Transcripts
1. Introduction: Finding success as a freelance
editor is as much about your tastes and your
instincts as it is about the technical knowledge
and program experience. Since I've adopted that mindset, the growth that I've seen in my career is more than I
ever would have expected. My name is Ryan Kao and I'm a freelance video editor
and cinematographer. You may have seen some of
my work on YouTube where I have a channel talking
all about cinematography, video creation, kind of my entire journey as a freelancer. I regularly create
branded content for companies like Nike, Jordan, Adidas, and as of more recently, have been getting
into documentary and narrative filmmaking. In this class, I
want to take you guys on a deep dive of what it's like to be a freelance video
editor in today's industry. I want to take you through
the tools, the definitions, the must-knows to building a
successful freelance career. Talk about some of the mistakes, some of the common pitfalls
that I see editors make, and most importantly,
I want to give you some ways that you can help
define success for yourself. I hope that walking
away from this class, you are left with a more realistic understanding of the freelance industry, some general tools that will be absolutely critical with
regards to communicating, to developing strong
client relationships, and hopefully just
a better sense of what you want to
do with your career. I couldn't be more excited that you are here.
Let's dive in.
2. Going Freelance: As an editor, you
are effectively a professional puzzle
builder or solver. This job comes with
a high demand for on-the-fly problem-solving, excellent organization skills, a diverse understanding of various video
formats and styles, and most importantly,
a strong work ethic. In many ways, editing is
as much about tastes and instincts as it is about your technical knowledge
or program experience. Being six years
into my career as a freelance video editor
and cinematographer, I can honestly say
there have been more unexpected roadblocks and hard-learned lessons in both my professional
and personal life that I ever would have
imagined possible. I've worked with many
of my dream clients, I've cultivated a
creative community of over 200,000 incredible people, I've traveled the world
getting to do what I love. But along the way I've learned some incredibly
pivotal things that have shaped my career
into what it is today. So in today's class, I want to take you
guys through some of the mistakes and the sticking
points that I learned and hopefully equipped you with
the tools that you need to start a successful career
as a freelance editor. I think understanding
the root of what type of an editor
you are can really help you to grow past a lot of challenges and a lot
of sticking points that you're likely to face. From my perspective, there are fundamentally three
types of video editors. In all likelihood, you'll probably touch all
of these throughout your career and
there's certainly great benefit to being
multifaceted with all of them. But the most successful
editors, more often than not, tend to be quantified as
one of these specifically. The first type of
editor I like to refer to as a content editor. Now this is generally going to be a person who is doing work, whether it's social media, it's usually
delivered to the web. That might be content
for yourself, it might be content for
somebody else's personal brand. This is usually going
to be short-form work that doesn't typically
have a lot of involvement in the
pre-production process or a lot of significant
story elements. The next type of editor
are commercial editors. Now when I say commercial, I don't literally mean like a video that's airing
on television. But more broad in the sense of purposefully marketed and
strategized video content that is on behalf of a brand, something that exists
in the world in the form of marketing or
pushing a product or a service. This can be a huge
range of things and it can be content that
lives on social media, but it's ad spots,
it's music videos, it could even be branded
documentary work. The final type of editor, narrative editors, I think this one's a little
self-explanatory. This is generally
going to be people who are working on
feature-length content, whether it's narrative films,
whether it's documentaries. Generally speaking, this is
going to be content with a heavy emphasis on dialogue
and character development. So before moving on, if you
take a look in the workbook, we have a table to help identify what type
of editor you are. Place some checks next to some of those qualities
to help determine what type of editor
you currently are or you are
aspiring to become. Before jumping in here, let's talk about some of
the mistakes and the common pitfalls that I see a lot of
entry-level editors in. The first of which being
a lack of diversity in the work that you initially
chose to take on. In the early years of
my freelance career, there was this trend that was
happening on social media, there were these things
called cinemagraphs , maybe you've seen them. Basically it's a still image and there's a portion of it that's animated or has motion. So maybe think of a still
image of a waterfall, but the water would be moving. I always thought this trend was not that exciting
or interesting, so I never really
decided to try it. Well, fast forward a little
bit and wouldn't you know it, I was approached by a brand, pretty big brand
Fitbit actually, to do a campaign for an ad that they wanted
to do for 4th of July, and they wanted to
create a cinemagraph. Well, I didn't have anything in my portfolio
to show for that and so because of that
