WHERE TO FIND A GOOD VIDEO EDITOR
So you’ve finished filming a project - maybe that’s a short film, a feature film, a corporate video, a commercial, or even your grandmother’s belated happy birthday video (because you forgot to get her an actual present) - and now you need an editor. Congratulations, you’ve entered what I call - the Dungeon.
Dungeon (noun): The shitshow that is post-production.
Before you can even consider how to hire the right video editor for your project, you need to know where to look for them. This may sound easy, you just type “video editor for hire” into google right? The problem is, when you search for that you’ll find a bunch of sponsored services that guarantee they have the perfect editor for you and it can be hard to distinguish which ones are legit and actually worth giving your money to.
So in this blog post, I’m going to cut through the BS and point out, from an editor’s perspective, where you’re most likely to find a high quality editor for a price point that works for you.
Personal referrals
I know I know, this one is probably pretty obvious and you don’t need some nerd in a dungeon to write about it, but I do want to emphasize the efficiency of this method.
There are a lot of nuances that go into what makes an editor a good fit for you outside of the final result - for example, are they easy to work with? Does their communication style jive with yours? Are they willing to do multiple revisions of an edit or are they one-and-doners? You may find an editor with an amazing portfolio and demo reel, but if you don’t know how they are to work with, you always risk not getting the experience you wish for.
That’s where the power of referrals comes in.
If you are able to reach out to your network and ask if anybody has worked with an editor that they would recommend, any recommendation you get is likely to be an editor that will produce high quality work and be pleasant to work with. Otherwise, they likely wouldn’t have been recommended to you (unless they were recommended by your arch-nemesis who wants you to crash and burn, but I doubt it).
Linkedin - 2nd Degree Connections
If you reach out to your network and nobody gives you any editor recommendations, then you’re going to have to do some digging - as I said, welcome to the dungeon.
Your next best bet would be to go on LinkedIn to see if anybody in your network has a connection with an editor. This may seem redundant if you’ve already reached out to people you know and didn’t get any recs but, firstly, there’s no way you reached out to all the people you have in your LinkedIn network - my guess is you may have asked 10 people tops. Secondly, just because someone may not think they know an editor doesn’t mean they don’t actually know one. They may have forgotten about somebody or are just not aware that somebody they used to know is now a kickass editor.
LinkedIn can help you find that forgotten badass. That’s of course if you have a LinkedIn account. If you don’t, you probably already skipped over this section but if you didn’t - I’d suggest getting one as it can be a useful tool in these scenarios. And to stalk your old high school classmates.
To find that editor, log into your LinkedIn account and then in the search bar at the top look up “video editor.”
Then, in the top left filter, toggle down to “people.”
LinkedIn will start showing you any video editors you share some connections with. I would suggest looking for editors with whom you share a 2nd degree connection (meaning you both have a connection in common).
If there are multiple 2nd degree editors that show up, go through each of their profiles to determine which one you feel would be the best fit for what you’re looking for. Their profiles will not only list their work history but their websites will often be linked, so be sure to review their websites to get a more detailed overview of their work.
Once you land on the editor you think would be the best fit, then go ahead and reach out to them - either through LinkedIn directly (if you have a Premium membership) or through their website. If you contact them outside of LinkedIn, be sure to explain that you found them through your mutual connection - it will help establish a sense of familiarity.
When writing this post, I’ve been debating whether you should reach out to your connection first before reaching out to the editor. Ultimately, from an editor’s perspective, I don’t think it matters. While reaching out to your connection can always be helpful to assess whether or not the editor is somebody they know well and would vouch for, you don’t need them to introduce you to the editor. In a digital world, it’s pretty commonplace for people to reach out to strangers, and if you’re an editor looking for work, it’s always welcome to receive a work inquiry.
Staff Me Up and Upwork
As far as job listing sites go, Staff Me Up and Upwork are where you’re likely to find the highest quality editors.
What you need to do is create a job listing where you describe the project details, and I would suggest including the qualifications that an ideal candidate would have, which will depend on what type of project it is. For example, if you need an editor for a short film, an ideal candidate would be an editor with extensive short film experience. Or if you need a cooking video edited, an editor who has had experience editing cooking or similar lifestyle content would be ideal.
The point here is, not all projects would be the best fit for all editors, and sites like Staff Me Up and Upwork can help you find the right candidate for the job. Editors will see your listing and those who feel like their qualifications match what you’re looking for will apply. Then you can check out all of their profiles and see who you think would be the best fit.
