Cut raw footage into something that holds attention. The last person who gets to decide what the story is.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Good for a wall or a guidance counsellor.
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What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Typical
$72,000
Assistant editor
$42,000
Senior or picture editor on a series
$104,000
Job Bank's national median is $34.62 an hour, about $72,000 a year full time. Union film and television editing pays at the top. Social media and marketing video editing pays at the bottom, but there is far more of it.
$42,000 to $52,000
Assistant editor, or an in-house editor at an agency or a company
Assistant editors organize footage, sync sound and keep the project files clean. It is unglamorous, it is where every feature editor started, and it is a real paid job from day one.
About $104,000
Experienced editor cutting episodic television or features
Job Bank's high figure is $50 an hour, plus overtime on union productions. Editors who also colour grade or handle visual effects charge more.
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is teaching yourself with free tutorials and one of the free editing programs, where the only real spend is a computer strong enough to handle high resolution footage. The high end is a private film school program of about a year at close to 37,000 for domestic students, plus a capable machine and the software subscriptions. A two year public college diploma in film or post production sits in between at 4,000 to 8,000 a year. Employers watch your reel rather than your transcript, so this is one of the few screen jobs you can genuinely enter without paying for school.
This is one of the few screen jobs you can genuinely teach yourself. Employers watch your reel, not your transcript.
Salary
Post-production houses, broadcasters, agencies and large companies with in-house video teams.
Weekly rate
The standard on film and television productions, for the length of the cut.
Per project
Commercials, corporate video, weddings, social content.
Overtime
Paid on union productions when delivery deadlines get tight.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Learn the software, cut a lot of bad footage, build a reel, then get hired to assist.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Media arts and English. Edit anything: school sport, your friends' music, your own shorts.
Training or self-teaching
0 to 2 years
A 2-year college post-production diploma, a one-year film school, or free tutorials plus relentless practice.
Build a reel
3 to 12 months
Two to four minutes of your best cuts, plus one or two full pieces. This is the hiring decision.
Assistant editor
1 to 3 years
Media management, syncing, conforming and delivery on a real production. You learn workflow properly here.
Editor
Year 3 to 6
Cutting scenes yourself, then whole episodes or films, or leading an in-house team.
Media arts
The software and the grammar of a cut.
English
Editing is storytelling with a mouse. Structure matters more than effects.
Music
Rhythm and timing are most of what separates a good cut from a bad one.
Computer studies
File formats, storage and colour spaces are a daily problem.
No licence and no exam. Anyone can edit for money. Film and television editing in Canada is largely union work through locals such as IATSE (International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees) Local 873 in Toronto, and editors there have negotiated rates and hours. Corporate, agency and social video sits entirely outside that system, with faster turnarounds and lower pay.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Colour grading
A separate craft in film, and a useful add-on everywhere else.
Motion graphics
Titles, lower thirds, animated explainers. Constant demand.
Sound editing
Editors who deliver a clean mix save clients a whole hire.
VFX (visual effects) clean-up
Removing rigs, wires and logos. Bread and butter work in post-production houses.
More than one editing program
Film and television leans one way, agencies another. Knowing both doubles your job pool.
Fast, tidy file management
The single thing assistant editors are judged on.
Documentary experience
Cutting 200 hours into 90 minutes teaches structure like nothing else.
Membership in a professional group
Canadian Cinema Editors runs mentorship, a conference and a member directory.
Most paid editing in Canada now is short vertical video for brands, creators and marketing teams. It pays less per hour than film work and the deadlines are brutal, but the volume is enormous and you can start at 18 with a laptop. Plenty of film editors funded their early years this way.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Footage arrives overnight. You back it up, sync the sound, and build a timeline while the shoot continues. Then hours in a dark room, cutting, watching, recutting, mostly alone with headphones on. The director comes in with notes in the afternoon and you rebuild a scene while they watch. Exports render while you eat. Deadlines land at the end of the day, so late finishes are common.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
Canadian Cinema Editors is a bilingual non-profit for post-production people across the country. It runs a mentorship program, an annual conference and awards for editing specifically.
On a feature, the assistant editor may handle tens of thousands of files, keeping every take findable. If that job is done badly, the editor cannot work at all.
Documentary crews often shoot hundreds of hours for a 90 minute film. The editor, not the director, usually finds the story inside that footage.
Last checked September 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in Canadian dollars, based on Government of Canada Job Bank wage data and published salary grids. They vary by province, employer and experience. Tuition is for domestic students.