For context, I (23M) have been working in a small marketing agency for the past 5 years now as a video editor and a videographer. I joined as an intern and once my internship ended my boss offerred me a job (once he found out someone else at the company was leaving). So I joined them whilst studying a ‘media arts and production’ degree at a fairly large local uni.
When I started working there, I was quite shit and I learnt very quickly to leave my ego at the door. I was often told by my boss that my edits were shit, that they didn’t make any sense, that I was too slow, etc. And tbf, I completely agree with him, it was shit. He never trusted me enough to go on a shoot, it was only when the shoot was on a tight budget, only then I’d be put on. I’ve been micromanaged to Nth degree. Sometimes, he’d remote connect to my computer to watch me work when he’s not at the office.
Fast foward a couple of years and I’ve switched degrees (doing a civil engineering degree), developed my editing skills, and they sometimes put me on shoots (only if the budget is tight), I’m properly burnt out and I’m really fed up with my boss, but I can’t really tell if my annoyance is valid.
I feel like I’ve never done anything creative in this workplace. It’s often just editing what they want with no room for creativity. Even when there is an interesting project my boss would go out and film it himself with no consultation with the rest of the team. And because of that, every shoot feels the same, every edits feels the same, every client has the exact same look and concept.
He’d often tell me “Hey, we pay you guys really well compared to other marketing agencies”. I’m on a casual rate, I get paid ~$27 USD an hour. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but even if its decent pay, I don’t think that’s something you have to keep on reminding me about. I’m also the only editor in the office who knows how to use After Effects (and they have me do after effects work) and I get paid less than the other editor.
Something else that happens would be how he would always make a comment about my freelance/passion projects and I can’t tell if I’m just being a wuss over it. Every time I do something outside of work I’d get comments like, “why don’t you edit like you did for xyz client”, and then when I do he tells me to revert back to how we always did it. He’d also downplay the shit out of my passion projects by saying “I saw it, the grade was shit” or “I could do better”. He once told me to not use the orange and teal look on my ‘out-of-work’ projects because it looked too similar to their videos and style (I find it stupid because its my style of editing anyways, of course its going to have similarities). I can’t tell if they’re valid criticisms or if they’re trying to deflate me.
He also started outsourcing their work overseas, which he’d often tell me “I’m thinking of doing all of the edits overseas” i.e. you’ll be out of a job soon. There was one time where he was sitting right next to me and he was on a zoom call with an overseas editor and he referenced a edit that I did for a client, he said: “This is something we did for this client last year, as you can see…” he laughs “it looks quite shit, but of course you could do better”. Maybe my skin isn’t tough enough for this game.
Something else he’d also do is he’d promise to put me on an interesting shoot in the future and then just won’t put me on it when it came around. He’d say stuff like “I have a shoot with Amazon in 5 months, I’m going to put you on” and then when it would come around he’d go “Sorry man, we need you to edit at the office”. He’d pull this stunt off 3-4 times every year, it feels like a “carrot on a stick” situation.
There was one time where he was caught snooping around a co-workers private messages to see if they going to get poached by another company.
I’m on the tail end of my degree and I’ve put in my resignation months in advance (because I know they won’t be able to handle a 2 week notice). All I got was a ChatGPT response and then got told to stick to engineering lmao. He then tried to pull the “I have 2 documentaries coming up and I was going to put you as a DP”. I then explained to him how I know he’d never put me on and then he just ignored me and walked away.
The thing is, I still love being creative. I love nerding out about camera gear and different edits and colour grades. I love trying to figure out how someone did an edit or how a story was constructed. I love watching BTS clips of major productions (even though I know I’d never be able to be on one). I love watching Corridor Crew and their VFX breakdowns. I was known as the camera guy at school. I’ve been obsessed with this for so long in my life but now I have no interest in my professional work. I feel like I haven’t been creative in so long, it just feels like a boring corporate job with glitter poorly thrown at it.
The thing is, I have so many thoughts and I don’t know which one’s to listen to. Am I really a shit editor? Should I just leave the industry while I can? Is my skin isn’t thick enough for this industry (or life in general)? Am I just inexperienced? Is this a normal thing in the industry?
What do you guys think?