lack of interest in trying these new things as an editor, I didn't
get that job. That was definitely pretty disheartening because
that would have been probably one of the more
substantial projects I would have gotten
at that time. It's important to
start somewhere to broaden your skill set and try different
things as an editor. Eventually, you'll come to the point where you
decide to niche down. But that experience
and diversity is so critical in
those early years. A couple of ways you
can go about doing this is maybe accept a couple
of jobs at a lower rate. Even doing some stuff for
free is never a bad thing. Or in some cases, you could
even just do spec work, maybe just trying
to find a trend of something that you see
on social or a type of ad and try and mock
it up with some of your own footage or existing
footage from a past project. The next mistake, not practicing on your own
time on a regular basis. It can become easy to let the
editing be a day job once you start earning that
consistent paycheck and making regular
income with projects, it's a really great
level to hit. But at the end of
the day, so much of what we do heavily relies on our own personal
creative identity and just general personal happiness to fuel the stories
that we create. The next mistake, having unrefined communication
skills or an ability to explain your decision-making in
your creative process. Simply put, if you're not able
to communicate your ideas, to be able to explain why a certain thing might work
for a project to a client, but this other component
might not work, that's going to severely
hold you back in your ability to take on
bigger and bigger jobs. The next not often seeking or even difficulty receiving
feedback from your peers, from mentors, or even clients. If you're somebody who
struggles with feeling really personally tied to
some things that you create, and you have a hard time hearing sometimes negative feedback from a peer or a mentor or a client addressing that early on
and figuring out how to see the positive criticism
in the work that you create will help you so
much in the long run. At the end of the
day, so much of what we do is very personal. But being able to disassociate that personal
connection and just actively take criticism
from external sources, will only help you to improve. The final mistake, not expanding your creative network and I mean this in a variety
of different ways. For one, if we're thinking about how we can learn and
actively improve, having a circle around you
who is encouraging you, who is creating work on a regular basis
that's inspiring you. But also people who are giving you that
feedback and criticism. That circle can help to cultivate
stronger relationships. It can help you to
develop a better sense of confidence within
your own work. More often than not, when you do develop those
relationships, they can oftentimes
help you find clients. Word of mouth is
such a strong thing when it comes to editors. Ironically, even though most
of what we do is online, but just being close and cultivating
strong relationships, the other people
in the industry, even beyond just editors, maybe it's shooters, maybe it's producers,
directors, writers. Those relationships
can ultimately be what will help
your career to thrive and to grow beyond what you're able to do
solely on your own. Look a lot of those
mistakes, they're not fun, we've all probably made them
or are actively making them. But I want to flip things around a little bit and talk a
little more positively and talk about some traits
that you may have already that lend themselves well to
professional video editing. The first one being
a proficiency in a wide range of software
and technology. I think it's no surprise
that as editors we generally have to
be very familiar with our primary
editing program. But you'll find that there's going to be a lot
of situations where maybe you need to
pop into Photoshop to quickly edit a
photo or a logo. Maybe there's a
scenario where you need to be able to work within a spreadsheet to help fill out a project management board of some sort or a
pre-production board. Being comfortable
in a variety of different applications
even being comfortable in two different types of video editing applications is an incredibly important
attribute as a video editor. The next one, having natural
storytelling skills, basically just your ability to understand
narrative structures, to understand plots and
emotions, and pacing. Being a regular movie
watcher certainly helps. Or maybe you are one of those people in school
that really liked to read, or maybe you were really into English or literature
or something like that. These are all different traits that can really lend themselves to understanding and navigating projects
as a video editor. Our next one, time management. Let's face it, some of
us are very good at sticking to a rigid schedule
and some of us aren't. I definitely have
had my fair share of experiences of
poor time management. As a freelancer, you are
effectively your own boss. You're generally responsible for organizing your schedule, so being able to
accurately assess how much work time you need to complete a
certain project, how much time it's going to
take you to get ready for prepping this project before
going into final delivery. All of these things
are so important and this punctuality is
absolutely something that will get you
recognized by clients. The final point is just
simply adaptability. Earlier you heard me talk a
little bit about how this job calls for being an
on-the-fly problem solver. There's going to be
so many situations in the freelancing workflow and lifestyle that you might
