The summer before my senior year, I worked as a video editing intern for SexSymbol Magazine, an online music publication devoted to uplifting female artists. My job primarily consisted of editing short and long-form content for the magazine’s Instagram, TikTok and YouTube accounts.
Prior to that summer, I lacked formal video editing experience—I had spent months experimenting with the free video editing platform DaVinci Resolve, but my knowledge was limited to the basics.
Becoming a Video Editing Expert
Over the course of my time with SexSymbol, I mastered many key video editing skills. I learned how to artfully intersperse main and B-roll footage, adjust audio, and insert textual elements such as title cards and subtitles. Video editors are expected to transform raw footage into a condensed, well-paced video that viewers will enjoy, but how does one decide what to keep and what to cut out?
This was largely left up to my discretion, and I learned to strike a balance between brevity and detail. Sometimes, the most unexpected moments in a video—a word humorously mispronounced by an artist, a dropped camera, an offhand comment that turned into a ten-minute tangent—were the most interesting. Leaving in these small, unpolished moments created a tone of sincerity that fit the magazine’s independent brand identity.
Responding to Feedback
My success as a video editor was largely thanks to my ability to receive feedback. Each video underwent multiple rounds of revision before it was published. After watching my draft, my supervisor would call me and tell me what needed to be improved—there might be a section that needed to be cut out, a backing track that was too quiet to be properly heard, or a mistake in the subtitles that needed to be corrected.
At first, when I was inexperienced, the feedback took lots of time and effort to correct. However, every time I received feedback, I made sure to remember it. When my supervisor pointed out a mistake I’d made and requested that I do something differently, I took it to heart: I fixed the error and resolved not to let it happen again, incorporating it into my understanding of her expectations.
Responding effectively to feedback allowed me to improve my skills over time. At the end of my internship, SexSymbol’s founder praised me for my ability to instinctually craft videos that fully matched the magazine’s vision—my final products were clean and punchy, but with an underlying air of genuineness that transformed each video into an intimate look at the artist.
