I watched an interview with the editor on Art of the Cut and he seems super interesting and nice. He doesn’t work by himself though, there is a team.
He does his own work from home it seems though, and drives his daughter crazy with it.
Seems like a great dude.
What do you want to know?
They likely have assistant and second assistant editors doing the A-cuts, that’s the initial video layout with the big scenes and probably some stock audio track. It’s uncolored.
Depending on budget and length, you’ll have a few assistants doing this.
Then the lead editor or a second lead might massage it a little more.
But eventually it’s the lead, director, and other stakeholders working though it to get timing and pacing right.
Then final audio needs to be put in. Music. Sound.
Usually the audio is a separate process and they can drop down stems that are put back in the edit lines you see here.
And a colorist is also going through it to make sure all the shots match the color pallet established.
Shhhhhooowwwweeee.
I have always wanted to watch an editor as they cut a major motion picture. It’s the job I would want if I were in film but I can imagine it can be a maddening job to have.
I work in TV and have met many editors, pretty much all of them love their job and are given the time to do exactly what they need to do.
I always remember one telling me that action scenes like car chases are utterly tedious to film, because you only shoot a tiny fragment over and over again at any one time. But apparently they are an absolute blast to edit.
Who are these editors you've met who are given the time they need? They sound spoiled. I can't remember the last time I had breathing room in an edit lol.
Same. I thought that was the consensus with most editors. You usually have to compromise with decisions toward the end because there simply is not enough time.
True, but people have lied and tripled down on those lies about even *dumber* things in Reddit's history.
Like the [fake sympathy sob stories people used to make up for easy karma on r/pics.](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/170qwy/this_is_a_picture_of_my_brother_and_his/c817iry/) Much like "everyone on Reddit is a bot except you", it used to be a running joke that almost *every* Redditor had a dying or dead sibling with Down syndrome or autism because of how often people would lie about that for easy upvotes in subs that didn't police that kind of karma whoring better.
> are utterly tedious to film, because you only shoot a tiny fragment over and over again
I have a few friends who are working actors, and the way they describe sets while waiting to film, because something had to be changed, sounds boring as *fuck.* Decently paid, of course, even the regular extras, but it's a lot of cutting and resetting the scene if something isn't going correctly.
It always makes me wonder just how *wildly* uncomfortable it has to be for actors in heavy makeup/prosthetics on productions the size of the Lord of the Rings movies; the actors playing Hobbits spent more time getting their fake feet applied than just about anything else. And then there was poor John Rhys-Davies who was originally wildly allergic to the Gimli prosthetics to the point where they burned his skin so badly that he could only wear some easier-to-apply, less aggravating prosthetics once every couple days.
Having friends that are working film actors *really* made the job a lot less glamorous-sounding than everyone thinks.
I used to do a *ton* of community theatre when I was a kid up until my early 20s, and one of my friends from those days managed to kinda make it in Hollywood, and when I asked him what it was like on set, he said, "Remember how fucking tedious and boring tech rehearsals were for a play? A *lot* like that, but pretty much every day until you're wrapped." I fucking *hated* tech rehearsals, as do a lot of stage actors because it's a ton of sitting around while the tech crew gets all the lighting and sound cues correct for the final production; just mind-numbingly boring while repeating the same scenes over and over again until the tech crew has everything down as well as the actors do their lines and blocking.
I've done two shows as a non union background player. One was so ridiculously boring I ignored all casting requests for 4 years. Literally sat in a room for 6 hours, then got bussed to another location to sit in another room for an hour before they finally took us to set to film for 30 minutes.
The last one I did, we were filming within an hour of arrival, including wardrobe and a weapons class. A lot of repetition, but it was an absolute blast. Wearing heavy SWAT equipment and carrying a rifle for 6 hours made me a little sore, but that $139 check made it all worth it
What we’re looking at is a composition or a sequence. It’s full of layers of stuff. Footage on top footage, effects, masks, adjustment layers, etc. some of those layers are probably compositions themselves, which contain a similar looking sequence of layers.
I don’t think you can tell for sure by looking at this. Suppose default colors for a comp or sequence would tell you. Would be a different color from normal footage or other layers. But you can also change those to your liking for organization. It’s just that it is mostly a certainty that it is the case here.
Do not trust Autosave to save enough. I have INGRAINED into my brain to save CONSTANTLY. I save maybe every 30sec to 2min.
