Artistically;

1. Know your footage before you start.

2. Know the audience you are editing for.

3. Know the basic rules and why they are rules and when it’s good to break them.

4. Make sure every shot and anything you do in your edit has motivation behind it.  Why are you showing this shot now? The motivation can be as simple as “this what the narrator is talking about…” or the pace of the piece at this point calls for another shot. There can be many reasons to make an edit… including a whole scale of “I don’t have the shot I need… so what’s the best bad decision I can make?”

5. Start with music. While not every edit will have music as an important element, I see two general camps. 1] Edit and then lay in any piece of music. 2] Use music as a base motivation. I tend to be #2 about 99% of the time because music will always help you feel what you should be seeing - and therefore make the communication better.

6. Serve your message… not the “effect of the week”… sometimes you might need to do that… but as mentioned in another response cuts and dissolves solve 99.9% of any problems.

7. Be responsible for your result.

8. Work well with people. Television and video are generally team sports.

9. Care more about the project than anyone else.

10. Use your heart.​