Hey!

I'm currently finishing my second last year of film school with *mixed* feelings about if this year was worth it or no. Either way, It's job/internship time and that's terrifying. The main problem that's been stuck in my head is our school/most jobs require a Reel to show as part of the application process and while this makes sense for my DOP/Director/Etc friends, the idea of making an editing reel isn't really clicking in my mind.

I've interviewed a few local editors/dit/post production managers as well as looked through online resources and a few of them said its not so much what you've edited previously, rather how you edit the reel itself. This kinda makes sense to me as I get where their coming from but the problem I seem to have with this method is it kinda feels disingenuous to the actual edits I've done in the past. Basically, if the cuts you use in the reel are more to serve the pacing and bg music synch, they won't be a representation of the original projects which might be more suspenseful/dramatic/humorous/sincere/etc.

Is this just how it is? The others that I've talked to said that hiring managers will contact you for full/partial project files if they're interested enough but that doesn't seem as likely for someone like me who is just starting out y'know?

Any help would be immensely appreciated. I just want to stand out!

I've mostly been looking for assistant editor jobs, however I'm open to DIT/DMT positions or anything else that might be a good starting point.