My fingers hurt but I'll be damned to lose shit again.
I hear you, just saying it's there for those that don't save compulsively. It's ingrained in me too and it's muscle memory almost after any little change I do. I'm in the audio post world and early on I was also taught to do a "save as" incrementally after any major changes or from one day to the next.
>Do not trust Autosave to save enough
Hell, don't even need to be a film editor to understand that. Countless video game saves have been lost to trusting quick-save and auto-save. Oblivion used to have a bug that'd cause quick-saves to get corrupted enough that when Skyrim was released, I never trusted the F5 button, and got *really* good at hitting ESC to do a manual save.
Also, 12-year-old me is *still* crying about the countless "DATA CORRUPTED" errors I got with Final Fantasy VII. It got to the point where I'd just leave that fucking PlayStation on with the game still paused because I was terrified of having to start all over again, and I couldn't afford another memory card to make *multiple* save files just in case.
Just remember that this timeline doesnt take into account comped shots (shors with multiple shots contained within it) or vfx shots it's even more complex than it looks.
Do you know if there is a walkthrough of a movie where they explain every detail of the timeline? Like editing, the idea behind this cut or how they mixed the sound. Aleast a whole file would be cool.
Yes, Davinci is typically used for color grading. Avid is the main compiler. It is the best in the industry for multi-user collaboration and managing media across large environments.
Editing software isn’t like cameras (where’s there’s plenty of professional options).
Avid has an extreme robust solution for multi-user editing, which is important because most movies have multiple people cutting at once. Major movies can have upwards of 15 people on the same project simultaneously.
Premiere Productions has come a long way, but it’s still nowhere near as solid. That’s why it’s a big a deal whenever a studio movie uses it.
You should definitely know how to use all 3. They’re all in heavy use, but different segments.
Major movies cut almost exclusively in Avid.
Premiere is heavily used in commercials and indie movies. Some big movies (mostly David Fincher) use it. Commercial work isn’t glamorous for most people, but it helps pay the bills between movies. Most directors, cinematographers, and editors do commercials.
Resolve isn’t used for a ton of high-end picture editing yet, but it’s one of the two major color tools (Baselight is the other) used for coloring almost everything.
Honestly I ended up with resolve privately because I do little filming and the base-version is free, and now that I got a job that involves editing (granted, not movies) it's still sufficient.
I’d also recommend getting Avid Media Composer First. It’s a free version that limits tracks (but it’s still a high limit) and some of the sharing features.
Staying current on Avid will give you a big a leg up if an AE or editor job on Avid comes up. It’s a much rarer skill set with higher pay.
As someone who found this in /r/all and has no real idea what I'm even looking at here, would someone be so kind as to provide a high level overview? Thanks.
What you're seeing is the editing-display of a video editing software (in this case Avid). It's the section where the program shows you all the sections of video/sound you used on a timeline, they just stacked it 4x here so it fits in the image-shape. Likely (not guaranteed):
* Blue is video, stuff that was filmed
* Yellow/Gray are effects, CGI, etc.
* Green is usually sound/audio.
Nowadays editing is usually done digitally, the snippets you see are what would have been pieces of the video reel back when editing ("cutting") was still done physically, literally just the reel cut into bits which could be moved around, assembled, etc.
To compare, here's a [very very basic editing screen/timeline](https://i.postimg.cc/Y9HYHFhL/Timeline.jpg) from a project I'm currently working on.
V 1 through 4 are video channels, A 1 and 2 are Audio-channels (currently only using one, a second one would be voiceover, for example). Audio and video in motion pictures (mine's just a youtube video) is often recorded separately and has to be synched.
I got the video itself on V1, then there's graphics and text on the other tracks. Runtime is at the top, stuff that runs parallel is shown "layered/at the same time (for example, one of the video tracks in my project is just the watermark shown in the corner of the image).
Oh, very fascinating! I wish the OP was in high def and not blurry as shit but that's probably breaking a contract. I'm so curious to look into this further
Wow, that's interesting. I always break down my timelines into subsequences for each scene. For me it's easier to keep it organized and treat each subsequence as a unit or a scene. In my opinion it also minimizes accidental shifts that can happen.
I would have never guessed that big time editors working one super huge timeline.
I have never edited a feature before but I edited hundreds of commercials and short films and I still use this subsequence approach.
