On a lovely Sunday afternoon at the start of May, a whole swathe of Assistant Editors (and Assistant Editor friends) joined a Zoom call from all over Australia in order to chat about everything Assisty. This year joining me on the panel were Melissa McLeary and Nick Prior, both with extensive industry experience, allowing a free ranging and meandering conversation covering workflows from indie films, animation, drama, ob-doc and reality TV. A lot of questions and discussion came to us through Zoom chat, and we had Tim Hadwen on hand to help us wrangle the questions as they were coming in.

We started off walking through a daily work checklist from a low budget indie film, before moving through into a more conversational chat about different workloads and different production expectations. We talked about the career benefits of moving overseas, and the difference in opportunities afforded to those who make the move.

We touched on rates, work hours, and fair compensation. We expounded the virtues of being adaptable and complained about night-shift. We discussed the difficulties and benefits of working from home, and enthused about the ease of the Resolve proxy workflow.

Assistant Editors often work alone, so it’s great to get together to hear other people’s experiences and tribulations. We had a really enthusiastic response to this event, and the ASE is looking forward to continuing the Round Table next year.


(Assistant Editor Round Table attendees.)

Andy Finn

Executive Committee Member

(eNews 104 - June 2021)


An open forum and free-flowing conversation about interesting workflows, chin-scratching conundrums, and the hair-pulling, scream-inducing challenges that Assistant Editors face every day.

This year the Assistant Editors Round Table will be hosted by Andy Finn, Melissa McLeary and Nick Prior. With over 30 years combined experience as Assistant Editors, they’ve worked on a huge range of projects covering animation, drama, feature films, documentary, reality TV, and everything in between.

Using real world examples, they’ll talk through a number of problems they encountered
and the solutions that were used to deal with them.

Sharing of hilarious stories, well-earned scars and embarrassing mishaps
will also be greatly encouraged.

WHEN: Sunday 2nd May, at 3pm AEST

WHERE: via ZOOM

RSVP: office@screeneditors.com.au by Thursday 29 April.