There aren’t many more awkward moments in an edit than when you’re sat next to a Director, searching for a clip that you’re pretty sure you’ve seen somewhere, but really can’t find anywhere in your project, wondering if they think you’re an idiot. Although it can be tedious, making sure your projects are well organized…
Category: Workflow
Using Temp Music in an Edit
The rise of digital technology has given people access to equipment and software that 20 years ago was expensive and difficult to acquire. From a single computer, one person can now do the work of many. However, there is also an increased expectation that this one person is able to do high-quality work in multiple…
Five Stages of the Edit: Part 5 – The Fine Cut
So you’ve reached the final stage of the edit. The film is almost done. You’ve fixed as many problems as you can, agonized over feedback, and built up a rapport with the Director through weeks and months that have tested and stretched all your skills – and perhaps you – to breaking point. And that’s…
Five Stages of the Edit: Part 4 – The Producer’s Cut
So, to summarise where you are entering this stage: you’ve assembled the script cut, worked with the Director to create a version of the film they imagined before they walked on set, and you’ve fixed as many underlying narrative, performance, or structural problems as you can. Ideally, you and the Director have had a productive,…
Five Stages of the Edit: Part 3 – The Director’s Cut
Once you’ve completed the assembly and screened it for the Director and the Producers, you move from working on the film on your own, to a collaboration with the Director on the Director’s Cut. This may take the form of spending each and every day sat alongside the Director, working your way through the cut….
Job Roles in the Offline Edit
Exactly who does what in a cutting room depends on a lot of things, the workload at any particular stage, how many people are on the team, the experience of its members, the country in which you’re working, and perhaps most significantly, the scale and budget of the project. But here are the main job…
Five Stages of the Edit: Part 2 – The Assembly
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,…
Five Stages of the Edit: Part 1 – The Script
It might sound odd that the first stage of the edit is the script, but many, many things in this industry revolve around the script, and for the editor, it’s the key element we have to work with before we start getting rushes from the set. Plus, there are a few things I find it…
How many stages does a Film Edit have?
Making a film or television show is a multi-stage process which has been honed over decades, and with some exceptions follows a standardized process. The film edit is much the same, usually completed in a series of common steps, and generally taking place in the same order from one project to the next. Production of…
What does an Assistant Editor do?
Glance at the credits of any feature film or scripted TV show, and you can see that there are dozens, if not hundreds of people involved in getting the show to the screen, often with their own unique job title, ranging from the familiar (Writer, Director) to the unusual (Key Grip, Best Boy). But even…