Assistant Montaż: Getting In (and Getting Out)

To the general public—even to some inside our industry—the role of assistant editors is often misunderstood. Certainly when you compare it to the editors they assist. But even though assistant editors are essential to film and TV production, their contributions are typically unsung. And trust me, these contributions reach way beyond coffee fetching.

Start with the obvious

It’s stating the obvious, but assistant editors assist the editor . But what does that actually mean? These days it can mean preparing and culling footage, setting up computers and edit projects, creating first assembly edits, building the first pass on sound effects/music, taking the first go at all the VFX shots and yes, occasionally doing a coffee run.

It’s a lot. And because every editor works differently and every project presents its own set of requirements, the role has a lot of flex. Meaning the people doing it need to be just flexible.

But it wasn’t always like this.

(Not the) Same as it ever was

While the general mandate of assisting the editor has remained constant, the form has evolved. For years, being an assistant editor meant that you’d be in a room with the editor and a Moviola or a Steenbeck.

Steenbecks and Moviolas were the film-based editing machines that preceded modern day NLEs.

You’d work in tandem, laying in sound, physically cutting reels, and fetching actual film out of actual bins. And for a long time this was the only path to becoming an editor. So much so, unions in the states required a minimum of eight years as an assistant before you could be considered for an editor position. As evidenced by this quote from Bobbie O’Steen’s fantastic book “ Cut to the Chase ” where famed editor (and Bobbie’s late husband) Sam O’Steen has just been contacted about editing a feature film:

Jesus. I only had four years as an assistant and I needed eight years [the union rules required eight years of assisting before you co