own content easier than ever before, but they have also made the market significantly more crowded. To stand out, you’ll need to have polished, edited work that looks like time and effort was put into its creation. Many content creators hire editors to work on their projects, but smaller creatives and up-and-coming content creators can learn editing techniques to work on their own uploads.

Finally, editors play an important role in online and broadcast advertising campaigns. Commercials have a relatively limited amount of time to communicate with their audience (even less so online, where six-second skips are very common), so the editor's job becomes to use the limited timeframe to communicate as much meaning as possible. While these might not seem like the most glamorous or creatively fulfilling editing jobs, there is a lot of room for editors working in advertising to show off their skills and make creative choices in their work.

Since video editing involves using raw footage, almost all video editors work alongside a wide range of other creatives who are responsible for getting that raw footage into the editing room. Editors are often the last people who meaningfully touch a film project, so they’ll spend a lot of time collaborating with others to ensure that the collective creative vision is realized.

Editors work most closely with directors to help the director's creative vision shine through and, in part, to help make a coherent narrative out of the miles of raw footage the director produces. Many famous directors often work with editors for long parts of their careers, creating pairs with a consistent style and working relationship (for example, Thelma Schoonmaker has been a vital part of Martin Scorcese’s directorial success, working with him on 28 films over six decades of collaboration and bringing home three Oscars to Marty’s one). Editors will need to work closely with directors to create a finished project that is ready for release.

In addition, editors will often work alongside writers, cinematographers, and sound designers to ensure that the creative vision of all parties is visible in the edit. Writers will include specific transitions and cuts that help the scene; cinematographers will make creative choices with how they shoot various takes (and these choices will limit what options an editor has to make), and sound designer and editors will work together to ensure that the sound flows as naturally as the edit. Editors will also often work alongside producers to make certain aspects of the project central to the final edit (particularly in commercial editing jobs).

While less famous than Los Angeles, New York City has a robust film and television industry that hires editors for projects ranging from scripted TV to live tapings of television shows to commercials and digital content creation. Outside of the major studios, like NBC’s presence at 30 Rock, smaller studios are forming in NYC relatively frequently. As digital content creation becomes more of the default, online studios are hiring more and more editors in NYC, making it one of the best cities in the country to find work. A Video Editor in NYC is likely to earn about $75,000 a year, which is in line with the national average. Some of the most prominent hiring firms in NYC include NBCUniversal, Bloomberg, Paramount, and CondeNast.

Learning video editing can be a lucrative career, and it can be one of the most creatively fulfilling jobs for technical artists. If you work on a film or television set, you’ll have the opportunity to join The Motion Picture Editors Guild, one of the many creative unions that ensure equitable treatment for creative professionals. Becoming a member provides material benefits and allows you to enter into a creative community that includes some of the finest editors to have ever worked in the industry.

Likewise, professional editors can become part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. These organizations are most well known for the awards they give out each year (the Oscars and the Emmys, respectively). Still, they are also important archives and curators of the history of film and television editing. If you aspire to win awards and receive praise for your work, editing is an important and highly respected art form in the film and television community, offering you many venues to perfect your craft and become noticed by your contemporaries and colleagues.

While most people associate editing with Hollywood and the film and television industry, you can also make a name for yourself as a freelance editor, including as a part-time editor. As more and more video content is being created every day, the demand for skilled editors increases, but many editing projects don’t call for hiring a full-time, professional editor. For example, a small business making its own commercial or a workshop creating a safety training video will likely aim to hire freelance editors for one-shot projects. Learning how to edit film can be a lucrative hobby since this freelance editing work allows you to work on smaller projects when you have the time and availability.

In addition, if you want to create your own content for platforms like YouTube or TikTok, learning how to edit videos can greatly increase the reach and impact of your content. Just a little editing training, even just taking a course in how to use the basics of Premiere Pro, can do wonders for the look and feel of your content. Your audience will feel this professionalism and attention, helping you stand out in a very crowded field. Plus, since editing is the act of adding meaning to raw footage, you can make your content more impactful with the aid of clever editing decisions. This is particularly true for platforms like TikTok, where the short video format and rapid consumption of content make standing out even more critical than on other platforms.

While the two are commonly taught together, video editing and motion graphics are not the same thing. However, at some smaller studios and in the context of freelance work, it is likely that one person or department will handle both aspects of the editing process. Video editing is, in short, the act of taking already existing footage and combining it into a single cohesive final project. Motion graphic design involves creating new effects and models in post-production to be included in the final project.

Motion graphics are more akin to VFX and digital special effects. Work that used to be done by practical effect artists is now done digitally, and this has greatly expanded the creative toolkit for motion graphics artists. They are responsible for everything from minor replacement effects, such as creating the display on a computer screen in post-production, to particle effects, explosions, muzzle fire, and other environmental effects to massive digital modeling work, such as the computer graphics work that transforms Andy Serkis from a man in a strange ball-covered suit into an ape (or whatever strange create Andy Serkis is playing this week). 

Video editing involves taking already created footage and content (including digital effects) and compiling them into a completed film project. They often work alongside digital effects artists and motion graphics designers, but their work is more focused on aligning and integrating those effects into a film. For instance, a digital effects artist will be responsible for creating the explosion effect that you see on screen, while a film editor will be the one who syncs up the digital explosion with a sound file to ensure that the unreal effect looks, feels, and sounds like it was real.

The major difference between the two fields in larger productions and studio settings is that film editing tends to be done by a single editor (or a single editor and their assistants), while motion graphics tends to be done by massive teams of artists and designers working tirelessly to complete the project. For instance, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy 3  was the work of 11 different VFX studios and credits 1,146 VFX artists working on the project in some capacity. These artists will often work on very specific aspects of the project, so while an editor will work on the entirety of a project, overseeing every aspect of the film editing process, a visual effects artist may only ever work on single complex models or even just individual aspects of those models (such as, in this example, making the hair on Bradley Cooper’s Rocket Raccoon look like moves realistically in the wind, despite there being neither a raccoon on screen or wind in the studio).

When it comes to learning video editing skills, most students will learn the trade in film school or as part of an apprenticeship working in a film studio. While these are both excellent ways to learn the ins and outs of film editing, they come with significant drawbacks. Film school can cost a significant amount of money, upwards of $100,000 in NYC. While trade-based apprenticeships are cheaper, they can still cost tens of thousands of dollars. In addition, learning professional editing in a film school often necessitates getting an MFA, which can take five or six years. If you want to learn professional skills in an accelerated environment, learning in a bootcamp or certificate program can significantly speed up the process and prepare you to start working in the industry immediately.

While film school can take years to complete, most bootcamps are immersive training programs that can be completed in only a few months (or even less time if you are only learning single applications). In addition, these programs tend to be significantly cheaper than film schools without sacrificing the depth of training. These bootcamps being accelerated means that the training will be more focused on developing career skills than on the history of editing as an art form. While you will learn about the essentials of montage and editing techniques, you won’t spend a semester watching 11 Hitchcock films to truly understand his particular editing vision. Since these programs are career-focused, you’ll get a lot of accelerated, hands-on training and work on real-world editing projects to ensure that you have a demo reel that demonstrates the skills you’ve learned. Bootcamps and certificate programs are a great alternative to film school for students who want an accelerated training program but don’t want to sacrifice the quality of the practical, career education.