Ireland’s Diarmuid Early wins world Microsoft Excel title

The Oscars, The Golden Globes, the Emmys, just a few!

You never get to see the action there. Just the finished product.

I think this may actually be two different things. Much like how being good at coding doesn’t mean it’s fun to watch you code. Though there are “performance” coders where it really is!

Although they do have a category for best editing, it's hard to call it an award for "best film editor" when it doesn't control for the overall quality of the film. For example, with the Oscars, it's extremely common (2/3 of the time) for a film that wins best picture to also win best editing.

I wonder how you could construct a reasonably controlled competition for film editing.

Perhaps that’s because Best Picture isn’t controlling for the effect that good editing has on the film.

Drop 10 hours of footage to the competitors on day 0, assign judges random groups of completed films on day N.

Maybe let each editor request one reshoot in the first week, a committee aggregates similar requests, all editors get all the reshoots once they're finalized.

Maybe include storyboards and a rubrik for what story the film is supposed to share and how we're meant to feel, but maybe not.

These reward the artistry of the output of the edits, not the productivity of the editors.