run into small issues. Maybe you need to
source footage from a weird location on a
website or off the cloud. You're dealing with slow Wi-Fi, you're dealing with
external family issues as you're working remotely, being able to manage
those emotions and those awkward situations
that don't necessarily fit in the job
description as an editor is so valuable and
absolutely will get you a little bit
more credibility and trust within the
client relationships that you're likely to encounter. After all of these mistakes and these different attributes
that we've talked about in your cases workbooks, maybe mark down a few of your own personal
strengths that you think lend itself well
to being an editor, and maybe what are some of the challenges that you faced or the more difficult
things that you have a harder time managing that
you'd like to work on? Now that we've talked
through some of the general lay of the land
of Freelance Editor 101, let's jump into our next lesson, which is talking about some
of the must-know tools and definitions that you're going to encounter as an editor. See
you guys in the next lesson.
3. Decoding Editing Definitions and Terms: So to get ourselves
prepared to tackle the landscape of freelancing in the post production world, I want to take you
guys through some of my must know terms and tools; kind of specifically
technical definitions and also client facing
definitions that you're absolutely going to need to know to at least get
the conversation started with potential clients or collaborating
with other editors. Our first technical
definition, time code. This is funny enough, kind of a scary one
and certainly one I wasn't comfortable with
for quite some time. It's a lot of numbers, but all it really is
specific data source that both a camera and a sound file can hold that can allow
them to sync together. I'm sure you've had to
do it at one point. Syncing audio and video. More or less it's a headache. Time code simply
just solves this. This is super
important, obviously, if you're working in longer narrative projects
where there's a lot of separate recorded
sound and video files. Time code takes all
of the guesswork out of all of that and can
align everything for you. The next one, proxies. You're more than likely at some point going to use
these as an editor. Let's say you're working
on a project that was shot on a camera that has raw
recording capabilities. The file sizes are
massive and maybe your computer isn't capable
of editing those files. Proxies are essentially
a reduced resolution, much easier to edit copy
of those video files. If you're sending stuff
to video editors and they don't need all of
that original data, then proxies are a great
solution for this. Our next term selects, and think of these
basically just like pulling the best parts
of a video clip, the most usable sections. Usually what a lot of people
do to get these selects is you would go into your
source viewer in your editor, set an in and outpoint of
that clip and drag that in. That is essentially your select. Our next term kind
of nicely segues from selects and
these are stringouts. Stringouts are basically
just a rendered time line of all of your best footage. It can also be just all of the footage onto a
singular timeline, but then that is exported as one long video clip and
usually sent to a client. More often than not, you do this with things
like interviews. Lay in all of the
interview footage, the client can then view
that as one big long file, pull timestamps, notes,
any feedback that they might have relative to that footage to then
share back to you. It's basically just
a simple way to share a batch of footage, whether it's your selects or your master footage with
the client for review. For our last
technical term, XMLs. If you end up collaborating
with other video editors or you're sending a project for somebody to add sound design, XMLs are something
you're going to use. In a way, it is a
universal file for you to share your timelines
with other editors. Of course, if you're
working inside of a program like Premiere and your other
collaborative editor is also working in Premiere, it's simple enough to be able
to share a project file. But if you're working between multiple programs, XMLs are, again, like a universal language to be able to share
those timelines. Now that we've
gotten through some of those technical terms, let's switch gears a little
bit and talk about some of the client facing
terms and definitions. Things that you're going
to have to know and understand when
you're approaching a client or a new project. Our first one, scope of work. This effectively serves as a high level outline
of the project, all the expectations
and responsibilities. This is where you're
generally going to see things like your
rate, the timeline, the number of deliverables, and general production
related info or deadlines. Even things like rights and
usage or payment schedules. Think of this as
just a master guide as to what you will be
doing in that project, how you'll be
compensated for it, what your responsibilities are, and what the client is going
to be doing on their end. The next term while can
sometimes be confused with scope of work is be creative
brief or treatment. This is the document that
you're actually going to get, the creative behind what you're going to
execute as an editor. You'll generally receive this in the form of something like a Google Doc or sometimes
a slides presentation, or sometimes just written
in the body of an email. But you'll find things like references to past videos that
the client's looking for. Kind of a general write up of the expectations of what they're looking to
