WRITTEN BY SAM BUSEKRUS
ASSISTANT SOUND EDITOR/OFFICE MANAGER, BOOM BOX POST
My main reason in writing this post is to give some insight to college students/new graduates on what being an assistant editor looks like because I was in that spot not too long ago. If you don’t fall into this category, well, I hope you still want to know what my job is like! After interning at Boom Box in the summer of 2018, I knew that I wanted to work here. I was so excited to take over the roll of the person who was supervising me as an intern! I’ve now been in this position for over a year and feel like I can give you all there is to know about my job.
Essentially I have three major roles at Boom Box: assistant editor, office manager, and intern supervisor. You might be wondering how I can handle all of these things at once and to that I answer you, agreed. I don’t know how I do it either!!! Just kidding… it is manageable. Let me break it down for you:
Assistant Editor
Downloads/uploads- This is probably the most important part of my job because everyone at Boom Box relies on me for this aspect. Throughout my day, I will get emails from clients and our remote editors on materials to post to our server. From our clients, it will be picture, guide tracks, aafs, etc. From our editors, it will be editorial sessions. All of these things get posted to our server in organized folders for each team member for a particular show. I will then post on Slack to let everyone know that it’s been posted.
Spots/assemblies- For every show that I work on, I create both spots and assemblies. A spot is simply a PT session with the video and guide tracks to be used for the client spotting session. Once everyone has completed their editorial session for an episode with the client notes taken into account, then I take all of those sessions (dialogue, foley, and sound effects) and combine them into one session with the video. This session is then passed along to the supervising sound editor to prepare for the client preview. After the clients give preview notes, I then do the same process of combining all preview fix sessions to pass over for the predub!
Deliveries- Once we finish a mix, we need to send off these deliverables to our clients. For this, the other assistant editor, Tim, will create these deliverables and post them to Slack and let me know when they are available. I then grab them from the server and post for our clients.
BG editorial- One of the best parts of my job is being able to do some editing myself! On several shows, I do the background editorial. If you don’t know what BGs are or need a refresher, check out this blog we did.
Office Manager
Office supplies- I’m in charge of making sure we have the supplies that we need in the office. Whether that’s paper, tissues, or snacks, I am your gal. Perks of this are that I get to choose what snacks we have at the office! I do have my preferences ;). This can also be a fun aspect to make the office more enjoyable. For example, we have mini chalkboards outside every editorial room that each editor has decorated with their name!
Team events- To piggyback off making the office more enjoyable, we do like to have plenty of fun events to get everyone socializing and having a good time at work. Being stuck in a room all day editing and not really talking to anyone can get old at times, so we like to get everyone out of their caves to take a breather! I plan all team gatherings. Many of you have probably seen some of our lunch and learn blogs. We all get together for a catered lunch and then one person will give a lesson on a topic of their choosing. Another example is we do a tipsy day once a month where we enjoy a drink or two with some chips and salsa to kick back and relax.
Social Media- I hope that you guys have checked out our social media pages once or twice because I am in charge of all platforms!
Intern Supervisor
Hiring interns- I’m in charge of choosing applicants to interview for each internship term along with helping with the hiring process.
Intern calendar- We have a very organized internship program full of different lessons with our editors. You can check out our program in more detail on our website but a little rundown is that our interns get to meet one on one with our editors for various lessons such as sound design, foley editing, etc. I am in charge of scheduling all of these lessons and reviews with the editors and making sure they have enough time to complete each project.
Errands- Any errands that the interns need to run comes from me. Whether that’s going to buy a recording prop, setting up the mix stage food, etc.
Help the interns- My main goal of being their supervisor is to be able to help them in any way that I can. We really do appreciate our interns and want them to succeed. I’m there to answer any questions they may have and will do all I can to make the internship program worth their while.
If you are interested in our internship program, I suggest checking out this blog that I wrote about what it takes to be a good intern!
Bottom Line…
For those looking for an assistant position, I would say the job is full of a bunch of different tasks at once. If you can’t multitask then you probably won’t do well at this job. The key is to stay organized and write things down because you WILL forget something otherwise. The best part about this job is being involved in all areas of our editorial process. I get to see everything that is going on. I am ALWAYS learning so the best advice is to be a sponge and soak it all in!