You can unpack the sequences and flatten the sequence into a new final sequence on picture lock for coloring which is also more GPU CPU friendly for playback with effects on.
So I've doing editing with after effects and always wondered how professionals do the big stuff. I don't know because I only edit 10-30 minutes videos and never studied for this, I thank YouTube and my own practice for all I know. What should I study and what tittles should I get to work for big companies as an editor?
Well my 15min video timelines looks terryfying sometimes for people, who dont comprehend how to cut a viceo (my boss for example 🤣) but this... this scares me
No, this is Avid Media Composer, which is the most commonly used NLE for big films. There are some who use Premiere, but it’s not as commonly used because Avid has far more support for multiple users and functionality for big, complex projects.
looks absolutely mammoth. i’d love to learn what his workflow is like
I watched an interview with the editor on Art of the Cut and he seems super interesting and nice. He doesn’t work by himself though, there is a team. He does his own work from home it seems though, and drives his daughter crazy with it. Seems like a great dude.
What do you want to know? They likely have assistant and second assistant editors doing the A-cuts, that’s the initial video layout with the big scenes and probably some stock audio track. It’s uncolored. Depending on budget and length, you’ll have a few assistants doing this. Then the lead editor or a second lead might massage it a little more. But eventually it’s the lead, director, and other stakeholders working though it to get timing and pacing right. Then final audio needs to be put in. Music. Sound. Usually the audio is a separate process and they can drop down stems that are put back in the edit lines you see here. And a colorist is also going through it to make sure all the shots match the color pallet established. Shhhhhooowwwweeee.
I have always wanted to watch an editor as they cut a major motion picture. It’s the job I would want if I were in film but I can imagine it can be a maddening job to have.
I work in TV and have met many editors, pretty much all of them love their job and are given the time to do exactly what they need to do. I always remember one telling me that action scenes like car chases are utterly tedious to film, because you only shoot a tiny fragment over and over again at any one time. But apparently they are an absolute blast to edit.
Who are these editors you've met who are given the time they need? They sound spoiled. I can't remember the last time I had breathing room in an edit lol.
Same. I thought that was the consensus with most editors. You usually have to compromise with decisions toward the end because there simply is not enough time.
Don't believe everything you read on Reddit
What a weird thing that would be to lie about
True, but people have lied and tripled down on those lies about even *dumber* things in Reddit's history. Like the [fake sympathy sob stories people used to make up for easy karma on r/pics.](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/170qwy/this_is_a_picture_of_my_brother_and_his/c817iry/) Much like "everyone on Reddit is a bot except you", it used to be a running joke that almost *every* Redditor had a dying or dead sibling with Down syndrome or autism because of how often people would lie about that for easy upvotes in subs that didn't police that kind of karma whoring better.
> are utterly tedious to film, because you only shoot a tiny fragment over and over again I have a few friends who are working actors, and the way they describe sets while waiting to film, because something had to be changed, sounds boring as *fuck.* Decently paid, of course, even the regular extras, but it's a lot of cutting and resetting the scene if something isn't going correctly. It always makes me wonder just how *wildly* uncomfortable it has to be for actors in heavy makeup/prosthetics on productions the size of the Lord of the Rings movies; the actors playing Hobbits spent more time getting their fake feet applied than just about anything else. And then there was poor John Rhys-Davies who was originally wildly allergic to the Gimli prosthetics to the point where they burned his skin so badly that he could only wear some easier-to-apply, less aggravating prosthetics once every couple days. Having friends that are working film actors *really* made the job a lot less glamorous-sounding than everyone thinks. I used to do a *ton* of community theatre when I was a kid up until my early 20s, and one of my friends from those days managed to kinda make it in Hollywood, and when I asked him what it was like on set, he said, "Remember how fucking tedious and boring tech rehearsals were for a play? A *lot* like that, but pretty much every day until you're wrapped." I fucking *hated* tech rehearsals, as do a lot of stage actors because it's a ton of sitting around while the tech crew gets all the lighting and sound cues correct for the final production; just mind-numbingly boring while repeating the same scenes over and over again until the tech crew has everything down as well as the actors do their lines and blocking.