achieve within the edit, maybe resources to the
different footage. Of course, there's likely to be some back and forth
communication on some of these
creative details, but this brief or this treatment usually
serves as the North Star, kind of the reference that
you will be going back to throughout the
life of the project. This next one, it's
not exactly fun, but we all got to deal
with them, revisions. Once you finish an
edit and you turn over a project to a client, they're going to have feedback. Now it's important
that we are again, able to receive
that feedback and interpret their notes
and ask good questions. They're basically going to ask you to adjust
certain things. Maybe remove a shot,
maybe we want to adjust the timing of a certain
clip or change some logos. These revisions can
sometimes be significant, can sometimes be very small. But going through
this revision process and knowing how
to communicate on all of these revisions is definitely something that
we need to know as editors. So now that we've
gone through some of these must know
definitions in terms, let's jump into our next lesson
and talk through some of the first actionable steps to becoming a freelance
video editor.
4. Choosing Your Editing Rate: All the terms aside,
let's get into what you guys are probably
most interested in. The numbers, rates specifically, are probably one of the
more confusing parts of freelancing in
basically any part of the video
production industry. It all depends on various
things like skill level, general experience,
the type of project, and even your location. To get started, an
entry level editor, somebody who's just getting familiar with the
process of editing. They're still understanding
the program and learning a little bit more each
project they take on. These people will likely
see somewhere in the range of 20 to maybe $50 an hour, or about 150 to maybe
$500 per project. These are going to be things
like small social edits. Maybe you're just
quickly cutting together a little
montage with some music. Maybe you're adding logos to the front and
back of a video, maybe even subtitles on a long interview or
something of that nature. This is generally
going to be people who are doing that
content editing. Our next step would
be mid level editors. These are people with generally at least a few years
of experience. They're probably
pretty proficient in the video editing
programs and will likely be taking
on work that has a little bit more strategy
in marketing behind them. These guys can probably
expect somewhere in the range of 50 to $100 an hour, or about 500 to maybe
$5,000 per project. These are things like
low budget commercials, maybe music videos, small
short films, or branded work. Finally, our highly
skilled video editors. These are veteran
people who have been working in the industry
for a number of years. They're very proficient in
various forms of editing. These are generally going to be more complex projects with more people involved in
the production process. Usually you're working
with a producer, a director, maybe even a writer. Once you reach that level of
highly skilled editing where you're working with
a lot of people in your post-production process, it's pretty unlikely that
you'll be billing or quoting, or bidding on projects
with an hourly rate. Generally, it's going to be a day rate or a project
rate somewhere in the range of 5,000 to even 20,000
and above per project. Once you get in
and get your rate established and where you fall
in that tier as an editor, of course, there are going
to be things that you will charge outside of
beyond your normal rate. This could be things like
rush jobs or rush fees, or maybe there's
more revisions than was initially quoted
in your scope of work. These are all things that
you definitely need to understand and be able to
discuss openly with a client. Keep in mind, it may
make sense to charge different clients
different amounts depending on the project. I think it's
important to look at the differences
between quoting for an hourly rate versus a day
rate versus a project rate. Hourly rates I think
makes sense if you're doing these small
one off jobs where, again, maybe you're just
adding subtitles to a video. Maybe you're just quickly
cutting out some of the dead spaces in a long take. This is stuff that will maybe
take you a couple of hours, and so in these instances, an hourly rate will probably make sense for you
and for the client. For projects more complex beyond just a few hours of work
can sometimes be a little bit difficult to quantify the exact amount of time that it will take
you in a given day. For a general rule of
thumb in these cases, I like to charge a day rate. The reason being is that it can sometimes be a little
bit challenging to quantify the exact amount of work time that goes into
a project in a given day, and so a day rate is a safe way to quote for
these types of projects. Now to take it a step further, if a project requires
an extensive amount of involvement from you in the
pre-production process, or even the creative direction, then in these cases, it may make more sense to quote for the project as a whole. This can help you to account
for that time that may extend outside of the general
tasks as a video editor. But of course, when
it comes to rates, there's not really a one
size fits all solution. It would be great to have
a perfect calculator that works for every project and
how much you've charged. But being a
successful freelancer really does rely on your
ability to communicate with the project and
help them to establish their needs and what we can
do within their budget.
