How to hire a video editor, and what to send them

I have sat on both sides of this. Other studios hire me as their overflow editor, and I am the editor my own clients hire. The first month goes badly for the same three reasons every time, and none of them is talent: the brief was a sentence, the footage arrived as compressed copies from a chat app, and nobody said how many rounds of changes were included until round four. This post is the checklist I wish every new client worked through before sending me anything. I sell this service, so read what follows knowing that.

Decide what you are hiring before you look for who

"Video editor" covers three different jobs, and most of the frustration I see comes from hiring one while needing another.

The cutter. You film, they assemble. You give them footage and a shape, they return a finished cut with music, captions and your logo. This is what most people mean, and it is the cheapest to buy because the thinking has been done.

The editor who also directs. You film, but they tell you what to film first: the script, the shot list, where to stand. The edit is the second half of their job. This is the model I run for brands that film on a phone, and it is the one to hire if your footage keeps coming back "fine" rather than good, because the problem is upstream of the edit.

The producer. They bring a videographer, run the shoot day and edit afterwards. The most expensive, the most hands-off, and the right answer only if nobody in your business will ever hold a camera.

Write down which one you want. If you are not sure, the honest test is this: do you already have footage you are happy with that is sitting unedited? Then you need a cutter. Do you have a phone and no footage? You need the second one.

The brief: one page, before any footage

An editor can cut anything. What they cannot do is guess what you want and get it right at the first attempt. A brief that fits on one page saves a round of revisions on every piece that follows it. Mine asks for:

1. What the video is for. One sentence. "Get people who already follow us to book a consultation" is a brief. "Brand awareness" is not.
2. Where it will be posted, because the platform decides the shape. Instagram's own help page notes that reels over three minutes are not recommended to new audiences, so a reel for reach is under a minute and a long-form video is a different edit entirely. If the same footage has to serve YouTube and reels, say so, because the editor will frame and caption differently for each.
3. Length, as a range. "45 to 60 seconds" tells the editor where to be ruthless.
4. Two reference videos you like and one you do not, with a line on why. Pacing, caption style, music feel, how much of the person's face is on screen. The one you dislike is the more useful of the three.
5. The words you never use, and the words you always use. Every brand has both. An editor adding on-screen text will otherwise reach for the generic ones.
6. Brand files. Logo as a vector or a large transparent PNG, your colours as hex codes, your fonts or their names, and any guideline document. If you have none of this, say so plainly; a good editor would rather build a small consistent look than be sent a screenshot of your Instagram grid.
7. Who approves. One name. Two approvers with different taste is the most expensive thing you can add to an edit.

If you want to see what the brief turns into on my side, the video service page describes how a month runs, and the works page shows finished pieces built from exactly this kind of one-pager.

The files: send originals, through a folder, with the frame rate written down

This is where the most money is quietly wasted. Footage sent through a messaging app is recompressed on the way: smaller, softer, often lower resolution. The editor then grades and sharpens a copy of a copy, and the result looks like a phone video no matter how good the cut is. Send the original files, every time.

How to do it:

• Use a shared folder, not attachments. Google Drive, Dropbox, iCloud, Frame.io, anything that keeps the file intact and lets the editor download in one go. One folder per video, named with the date and the subject.
• Keep the takes you rejected. The take you did not like often has the one clean sentence the editor needs. Send everything, mark your favourites.
• Note the frame rate, or at least do not mix them. YouTube's upload guidance puts it plainly: content should be encoded and uploaded in the same frame rate it was recorded. An editor who receives 30 fps interviews and 60 fps b-roll can handle it, but a clip that changes frame rate inside itself, which a phone will do in low light if you let it, is a genuine problem. If you film on an iPhone, the filming post covers the settings that stop this.
• Expect large files. Apple's guide notes that higher resolutions and frame rates make larger files; in my experience a minute of 4K runs to a few hundred megabytes, and a shoot day adds up. That is normal. Do not downsize to make the upload faster.
• Send the music you have rights to, or say the editor should source it. Never send a track you heard on a reel and ask for "that one" unless you know it is cleared for a business account.
• Separate audio if you recorded any: the clip-on microphone file, the second-phone voice recording. Put it in the same folder with the same date.

A good editor will tell you what they want to receive back from you: usually an MP4 you can post anywhere. YouTube's recommended settings are a standard MP4 with H.264 video and AAC audio, and any editor working today will deliver that by default, in every aspect ratio you post in.

The terms: agree these before the first cut, in writing

None of this needs a lawyer. It needs one email that both of you can find later.

Revision rounds. Agree a number per piece. Two is the figure I see most and the one I work to: the first round is for the big things (a line that should go, a section that drags), the second is for polish. Beyond that is new work and should be priced as such. What counts as a round also needs saying: one consolidated list of changes from your one approver is a round. Six messages over three days is six rounds.

Turnaround. Working days from receiving complete footage to the first cut, and from receiving a round of notes to the next cut. "Complete footage" is the operative phrase. The clock should not start when half of it arrives.

Who owns what. You should own the finished videos outright, to post wherever you like. Ask whether you also get the project files and the original footage back; most editors will hand over footage, fewer hand over project files, and either is fine as long as it is said before you need it.

What happens to your brand assets and footage when the engagement ends, and whether the editor may show the work in their own portfolio. I ask every client this at the start, because the answer is sometimes no, and finding that out after I have put a piece on my site is worse for both of us.

Payment timing. A retainer paid before the month's work starts, or a project paid half up front, is normal. An editor who asks for nothing until delivery is either new or will be slow to deliver, because they are financing your project with other people's deadlines.

Where I fit: I take the brief, write the scripts, tell you how to film them on your phone, and cut, grade and caption the results in your brand on a monthly schedule, with two rounds of changes per piece written into the agreement. If that is the shape you are after, Book a call and bring your worst recent video.

How to judge the first cut

The first cut is not the finished video and should not be judged as one. Judge four things, in this order.

1. Did they follow the brief? Right length, right platform shape, the approved words on screen, the banned ones absent. If not, the problem is the brief or the reading of it, and that is the first conversation.
2. Is the story in the right order? The hook in the first two seconds, the point made before the viewer leaves, the ask at the end. Structure is cheap to change now and expensive later.
3. Can you read every caption at phone size? Watch it on your phone, not a monitor, with the sound off. Most reels are watched that way.
4. Does it sound like your business? Music, pacing, the way the titles move. If a cut is technically fine but feels like someone else's brand, say which reference it drifted from.

Leave colour, exact music choice and the small timing notes for round two. An editor who gets notes in that order fixes the structure first, which is the only order that works.

What a good editor will push back on

A useful test when you are choosing between people: send them your brief and watch what they question. An editor worth hiring will ask who the viewer is, why the video is 90 seconds when it could land in half that, whether the testimonial has permission to be used, and what you want the viewer to do at the end. One who says yes to everything is going to say yes to the version that does not work, and you will find out after you have paid for it.

That pushback is what you are buying, more than the cutting. The cutting is a craft. Knowing what to cut is the service. If you would rather talk this through than read it, I am on the studio page, and I will tell you which of the three editors you need.