What's a standby editor?
You’ve set up a production and the shooting goes smoothly.
Your edit teams are booked and ready to go.
Editor 1 starts, 2 weeks later Editor 2 starts and two weeks later editor 3 completes the edit team.
It’s all going to plan when all of a sudden…
It could be anything, an editor is taken sick, an edit falls behind schedule, the channel decides they want to go in a new direction
(usually 180 degrees to what was discussed…been there, got the T shirt)
Whatever it is you have to cope with it.
So, what do you do?
Book another editor?
For how long, a few days, a few weeks?
And available immediately!
It took ages to find the ones you have.
If you do find one, you have to get them up to speed, quickly.
They come in, the edit producer briefs them, they find all the sequences, they find all the bins…
You can wave goodbye to their first day…
and when they do finally get up to speed, your original editor’s back from sick leave…
Or the worst scenario, the channel decides, after seeing the first three rough cuts, to change the series direction.
Panic stations!
All the edit team’s workload has just been doubled!
If only you had an editor who knows the production and is guaranteed
to be available to ‘fill in’
It’s budgeted for one editor per show which is going to cost in the region of £10K.
A fourth, standby editor, will cost the production £600 per week.
If booked for the last 8 weeks of the edit schedule, when it's likely to be at it's busiest, that’s £4,800. Put another way, that's £800 per episode.
Is it not worth that for peace of mind?
I think most Producers an PM’s would say ’yes’.
If you’re not convinced, look at it this way.
You have a seasoned editor on standby, for the last 8 weeks, who knows the production because he's he's been onboard since the production began, knows the material and is up to date with the cuts, how they've been received by the channel and their notes. If the production feeds me 1.5 days work per week, you’ve recouped the money.
3 edits, 6 shows…12 days over 8 weeks…that is easily filled.
Just relieving one or more of the edits of Snaps-Ins, title seq, Instagram lifts, TikTok, Facebook and other social media lifts, international lifts and don’t forget the WOO’s.
If it’s taking the strain off of a team under pressure it could be; edit notes on a show or a part. Doing a sync assembly for a show that’s falling behind. Swapping music cues the channel aren’t fond of...
(that’s a real time suck)
It all eats up precious time of the edit schedule.
- book by the day or hour
- Book out the day or week/s for a small retainer fee
- Fee comes off the final editing bill
3 editors / 6 shows / staggered start / 2 weeks apart
16 weeks edit schedule from editor 1 starts through to editor 3's finish
Block booking for the last 8 weeks (£4k) as this is likely to be busiest period in the post schedule.