5. Getting Started: Now that we've gotten through the little bit more mundane, nitty gritty terms about
the freelance editor 101, let's get to the
more exciting part, the actionable steps that
you guys can take even today to start your journey
as a freelance video editor. The first one of course,
simply make it known. If your goal is to be a video editor and begin
getting paid jobs but there's nothing out
there that's pointing to or saying that you
are a video editor, how do you expect to
find any clients? This would be like having an amazing restaurant
on a busy road, but with no branding or signage on the
front of the building, people would just
walk right past without ever knowing
it was there. Sharing that you're an editor
can be as simple as just posting a project on
your social media. It can be a personal
or a paid project. An important thing to
consider here though, is that if a website
is where you primarily choose to share
your work as an editor, the fact of the matter is that the visibility and
searchability of your site versus the reach that
you can receive on social media platforms just
simply doesn't even compare. Take something that
you've created, again, it can be a
personal project, it doesn't have to
be a client project, and post it on one
of those platforms, maybe like Instagram,
YouTube, even Twitter. These are all great outlets for you to share your
work and make it publicly known to the world that you're a video editor and
you're looking for work. The next step, develop a strong
habit of experimentation. Spend less time researching
and more time doing. This experimentation is the fuel that will continue to help you evolve and grow and refine
your style as a video editor. A good way to approach
this is to try and create something for
yourself at least once a month, or just come up
with some schedule for you to create
content for yourself. If this started as
a passion for you, then this habit will
help you to keep that personal connection
and keep it thriving and not turning into a day job
that you'll burn out from. If it's purely a career
opportunity for you, this is still a hugely
beneficial practice, and at the end of
all of it can help you to avoid niching
down prematurely. While niching down
can certainly have some pretty distinct advantages in a saturated video market, doing so prematurely can have some pretty
significant drawbacks. The first of which being an increased potential
for burnout. Simply put, doing a
repetitive type of work or a certain type of
project on a regular basis, while can yield a
consistent paycheck, it can rob you of that
excitement and creativity to continue growing and might put you in a bit of a creative rut. Niching down can also lead to a plateau in
skill development. A good editor should be versatile and
constantly adapting to the new genres and video formats and allowing their style to grow and change. Finally, it may create limited
networking opportunities. Niching down puts you in a particular type
of work and you're generally going to
be working with the same people on
a regular basis. This certainly makes
the workflow easier, but this will limit you in your opportunities to discover
new potential clients, new projects, or even
just inspiration from other types of work. This leads me into my
next actionable step, which is to expand
your creative network. Learn from as many
people as you can. But let's face it,
it's not exactly easy to go about collaborating
with new creators, reaching out to people
for advice or guidance, so here's a few steps to
help you in that process. First, research and discover. Take a day to spend
some time looking for other freelancers in
your creative field. YouTube and Instagram are
both great places to do this. Find creators and
brands who align with your current tastes and
the goals within your work. While initially it
may seem practical to search for just
strictly video editors, it's hugely important to find other people in the video production process
to learn from. You can look for video shooters, maybe even producers
or directors. The best editors are
ones who are generally familiar with all aspects
of a videos production, and so having a
network of people to learn from in each
of those roles can help you to expand
that network and be able to learn more and
share that knowledge. When you're discovering
new people, it's important to be mindful
of reaching out to creators who might be a bit less
accessible. It's tempting. You come across those
incredible creators that are big in the industry, they're well known
for what they do, they're posting incredible work. The truth is that
those people are usually dealing with
hundreds of messages a day, they're dealing with
client communication, they're working on
active projects, and so sometimes maybe you sent them a message and
you didn't get a response. Just because they didn't get back to you doesn't
mean that they aren't interested in
