Mastering the Art of Rough Cuts: Essential Editing Tips for Filmmakers (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: This quick edit tip is all about shaping your cut. When it comes to sculpting a timeline, there's no right or wrong way. Some editors like to painstakingly handcraft each individual edit to perfection before they go on to the next one. That way, when they're done, they're done. We've seen very accomplished projects edited this way. But we prefer to first cut rough, then refine. Don't worry about working on the tiny details of a cut as you're first laying it out. There are several reasons to first cut rough. First, you can watch the entire story early to find out if some scenes, characters, or story points need more work than others. By seeing the entirety unfold in real time, even in a skeletal form, you can get a sense of timings, character development, and story logic. There may even be occasions where the rough cut dictates that additional footage needs to be shot or additional resources need to be acquired. Those are good things to find out early on. Also, if you're working on a tight deadline, it's always good to have a just-in-case version of your cut ready early. By doing a lot of the basic groundwork, you'll be in a much better position to deliver a baseline usable version if schedules are accelerated and deadlines are pushed up. Not that that ever happens. Right. Another benefit is that you can err on the side of cutting longer. If you've left your edits long, it's much easier to go back and trim something than to bring back footage you've deleted or cut out. This way, you'll retain as much usable material as possible and display everything you have at your creative disposal to craft narrative clarity. Finally, by having all the scenes in front of you, it's easier to select which one you'll refine first. Then that one polished scene can give your creative team a sense of the overall tone of the project. You'll also have a scene that can garner feedback from outside entities like test audiences and friends and family screenings. Generally, you'll just want to lay out the basics of your content onto the timeline. Usually just picture and dialogue. Then once you've got the entire sequence in a rough form, you can go back and start refining and embellishing the cut with music, sound effects, video effects, et cetera. As you've probably already encountered yourself, there can definitely be some anxiety at the beginning of a project. A blank page or timeline can be a terrifying thing. That's why we recommend that editors get your rough structure figured out first and then start fine tuning frames and audio. This is gonna allow you the most creative speed and flexibility as you're editing the piece without becoming bogged down in minutia. Once your timeline gets complicated, working with it gets a lot more difficult. Hey there, for tons more free editing training, head over to our website at filmeditingpro.com slash freetraining. Here you can download free editing guides along with high quality video training courses created by our team of professional Hollywood editors. Our tutorials cover a wide range of editing topics like cutting awesome movie trailers, editing action scenes, how to work with music and sound design, and a lot more. All of these free guides and videos are available at filmeditingpro.com slash freetraining. I'll see you next time.