EDITING
You get what you pay for. Experience, talent, personality, availability, drive, committment, endurance, communication skills, patience, flexibility, timing, style, good taste, a sense of humor and lots of hard drive space. These are all things a good editor should have. Alcohol & tissues are some other items, not required, but frequently requested. So audition your editor like you would your DP or Actors because ultimately the Editor is the one responsible for the tedious work of finishing a project. Editing is completing a marathon. The race started weeks or even months ago. Everyone on the production team is beat up and ready to quit filmmaking and reconsider a career selling real estate (ie, tired, scared and running out of money). A professional editor knows this and uses it to lull a director into his confidence and then blackmail and extort his potential victims... just kidding.
You need to have studied film, cut film and been in the trenches making films in order to know how to piece together a compelling story. Then there's the sound issues... and there are ALWAYS those goddamned sound issues! I won't get too into it, but let's just say that an editor worth his salt must know ahead of time that the details glossed over on the set come to a head at his desk on a monitor with everyone staring at the footage wondering what went wrong. A good editor expects this, works with it and somehow makes it work. Since I work freelance, I pretty much have seen it all at one time or another. I edit on an APPLE G5 2.5 Ghz Dual Processor using Final Cut Pro 5, Motion 2, LiveType 15, Photoshop 29, and a few other tricks here and there that sound real impressive to people like parents and small children. Yes, you can now edit feature films in the comfort of your boudoir for a modest investment of about fifty grand in equipment and years of endless training to keep up with the technology, while always remembering where things came from (ahh the days of the Steenbeck and Moviola). You can also edit things like:
I'll edit whatever -- But always remember this:
Editing is about pacing, rhythym, economy, style and story. Titling is about graphic design and tedious animation work that makes you go blind with the fear.