There are many ways to produce a film, commercial, or video. But generally, the participants in the process fall into only a few categories: the people paying for the project who will own it when it is done, the people who came up with the idea, the people who make the budgets and schedules, the people who do the actual shooting, and the people who creatively put the program together and finish it. Some personnel cross over into multiple tasks while other projects have an entire staff of people assigned to one aspect of the project, but the game is the same either way.

The word “client” is tossed around indiscriminately without much definition, mainly because it means different things to different people. At the top of the pyramid is the advertiser or sponsor, who is the one who pays for everything. In the advertising world, the client is a company like Coca-Cola. They pay an advertising agency to come up with strategies and creative executions. When they find an idea they like, they give the agency a bankroll to spend on making a commercial or web video of some sort. The agency hires a director, whose production company shoots the footage. The agency or director then hires an editor. The editor hires a graphics animator, telecine artist, mix engineer, compositor, etc. Each person refers to the person above them in the hiring chain as “the client,” and strangely, everyone knows who is being referred to. Sometimes there is an underling level within a client layer, such as a VP of Marketing, whose approval precedes the president – the “little client” and “big client” respectively.

For cinematic production, there are similar layers of client, though the politics are different. For small-potatoes jobs, you might have only one person to please. Suffice to say, the editor’s suite is but one of many stations that the project dwells along its way to completion. Although your role is very important, it is no more important than the role of others, so don’t presume yourself to be a “delicate genius,” as George Costanza would say.