chatting with you about what you're looking
to talk with them about. Sometimes it just means that they are a little bit too busy. In order to go about
this more effectively, try and find people who
are maybe more close to your current skill
level or even just a little bit higher than
where you're at now. More often than not, dropping
a message with those people is a better way to potentially
start a new conversation. An important thing
here to remember is be mindful about what you're trying to reach
out to them about. Keep in mind that everybody
has a busy schedule. I've found that maybe even just dropping a comment
about something they're working on relating to
something they're doing or giving them some praise on a project that
they just shared. Things like that, responses
and messages like that will definitely yield
a higher chance of you getting a response. From there, you can begin to open up that conversation
a little bit more. Maybe start asking some
more specific questions or advice about your own work. One little trick that I've found in my years of doing this is find people and reach out to people
who are local to you. Look, I get it, not everybody lives in a city with hundreds of people in the
creative industry like Los Angeles or New York
or something like that, but I think you'd
be surprised if you spend a little bit of time
researching your market, just how many other creators or editors there
may be out there. Being local to somebody not only is more beneficial
in the sense that you could possibly
work with them or help them out in
person in the future, but also it's just one way that you can relate
to another person. How you can start doing
this is of course maybe just location-specific
searches on social media. You can even use
Upwork and LinkedIn in to search for professionals
in your area. Then you could also go on Facebook groups or
meetup.com where you can find events that are usually specific to things that
we do as creators. If there's one that's about video editing or just
filmmaking as a whole, maybe see if you can
check it out and go meet some other people and build that creative
community around you. Now, learning from these new people that you're
reaching out to, as much as I'd like to say, here's the questions
you should ask, it's going to be different
for every situation. But I think more importantly, I want to talk about
some of the things you definitely shouldn't
ask somebody if you're reaching out
for the first time. The first one I think
would be finances or specifics on project rates. I think it's a little bit of
a difficult thing to talk about money and it's
certainly not a pleasant one, especially if
somebody's approaching you for the first time. I would probably avoid if
you want to know how much somebody was paid for an edit or how much the budget
was for that project, asking those types of
questions right off the bat. Now it may seem obvious, but also just don't
ask questions about people that you wouldn't
want asked about yourself. Don't ask them about religious
beliefs or politics, or family, or how long they've been working with
somebody in particular. Don't ask questions or send long technical messages that take a significant
amount of time to read. Again, keep things simple
and keep things digestible, just be mindful
of people's time. Our final actionable step is set your
professional goalposts. It may seem obvious to some, but starting your
journey as a freelancer, it's like getting in a car. If you don't have
an end destination and you just start driving, you will eventually run
out of gas at some point. Setting these
intentions early on, whether they're big or small, is one of the best ways
to establish a sense of direction and intention
behind your freelance career. In all reality, a
career goal post for just about everybody will likely have some amount of
financial motivation. Let's say your goal is to simply hit $5,000 a month in
consistent video work. That's great, but I think it's important to understand
the route why, and how to go about
achieving that goal. For me, in the earlier
years of my career, I definitely had a lot of financial marks that
I wanted to hit. But generally, I just
didn't have much of an understanding as to how I wanted to
achieve those things. Was it that I wanted to get
more respect in the industry, therefore taking on
higher-level projects? Was it that I wanted a
more consistent schedule? Was it that maybe I wanted retainer clients that I didn't have to find on a
month-to-month? Those have all changed and
evolved with me over time. In recent years, I've
found myself leaning more into the personal life
impact of these goalposts. How am I able to
manage a social life? How am I able to clock off
at a certain time every day? Once you have the why and the real meaning and
importance to you behind it, assigning a number
to that goal can be a lot simpler to achieve.
