Cut Free Daily

Teenage Mutant Ninja Video Editor! Have you ever encountered this newborn species? Well... I did! To give you the back story: I recently started working on a new project, creating the trailer for an upcoming documentary, that is still in production. This job has some interesting challenges to offer. Filmmaking is taking place in a dozen cities all over the world. Two editors are working remotely on it already, more than five terabytes of footage need to be downloaded, transcoded into proxies,...

In yesterday's article, I used the William Tell trailer as an example of an edit, based on a formula that serves the art of editing but does not serve the edit itself. I get it, though. I never said I never fell into this trap myself and I don't imply that I am not falling into this trap anymore. But, through the years, I have sharpened my skills of: mindfulness > I have developed all sorts of bells and whistles that as soon as I step into the trap, start ringing and warning me of the...

As promised, I will share the most profound lesson I received, which inspired me to write The Rhythm of Silence. It all started when our beloved teacher in Film Directing, gave us the following exercise: 'I want you to create a short film of a maximum duration of five minutes. The subject is up to you and there are no restrictions but these two rules: You have to shoot it alone and have only one actor playing. Afterward, I will do the editing and you will be the Director guiding me.' Everyone...

During 22+ years of editing trailers, I have changed my keyboard shortcut layout four times. The first three were... mehhh... not so impactful, I'd say. The last one was phenomenal! My newest keyboard shortcut layout brought a tremendous amount of -positive- change in my: Speed Immediacy Efficiency Creativity Comfort Clarity Focus Happiness It was such a radical and profound alteration of my daily workflow that I can't even recall how it was possible to work the way I used to, before making...

Today I had an interesting call from a close/distant friend. Although we speak only once or twice a year, to catch up with our news, we have known each other since early school and maintain a strong relationship! Surprisingly, I 'serve' clients like him, and he 'hires' creatives like me, so we have discussed business many times, too, but we have never worked on a project together. Today he called me to ask for my advice. He had an urgent project in mind for which he had received already a...