The world has changed and there´s a responsible for it: video communication. There´s not a single social media platform that doesn´t have the focus on video and mostly what are now called “shorts”, those 7 to 30 seconds long videos that used to be “vines”, and now have mutated into something else, something with much more uses, like selling stuff, but also relaying much more deep messages as the reach has never been so far and strong.
In fact, those social media platforms that didn´t add video in time, almost disappeared, or where severely hit by this impressive tsunami wave of new technologies, and on top of that wave, video soars like a only and quite daring king of everything. From TikTok to Instagram, and even the “old” Facebook, every single net is using video as one of the main forms of entertainment, allowing users to watch from the latest humor, to influencers, or even learn things with some interesting and well-designed tutorial videos.
All this content gets dispatched to thousands of millions of devices worldwide, to audiences from as little as 6 to 8 years old, and even to those people in the end of their lives. No matter who, there´s always something ready to be delivered in the form of video in these days, and of course the need for video editors is growing incredibly fast. In particular when in today´s world, the profession of an influencer is increasing in both numbers and the requirements from their audiences, as they can´t no longer rely on a few videos a month, they need to create content daily or at least 3-4 times a week.
What does a video editor do?
There´s no alternative when trying to create a vine, or short, without knowing at least a bit of video editing. Maybe an influencer has the talent to just record a video and have a good audience, but those cases are mostly reserved to people with great looks, or someone famous that suddenly finds a job in social media, but most of the “mortals” need to find another way to make their videos more interesting, and of course, video edition is the way.
As most of the experts in this field have quite a lot of experience in editing videos and video editing software, their job consists mainly in adding effects, making precise cuts and retakes, so the video goes on with multiple cuts and no one in the audience has any idea about it. This last point is becoming more necessary as the amount of time that the audience has an “attention spam”, is turning as short as anyone can guess, running from 10 or 15 seconds, to just a couple of minutes.
Videos longer than that will surely perish in today´s social media mandates. Maybe there´s a few platforms that might be a little more recipient to such longer content, as YouTube or maybe Facebook, but their target is much wider than the trending social media platforms today. If a new influencer, or just anyone trying to make a living out of social media, there´s no better way to do it than creating shorts and then jumping to something more complex as longer videos are.
The rates of a professional video editor
Of course in many cases having these services, the rates aren´t cheap, particularly if you are trying to hire a brilliant and senior video editor for a beginners short. But that is clearly overkill, in many cases if you are starting your career as a social media content creator, you can easily turn to a novice video editor, and maybe make a career together, growing in parallel as your popularity grow and you send them more clips to edit.
In other words, it´s best to know what you are asking for, and mainly to who? Since a great video editor will be able to create much more complex effects, which might be better to someone that has a career going on for quite some time, and are looking for ways to make their videos much more interesting. Considering it a great investment, as it might be buying a drone, and learning how to use it effectible to find another angles and great shots.
In terms of rates, and always setting prices in US dollars, the initial rate to edit a video for a novice editor is around 20 to 40 dollars for a short video, increasing as the requirements grow and the work turns more complicated. For a semi-senior editor, such rates start on 50 and run up to 100 dollars for every video edited, and might include animations, sequences montages, a polished portfolio and a great knowledge of videography and cinematography.
In the case of trying to hire the greatest hierarchy in the video editing line, called an expert editor or video producer, the rates start at 70 dollars, and can go as high as 200 dollars per video. But in exchange you might be able to create content that includes all that a semi-senior can do, and also including project and product management, live-action video editing and effects, as well as storyboarding and the possibility to include whiteboard video.