6. Defining Success: Hey, success can look different
for just about everyone. Everybody's journeys
are their own. But here are a few
marks of success and some questions that you can ask yourself to defining your own, meeting your financial goals. That's a huge one
for many people. One way that I've
quantified this in my own mind is the self-sustaining fire,
as I like to call it. In a way, if you think
about building a fire, you have to feed it kindling
in order to get it burning. That combined with air flow, and eventually it will burn on its own for
quite some time. Your career, in a way, can be compared to this. In the early phases,
you do have to do a lot of work to keep it
alive, to keep it burning. But once it gets to a point, you might be able to go hands
off and maintain clients on a month to month and
have consistent work with minimal effort in
that outreach process. To me, once I've
reached that point, and I'm bringing in enough
work on a consistent basis that's covering my
minimum monthly overhead, financially, that is my
mark for financial success. That being said, I do think we'd all be lying to ourselves
a little bit if we said that money wasn't a
motivating factor when it came to starting a career as a freelance
video editor. To give you guys a little bit of an insight to my
career evolution. When I first started,
maybe seven years ago, some of the first paid
editing jobs I had was editing logs for
other YouTubers. I think I was making
maybe $100 for a 10-minute video that took me probably three or
four days to edit. Fast-forward to now, I'm doing post-production
for some of the most well recognized
brand names in the world for well over
five figures per project. As you start finding
success as a freelancer, you start making more money,
getting consistent work. It's important to do so
in a way that's realistic and in a way that is sustainable
for you in the long run. Using that little bit of
extra time you had in a month to make just a little
bit more money might not be worth risking your reputation
and failing to deliver on a project because you're just that close to burning out. It's just as important
to know how to say no to a project as it is
to say yes to a project. But consider asking
yourself that question. What is financial
success to you? What do you hope to be able to earn out of your
freelance career? Success can also mean a certain amount of
work-life balance. How much are you able to do in a given week and still
maintain a personal life? To still be able to connect with your family, to
still have hobbies. Some people are
amazing at working 40, 50, 60 hour weeks. But some people need that
breathing room to stay creative and to stay motivated and determined to continue
with their career, so ask yourself that. What is a good balance for you? How many hours do you want
to work in a given week? When do you want us
to be able to say, I'm done working for today, and I'm going to do
things for myself now. Some other marks of success that you can
ask yourself might be, are you proud of the
work you're doing? Are you rooting for others
in your field to win? Are you spending time chasing fun and not just chasing
that next paycheck? Are you creating art
regularly for yourself? Maybe even spending time online without that anxious
fear of comparison, and instead,
comparing yourself to previous versions of
you instead of others. The question then becomes, is the work that you're doing
creatively satisfying you? Are you able to maintain a good personal work-life
balance in doing this, has the passion
become a day job? I think that once you're able to confidently answer these
questions for yourself, the doors really begin to open for the long term
trajectory of your career. There's so many ways that
we can define these things, but these are some great
starting places to help you figure out your definition
of success in your career.
7. Final Thoughts : That's it. We've made it through freelance
editor one on one. I hope you guys were able to get a little bit more of
an understanding of the landscape of the
video industry and maybe get a bit more confidence in taking on your career
as a freelance editor. I hope you guys check
out the workbook and maybe share some of your pages. Maybe some revelations
in the community page. Even meet some of the
other editors that might be here and have
some discussions If you want to dive deeper
into what it takes to become a successful
freelance editor, we've created a few
more amazing classes. Hope to see you guys there.