For those of you who haven’t yet heard the news, there’s recently been an important change in TV terminology. Following a two year campaign by Directors UK and the Edit Producers’ Network, from now onwards the title of “edit producer” will be phased out, and will be entirely re-placed by the new title of “edit director”.
This might seem a bit strange and unnecessary, but there are two good reasons for the rebranding of this job. In the first place, the new title more accurately represents what the job entails. In the edit, the person who is working with the editor to create a story out of reams of footage is doing a creative, editorial role. They are not just managing the edit. Even if they haven’t been on the shoot, the new title recognises that they have artistic integrity and an important role to play in the story-telling process.
In the second place, only those who have the word “director” in their job description are entitled to any form of royalties. In calling ourselves “ed-it directors” we are now on par with “location directors”, “dv directors” and any other iteration of “director” who has worked on just one section of the production process. In situations where there is no one over-riding directorial voice working on all stages of the production process from pre-production to edit, then the “edit director” is now entitled to share royalties with any other directors who have worked on other parts of the project. For more information about this, contact Directors UK (details below).
When I first started directing in the edit, over 8 years ago, it was fairly niche. It mostly occurred on fast-turnaround daytime shows, or cookery series, and it wasn’t considered a particularly challenging or prestigious role. But over the years more and more series, especially within the factual entertainment genre, have realised that simultaneously using a team of directors on the ground, and a team of directors in the edit, can be an effective way of making a series. The splitting of the location and edit director roles has become more and more common, and skills in the edit have become more valued and more in demand.
There is a downside to this splitting of roles, however, and that is that location directing is a skill that is vastly improved from experience in the edit; only from seeing how footage is cut together can you learn what you need to get on a shoot to tell your story in the best possible way. Equally, if you are always in the edit and never on location, you can for-get how difficult it actually is to deal with contributors, the unpredicatabil-ity of location work, the challenge of trying to “manage” and capture re-ality. Directors UK and the now rebranded Edit Directors Network strongly believe in finding opportunities for location directors to learn about edit directing through training, work-shadowing and job opportuni-ties, so that even if roles are split on some productions that the direc-tors of the future will know how to work in both situations and stay skilled in the complex and multifaceted art of directing. DV Talent run training courses in directing the edit and at times it’s possible to get Skillset bursaries to attend these courses.
In the meantime, do update your CVs by changing your job titles to “edit director” where before you’ve written “edit producer”. And do help spread the word to talent managers, production managers and SPs about the change of title when you’re offered jobs, or given contracts etc. This will not affect the production company negatively in any way, and there is not expected to be any opposition to the change. But it will only happen with your help and not overnight.
For more information about Directors UK go here .
For more information about DV Talent's Edit Directing course, click here :
