- Film editors are the unsung heroes of the major motion picture industry.film image by saied shahinkiya from Fotolia.com
A quality film editor can make or a break a major motion picture. These artists turn scenes into story through clever splicing of film to coalesce into a director's vision of a given project. Film editors have certain rights to the work created in the process of making a major motion picture, which have been secured through unionizing and contract negotiations with film studios. - All film editors working in the motion picture industry have the right to join the Editors Guild. The Guild was created in 1937 to ensure the fair wages of film editors, sound editors and librarians, and today protects the rights and earnings of these artists and professionals across the country. Thanks to negotiations conducted by the Editor's Guild, major motion picture editors as of August 2009 earn as much as $2,800 per week of "on-call" work.
- Film editing is as much an art form as acting or directing and, as such, film editors have a right to the work each creates. The complete, edited film is a representation of the editor's creative choices while working with the film's director in order to effectively tell a story. Rights to the editor's performance are generally signed over to the producer of the film whereby the editor agrees that the finished film is the property of the producer (or studio) and may not be reproduced or recut without the film studio or producer's agreement.
- The majority of a film's post-production is conducted in the editing room with the film's editor and director. An editor has the right to voice his opinion and put his "stamp" on a film through the use of techniques he finds to be his strengths, though the final call on how the story is to be told through the camera rests with the director. In this, the editor must defer to the director's vision and cut the film to include the scenes and camera angles the director prefers.
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