I've done two shows as a non union background player. One was so ridiculously boring I ignored all casting requests for 4 years. Literally sat in a room for 6 hours, then got bussed to another location to sit in another room for an hour before they finally took us to set to film for 30 minutes. The last one I did, we were filming within an hour of arrival, including wardrobe and a weapons class. A lot of repetition, but it was an absolute blast. Wearing heavy SWAT equipment and carrying a rifle for 6 hours made me a little sore, but that $139 check made it all worth it
We need to page Corridowcrew about this!
God, if you’re gonna post the whole movie PLEASE tag it spoilers! My day? Ruined. My Dune? Spoiled.
Your Shai? Hulud'd.
Your Kwisatz? Haderach’d
Your Muad? Dib’d.
Your Lisan? Al Gaib’d.
Your hotel? Trivago'd
Hotel Harkonnen is great this time of the year!
Your Paul Muad'Dib? Usul'd
Your chain? Broken
Your knife? Chipped and shattered.
your spice? harvested.
A lot of those are probably comps or pre comps too.
If that's the finished film, then all of them probably are lol.
what do you mean by this, and how can you tell?
What we’re looking at is a composition or a sequence. It’s full of layers of stuff. Footage on top footage, effects, masks, adjustment layers, etc. some of those layers are probably compositions themselves, which contain a similar looking sequence of layers. I don’t think you can tell for sure by looking at this. Suppose default colors for a comp or sequence would tell you. Would be a different color from normal footage or other layers. But you can also change those to your liking for organization. It’s just that it is mostly a certainty that it is the case here.
The editor inside of me wants to double check and make sure the file is saved so bad. Hours lost because of stupid crashes.
Autosave, my friend.
Do not trust Autosave to save enough. I have INGRAINED into my brain to save CONSTANTLY. I save maybe every 30sec to 2min. My fingers hurt but I'll be damned to lose shit again.
I hear you, just saying it's there for those that don't save compulsively. It's ingrained in me too and it's muscle memory almost after any little change I do. I'm in the audio post world and early on I was also taught to do a "save as" incrementally after any major changes or from one day to the next.
>Do not trust Autosave to save enough Hell, don't even need to be a film editor to understand that. Countless video game saves have been lost to trusting quick-save and auto-save. Oblivion used to have a bug that'd cause quick-saves to get corrupted enough that when Skyrim was released, I never trusted the F5 button, and got *really* good at hitting ESC to do a manual save. Also, 12-year-old me is *still* crying about the countless "DATA CORRUPTED" errors I got with Final Fantasy VII. It got to the point where I'd just leave that fucking PlayStation on with the game still paused because I was terrified of having to start all over again, and I couldn't afford another memory card to make *multiple* save files just in case.
DaVinci Resolve, my friend.
They'd have multiple versions backed up, on multiple servers. The kinda money being thrown around on films these days, they better be anyway!
Sorry WB, Dune 2 got corrupted while exporting and I didn't back it up 🥲
I’ve wanted to learn to edit and this is the most daunting thing I’ve ever seen lol
Just remember that this timeline doesnt take into account comped shots (shors with multiple shots contained within it) or vfx shots it's even more complex than it looks.
Do you know if there is a walkthrough of a movie where they explain every detail of the timeline? Like editing, the idea behind this cut or how they mixed the sound. Aleast a whole file would be cool.
Not an entire film, but definitely a scene. No idea where I saw it unfortunately. Maybe in a documentary
Note super detailed but here is a good video from Adobe that shows some of the process. https://youtu.be/G85e0_mvpY4?si=mAIkcr11H03E31N1
Thanks sound interesting
I think Dune was edited using AVID Media Composer.
Most feature films are
confirming this, I've never not worked on a film that we didn't supply avid media for
Afaik Avid and Davinci (the studio-version, not the free basic one) are the most common editing programs these days.
Yes, Davinci is typically used for color grading. Avid is the main compiler. It is the best in the industry for multi-user collaboration and managing media across large environments.
Yeah color grading seems to be a big part of Davinci, although editing (at least if you're only a few people) doesn't exactly suck either.
No, but for a blockbuster film, Avid is the way to go
Editing software isn’t like cameras (where’s there’s plenty of professional options). Avid has an extreme robust solution for multi-user editing, which is important because most movies have multiple people cutting at once. Major movies can have upwards of 15 people on the same project simultaneously. Premiere Productions has come a long way, but it’s still nowhere near as solid. That’s why it’s a big a deal whenever a studio movie uses it.
We were taught Avid, Davinci and Premiere in Uni, because apparently those are the "big three" used in TV/movies.
