Lauri Ahonen: My summer as an assistant editor

Huge array of feelings rushed through my head when I started my first practical training. A little bit of fear, excitement and secret dreams about a bright future which would open to me after this training.

Production assistants brought me discs from the set and they were arranged by episode in which they belonged to. My job was to check the filming reports if we really did have all the necessary discs. After that I put the material from the discs and in hard drives. It takes a lot of project management and management skills in general to keep such a huge amount of material in order. We had  tens of different hard drives and it was my job to keep in mind where all the different material could be found and to make backups of all the material.

My job was also to make a Final Cut project for each of the episodes. I named and synced all the material (the sound and the multicamera videos). Other editing assistant made a raw cut according to the script, and the episode would then be transfered to the editors. All in all, my job was basically to make the editors job as easy as possible.

When you’re doing your practical training you must be at your feet and do your job as well as you possibly can. Of course training is just training; it’s not wrong to make mistakes, but you must take the responsibility of those mistakes. I met great professional editors, made new friends, learned a huge amount of new things and got a job at the workplace after the training.

And the first time in my life I woke up every monday to the feeling of: “nice, I go to work today”.