The three episodes were absolutely captivating. Amazing archive, powerful interviews by all of the major players at the time but most of all I loved the editing. I reached out to Jesse Overman one of the supremely talented editors on a team of supremely talented Netflix editors who cut the series. Already a fan of Once Upon a Timeline, he came on the show and what transpired was a masterclass in documentary editing theory. Strap in for this one... it's epic.
Amelia Allwarden & Anna Hauger, the brilliant editing team behind the HBO series Dune: Prophecy come on the show to tell us all the cutting room secrets about how they put together the feature length season finale. Between them Amelia and Anna have worked on a ton of high-end shows like Pen 15, Watchmen and Sunny but they first worked together on the massive hit Westworld. Settle in for an inspiriting hour with these two amazing editors as they talk about their relentless passion for editing, their difficult journeys through the industry and what it’s like to cut a show together.
From The Good Place to Veep to Lessons in Chemistry and now to the latest season of Only Murders in the Building. The supremely talented Mathew Barbato came onto the show to talk the science of comedy editing, coming up through reality TV and his unique approach to cutting one of the standout episodes of the classic Hulu show.
Of course, there are pros and cons to both but it’s important to analyse every single one. We need to take a close look at how useful they are to us at every stage of our career. On this week’s show I go deep into the upsides and downsides so you can make an informed decision.
In this week’s show I’ll be going deep into the art of piloting, our ability to immediately change direction after negative feedback about our work. We’ll talk through what exactly pivoting is, how it works, the psychology behind it and how we can use it to our benefit.
Every cut we make, every shot we make longer, every piece of body language we include or exclude has massive repercussions. We’re shaping the experience of the audience with hundreds of these decisions every day. In this episode I break down all the factors at play every time we hit a fork in the road so that we can build the most exciting sequence possible.
We want to build a huge creative filing cabinet in our minds that we can apply to any set of raw footage that comes into our cutting room. I’ll be breaking down the key concepts, techniques and mindsets that we can use when researching and memorising these useful scene models.
On this weeks show Paddy talks through the definitive checklist of every single thing we need to consider when cutting, as well as every single thing directors and producers expect from us.Scored as always by our wonderful friends over at Universal Production Music, get ready for a fantastic start to our new Season.
We all know that the way we work with directors is essential to our career success but how does that actually work? What are the specific character traits that we need to develop? And what are the creative skills that directors are looking for when choosing who is going to cut their films?We're getting answers to all those questions and more direct from the source this week with the return of award winning documentary director Suemay Oram. Suemay gives a masterclass of collaborative insight from the other side of the edit suite in the concluding part of her guest appearance on Once Upon a Timeline.
On this week's show we are very lucky to have the hugely talented documentary director Suemay Oram as our guest. Suemay has directed films for everyone from the BBC to Netflix to HBO. In this two part interview she gives us some hugely valuable insights into the mind of a director and the collaborative relationship she has with her editors.It's an inspiring talk for any editor, producer, director or self shooter as Suemay breaks down her journey through the difficult waters of modern day directing and illuminates her perspective on filmmaking. Not to be missed!
So, what is it and why is it useful? Well, this skill is about identifying, planning and deliberately constructing the subtle visual elements that reinforce the overall arc of the story. Quite simply, we sprinkle elements across the timeline at key points to reinforce the intended reality.Now, we’ll always have a journey, an arc for our film no matter what it’s duration but that journey will need to be made up of a mixture of both obvious and subtle narrative and visual cues for the audience to guide them through the experience. And this week, we’re going to be focusing on the subtle side of that equation.
People change when they know there is a camera pointed at them and this causes all kinds of issues for us editors, especially in non scripted editing. One of the fundamental laws of our art form is the create believable performances on screen otherwise the suspension of disbelief is broken and the audience switch off.On this weeks episode of Once Upon a Timeline we talk through the psychology of this effect, it's impact on our work and what we can do it mitigate it.
There's a whole bunch of barriers standing in our way in terms of designing and navigating this path successfully. But on this week's show we're going to focus more on the creative residue that needs to be discarded when moving from one to the other.There are common creative errors, what we at Inside The Edit call Promo-itus, that need to be surgically cut away in order to survive and thrive in the longer durational films. An essential subject to tackle for any budding doc, drama or observational long form editor.
The pressure was immense, the hours were punishing and the shooting ratio was enormous. They had air craft carriers, F-18’s fighter jets, insane arial sequences, Covid lockdown, Tom Cruise was starring, Jerry Bruckheimer producing, Joe Kosinski directing and hundreds of millions of dollars on the line. No pressure.How the hell did Eddie Hamilton and the Top Gun Maverick Team pull it off? Well, he’s back on the show to tell us all.
Eddie has taken time away from his Mission Impossible 7 timeline to come back on the podcast and talk through all of the trials, tribulations and triumphs of his latest collaboration with Tom Cruise.Come and join us on this week’s episode of Once Upon a Timeline to get an exclusive, behind the scenes look at the creative editing decisions of one of Hollywood’s greatest editors.
There are a huge array of psychological, behavioural, action and dialogue based considerations we need to go through in order to get the best elements onto the timeline.In this week's episode of Once Upon a timeline Paddy breaks down all of these factors in detail and provides editors with a useful exercise to do in order to squeeze every last bit of high end content out of the raw footage.
There is a psychological and subconscious grading system with which the mind views new images and what it thinks is most important within a new shot. Much of it is the result of our evolution over thousands of years and understanding this order and priority list is a key insight for the professional editor. Join Paddy for an entertaining journey through the mind of the audience and the emotional impact of how they see our work.
It's not good enough to just focus on the craft, there are numerous psychological traits we must be aware of as well. On this week's show I'm going to be talking about a major one; the art of creating value in the mind of the client.If you'd like to learn how to create the best perception possible of your creative skills with directors and producers, then tune into this week's episode of Once Upon a Timeline: The Creative Editing Podcast.
How are many scenes structured? What are the can and can't do's in visual logic? When and how can we break the rules? These are just some of the editing questions we'll be discussing on this week's show.We also have a fantastic free Creative Editing Masterclass for you which takes you through everything you need to know to build a rough cut. Episode 7 of Once Upon a Timeline: The Editors Guide to Visual Grammar is now live!
We're kicking off our first podcast episode of the new year with a discussion around Full Disclosure and all its perils. Crafting the information and story content is one thing but knowing when and where to disclose that content to our audience is a delicate art.Too much too soon and we overload the audience, too little and the narrative won't make sense and create that magnetic interest from the viewer. Join me for this week's in-depth creative editing discussion on Once Upon a Timeline: The Creative Editing Podcast.