When creating the listing, be sure to state the price or price range you’re willing to pay, to make sure you don’t invite folks who are way out of your budget.
And before selecting a candidate, conduct interviews with your top picks so that you can find somebody who’s not only qualified, but a good personality fit. In another blog post, I’ll dig into some questions you can ask when hiring editors to help you make this decision.
Fiverr
Fiverr is another popular platform where you can find editors, but there is a caveat.
The way Fiverr works is the reverse of Staff Me Up and Upwork. Instead of having potential freelancers submit to you, you have to go find what you’re looking for.
When you go to Fiverr, they have a big old search bar that says “Search for any service…”
Pro tip, don’t bother typing in “dry cleaning pickup” - they don’t have it.
Instead of typing in “video editor” I would suggest adding the type of video editor you need. For example “short film video editor” - this will help narrow the search.
Fiverr will then give you a bunch of editors to choose from. Each editor will have a profile, here are some of the things you’ll see on them:
All editing services they offer (called “gigs” on Fiverr)
Work samples of their choosing
Previous client reviews
Pricing packages
What are these mysterious pricing packages? They’re different pricing tiers that offer different levels of the same service.
For example - when I was first starting out as an editor, I was on Fiverr and the editing “gig” I offered was “Actor Demo Reel Editing.” As you can see below, I had 3 pricing packages.
My Fiverr pricing packages - prices are now shown in this screenshot
My “Basic” package was an industry-standard demo reel, with a simple title card and 2 revisions. I charged $50 for that at the time.
Then, if you paid $70, you got my “Standard” package where I added an extra revision along with a custom thumbnail, lower third graphics, and audio mixing.
For $90, you were the real deal with my “Premium” package where I gave you unlimited revisions, color grading, music/sound design, exports for social media, and the original project file.
This flexible pricing system is unique to Fiverr, and certainly valuable because you can make sure you’re paying for the exact service you need and not for anything that may not be necessary for your specific project.
You’ll also be able to see how quickly the editor will be able to deliver the project to you because, as you can see in the image above, their expected turnaround times are listed in their gigs - and Fiverr holds them to that deadline.
Once you’ve decided on your Fiverr editor, the hiring process is immediate. You place the order, and the editor will deliver the video to you by the deadline. The whole process is kind of akin to buying a product from Amazon.
Now, at first glance this may all seem like a pretty good option, and it can definitely be. The main risk you run when hiring somebody off Fiverr, is that it can be difficult to tell if the final result is going to be any good or not. Sure, there’s a review section where you can see how satisfied previous customers were, but those reviews can always be planted by the freelancer. And, because the freelancer gets to set their own price, the freelancer who gets booked the most is often the one with the lowest prices and quickest turnaround times. So the platform kind of incentivises cheap and fast labor, which almost certainly means that the quality of the product will be affected. It’s the McDonald’s style of video editing.
This is not to say that those editors aren’t good. It’s just that, because cheap prices and speed are often most attractive to buyers, the editors are forced to lowball their rates to get orders and prioritize speed over quality. It’s the classic saying: between fast, cheap and good - you need to pick two, you can’t have all three.
Of course, there are also editors on Fiverr who are not willing to play the fast and cheap game, but the reality is they’re likely to get less overall orders, so they’ll have a slimmer body of work and less reviews to go through to assess whether or not they deliver on what they charge (and, once again, reviews are not always legitimate). And unfortunately, Fiverr doesn’t allow freelancers to post links to their website or any external portfolio - so it can be very difficult to tell if they’re any good or not. So I think, at that point, you’re better off finding an editor through one of the above channels.
Now look, there are definitely some project types for which choosing a Fiverr editor would make a lot of sense, otherwise it wouldn’t be included in this list. But, in my opinion, these would be small short-term projects for which you need a fast and cheap turnaround where the quality of the edit may not matter too much. Projects that come to mind would be:
Vertical social media videos (IG, TikTok - for these sites, less precise edits are usually acceptable and can even be part of the style)
Simple talking-head videos (you see these on Youtube a lot - videos where it’s a person talking to the camera, and the editor’s job is often to cut out the mistakes or the “fluff” and add some B roll and music - most editors will be able to give you a serviceable edit for this quickly and cheaply).
For one-off projects like these, save yourself the headache of posting a job listing and just pick an editor of your choice on Fiverr to get your project done as fast as possible. But if the project requires more time, nuance and attention to detail, I would suggest finding an editor through either a referral, LinkedIn, Staff Me Up or Upwork.
