Aurora's Blog

Oh my goodness! (Ahhhhh!)

After being in the edit chair for 3 weeks (and dying to tell you all about it), everything has officially gone through, and I can now talk here about being an editor! (Eeee!)

I loooooove my job. I love it. I love it so much.

I do the headlines editing at the show, which means that I edit the clips that roll in. You see something about Hillary Clinton, or Fox News, or any of that jazz on our show? Most likely, I was the one who edited that!

And I love it. I love everything about my job.

It’s the perfect mix of everything.

It’s the perfect mix of using the technical side of my brain with the creative side. In the montages, I have to try to get the comic timing right. (Well, I have to get the timing right with everything – not just montages.)

Sometimes I have to cover a shot with a different shot to make things flow better. There are all these little creative decisions.

And then there are all these technical elements – making sure I give the control room the correct amount of padding on both sides of the SOTs (that’s what we call the rolls – standing for Sound On Tape). I need to put the ticker and date in the correct place and have things fade off with the correct amount of time.

So, creativity + technical business = A+.

It’s also the perfect mix of working alone and working together.

In the morning, I sit with the (ever-changing) script and edit the rolls until the afternoon comes and a producer comes in to work with me. Then we all watch rehearsal and see how things play. And then we work on re-write. (Then I do some other while the show is happening and after. (We’ll get there soon.)

So, I get my alone focused time in the morning. I get my hands-on together time in the afternoon. It’s lovely!

Also, I hate to admit in writing that it’s actually sort of nice to have a work life balance – because I do love to live my job. (And goodness, I have in many ways done that haha.) But now as an editor, it’s actually a fairly normal schedule. And there comes a point where work is definitely over because the show airs that night. I feel like I get to go in in the morning, give the show my full heart and attention, and then leave it behind – because it’s going on the air. It’s a fantastic feeling (and indeed a pretty fabulous work/life balance).

I also love how every day brings something a little different.

I’ve had a day where I had to build two rolls. And I day where I had to build 19 – including some with special effects. There’ve been days with no re-write changes, and days where we build montages from scratch during re-write. You’re never exactly sure what you’re gonna get, and I just adore it.

I looove my job. I have found my perfect niche here, and I just love it. (Have I mentioned that part yet?)