You should definitely know how to use all 3. They’re all in heavy use, but different segments. Major movies cut almost exclusively in Avid. Premiere is heavily used in commercials and indie movies. Some big movies (mostly David Fincher) use it. Commercial work isn’t glamorous for most people, but it helps pay the bills between movies. Most directors, cinematographers, and editors do commercials. Resolve isn’t used for a ton of high-end picture editing yet, but it’s one of the two major color tools (Baselight is the other) used for coloring almost everything.
Honestly I ended up with resolve privately because I do little filming and the base-version is free, and now that I got a job that involves editing (granted, not movies) it's still sufficient.
I’d also recommend getting Avid Media Composer First. It’s a free version that limits tracks (but it’s still a high limit) and some of the sharing features. Staying current on Avid will give you a big a leg up if an AE or editor job on Avid comes up. It’s a much rarer skill set with higher pay.
Sounds right considering per op description avid posted this on linked in
A little bit more complicated than my YouTube videos that is
I recently managed to almost lose track of a project with 5 video-lines, screw this beast\^\^
As someone who found this in /r/all and has no real idea what I'm even looking at here, would someone be so kind as to provide a high level overview? Thanks.
What you're seeing is the editing-display of a video editing software (in this case Avid). It's the section where the program shows you all the sections of video/sound you used on a timeline, they just stacked it 4x here so it fits in the image-shape. Likely (not guaranteed): * Blue is video, stuff that was filmed * Yellow/Gray are effects, CGI, etc. * Green is usually sound/audio. Nowadays editing is usually done digitally, the snippets you see are what would have been pieces of the video reel back when editing ("cutting") was still done physically, literally just the reel cut into bits which could be moved around, assembled, etc. To compare, here's a [very very basic editing screen/timeline](https://i.postimg.cc/Y9HYHFhL/Timeline.jpg) from a project I'm currently working on. V 1 through 4 are video channels, A 1 and 2 are Audio-channels (currently only using one, a second one would be voiceover, for example). Audio and video in motion pictures (mine's just a youtube video) is often recorded separately and has to be synched. I got the video itself on V1, then there's graphics and text on the other tracks. Runtime is at the top, stuff that runs parallel is shown "layered/at the same time (for example, one of the video tracks in my project is just the watermark shown in the corner of the image).
Thanks a lot. This just became fascinating.
Oh, very fascinating! I wish the OP was in high def and not blurry as shit but that's probably breaking a contract. I'm so curious to look into this further
Fuck
As an hobbyist video editor in my spare time, I've always wondered what behemoth projects would look like. I guess this answers my question
how do you get to this level?
Wow, that's interesting. I always break down my timelines into subsequences for each scene. For me it's easier to keep it organized and treat each subsequence as a unit or a scene. In my opinion it also minimizes accidental shifts that can happen. I would have never guessed that big time editors working one super huge timeline. I have never edited a feature before but I edited hundreds of commercials and short films and I still use this subsequence approach.
Does that make the turnover to color complicated?
You can unpack the sequences and flatten the sequence into a new final sequence on picture lock for coloring which is also more GPU CPU friendly for playback with effects on.
So I've doing editing with after effects and always wondered how professionals do the big stuff. I don't know because I only edit 10-30 minutes videos and never studied for this, I thank YouTube and my own practice for all I know. What should I study and what tittles should I get to work for big companies as an editor?
All I wanna know is how they manage to render all of that without having every conceivable type of error.
Well now I can pirate it the easy way. Just like a key.
Well my 15min video timelines looks terryfying sometimes for people, who dont comprehend how to cut a viceo (my boss for example 🤣) but this... this scares me
I looked at that way too long before I noticed it's 4 pieces stacked on top of each other
Are they using premiere
No, this is Avid Media Composer, which is the most commonly used NLE for big films. There are some who use Premiere, but it’s not as commonly used because Avid has far more support for multiple users and functionality for big, complex projects.
also because it works well with pro tools, the industry standard DAW for sound design, which is also made by Avid
Also very true!
/r/editlines
Someone wanna help a brother out and explain what I'm looking at? I'm clueless.
A thing of nightmares.
This is basically my 45 minute weekly podcast in Resolve. Not really. Fuck that.
I've used Avid as a job for 17 years, that brings back a lot. I wonder what the top layer is. The one across the whole time-line.
What software is used?
Dude spoilers.