With the shoot underway, the real work of the Editor starts in earnest. The Assembly is the first step in the edit where material hits the timeline and the final form of the film – which may have been in development for years – begins to take shape.
Building the Assembly
Most of the time, the editor will begin full-time work on the project in parallel with the shoot, cutting the material that comes over from set each day, and attempting to put together a day’s worth of scenes each day. There are a few reasons for doing this, starting with the ability to feedback to the Director and others about any technical issues with picture and sound, especially during the first week as kinks are ironed out.
The DIT (Digital Imaging Technician), will create low-res versions of the footage (known as Proxies), usually with the sound and picture synced together, then send those to the cutting room via harddrive or the internet. The editor will usually get a day’s footage by some time the following morning (although sometimes cards will come through quickly from earlier in the day), view that footage, and then spend the rest of the day assembling scenes.
Feedback during the shoot
As films and TV shows are only occasionally shot in chronological order, scenes will generally be cut in isolation, then added to the growing assembly once they are done. This is one of the many reasons why assemblies almost always feel very lumpy and uneven. Some Directors like to view scenes during the shoot, while some prefer to wait until the shoot is wrapped and the assembly is complete. Regardless of the Director’s preference, the editor will be feeding back any issues they come across while assembling scenes, including coverage angles that they feel are missing, any issues with an actor’s performance, or technical issues with picture or sound.
Your role as the Editor during the shoot is to have an eye over the material that is divorced from whatever challenging events are happening on set, and to keep the Director and Producers abreast of any issues you feel need raising at this point in time. Generally, it’s best to keep any difficult or negative feedback confined to the Director and/or Producer, and every editor quickly learns to reply to questions from other crew members asking “how’s the footage looking?” with a short and simple “yeah, it’s looking really good”.
Making your first set of decisions
So that’s the technical and diplomatic stuff surrounding the assembly out of the way, now what about the actual editing you’re doing during the assembly? Well if you’ve done your prep work before the shoot, you should have a pretty good idea of what kind of film the Director is trying to make, a strong idea of the story that’s being told and how it’s structured, plus a good sense of the role each scene is playing in the film. This last one is your guide while cutting these randomly ordered scenes that don’t yet fit into a full cut.
When watching the assembly, the primary concern of the Director and Producers is not your work as the Editor, but whether or not they have, at a minimum a film, and ideally a good film. By this stage, a lot of money has been spent, and if they can’t see the beginnings of a film, or they can’t at least see the building blocks of a film, then they’re in trouble.
This is why as an editor you need to make sure that all the building blocks of the film are visible, that all the key beats are present in the film, so that even though this version still requires a LOT of work, the Director and Producer can breathe a sigh of relief and move on to the next stage. This is why you do your prep work at the script stage, so that you understand all the building blocks that exist in the script, and can represent those in the assembly.
Building a scene
When starting a new scene I tend to remind myself what the scene’s role is, then skim back through the scene in the script. I will be looking to remind myself of the details of action and dialogue, plus the key beats in the scene – especially the moment where the job of the scene manifests itself – and the action or dialogue that fulfils this.
Some people (rarely editors) will refer to the assembly as the “Editor’s Cut”, but really the assembly is a “Script Cut”, a version of the film that follows the form of the script. Your job at this point is not to start moving things around, dropping lines of dialogue, or removing scenes. Your job now is to create a representation of the script, so that you the Director and the Producers can sit back and see what does and doesn’t work now you’ve turned words on the page into a living and breathing movie or TV episode. It may well be that you have ideas for changes and improvements to make while putting together the assembly, but almost all Directors will want to see everything laid out in the film first.
How much to polish a scene
Some editors will use the assembly just to rough out examples of the coverage and treat it very much as an “assembly” of the material and not as a cut. While it’s important not to get too bogged down in putting together each scene at this stage, and sometimes you just need to get something down and move on, I do try to make the assembly feel as much like a real film as possible. This includes spending time cleaning up sound, adding some basic sound design, and even adding temp music (depending on the preference of the Director).
My reasoning for this is that the less a Director is watching the assembly thinking “Oh God this is terrible, I need to jump in and fix everything”, and the more they’re able to watch it as a film, the more they can use the assembly as an opportunity to see the strengths and weaknesses of the film. After all, watching the Assembly is the closest the Director will ever get to watching the film as if they’re a fresh viewer who knows nothing about it, and that objectivity is something you and the Director will be trying to find throughout the edit process.
Screening the assembly
Delivering the edit to the Director and Producers is one of the most nerve-wracking parts of the whole job. Directors generally hate assemblies. They are, as a version of the film, almost always too long, too slow, and too flat. Plus they rarely match the film the Director has in their head.
All Directors of course are different, some will have very clear ideas of what they want, down to very specific take choices, while others prefer to go into the edit without a clear idea of how to execute things and just want to be sure that they have all the material they need when leaving set. But whatever the preferences of the Director, getting a complete cut together is an important landmark, and an opportunity to finally see the film together as a film for the first time.
You’ll often immediately spot issues that weren’t obvious or apparent on the page. Some scenes will feel redundant, or simply repeat beats from other scenes. Perhaps big structural issues will become apparent, often at the beginning where things take too long to develop or intrigue the viewer, or once we enter the second half of the film and we start to build towards the finale. Perhaps character-focused moments and scenes will begin to feel like candidates for the famous “cutting room floor”, or at least a move into the first half of the film where those kind of moments might feel more appropriate.
After watching the assembly you should be able to begin making a list of issues you can see in the film, or opportunities for trying something different, ready to begin work with the Director.
You can find out about the other steps in the Offline Edit process in our article on The 5 Stages of the Edit, or move on to Part 3: The Director’s Cut.