Once Upon a Timeline

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.

Within just a few short years Carly's grit, determination and relentless pursuit of her dream to edit high-end drama has paid off as you can now see her work on the latest season of the BBC/HBO drama Industry.We love inspiring stories on Once Upon a Timeline and not only does this episode have a ton of inspiration but it's also jam-packed with incredibly useful information for any editor.

And today's guest on Once Upon a Timeline has one of those great stories. The hugely talented Carly Brown has worked on a unique range of genres as she rose up the editing ladder. From short promos to quick turnaround sport's shows to documentaries and all the way up to high-end drama.We're very lucky to have this amazing editor as our first guest on Season 3 and I know you'll love this first part of her interview.

But without an in depth look at why they happen and all of the many ways we can actually benefit from them, we'll never look at them as anything but an inconvenience.This week's show is an encyclopaedic study of this enormous part of our art form. We're going to look at the numerous types of jump cuts, how they work, how they can benefit us and what the rules are for using them in our cutting patterns.Don't forget it's also Black Friday weekend here at Inside The Edit. Get 50% off any membership by using the promo code BF21 at our store! This is the only sale we do all year so don't miss out!

In this week's episode of Once Upon a Timeline I discuss the power balance in the edit suite and all of the psychological aspects at play. What do directors want? How do they think? What do they need from us outside of our creativity?Most importantly we're going to discuss the behavioural techniques and thought processes that can not only mitigate negativity and ego but also turn this vital creative relationship into a fruitful and fulfilling partnership.

As visual storytellers we need to concern ourselves with many different types of arcs that are never really talked about in the editing world. And so to kick off Season 3 of Once Upon a Timeline we're going to demystify, breakdown and explain everything you need to consider when designing these crucial narrative structures.

The emphasis on kit and keeping up with all of the latest equipment really does negate the one true aspect of filmmaking which we should all be focusing on more than anything else. It's also the thing our audiences love to see.Tune in to this week's episode of Once Upon a Timeline to hear an in-depth discussion on this controversial subject and my thoughts on where we should be putting all our attention.

They save us, they help us and they make sense in a world full of chaos. Like a thousand editors before me, I've spent large parts of my career using these words to construct the essential journalistic structure and logic of so many scenes.What are these three words? Well, I'm sorry but you're just gonna have to tune in to this week's episode of Once Upon a Timeline to find out. Guaranteed, these three words will elevate your skills as an editor so be sure not to miss the show!

On this week's show I'm going to break down and talk through all of the advantages to this perishable skill and show that there are many art forms that can teach us how to embrace complexity.This is not something to be intimidated by and run from, it's something to study, learn and weave into our narrative skills. We want to be known as an editor who can handle any situation from the simplistic all the way to the highly problematic.

Care and attention need to be paid to how we structure our edit, but we must also take a deeper look at how we get a huge return on every creative investment we make on the timeline.In this week’s episode of Once Upon a Timeline, I'll be breaking down the factors at play and talking through a battle plan that maximises our creative Return on Investment. We don’t want to leave this to chance like playing the lottery, we want to maximise our artistic dividends by sound investment.

Nothing should leave our edit suite without us making it the very best it can be and going through and pruning all of the last details to make sure everything is perfect is essential.In this week's show, I'm going to break down exactly what we look for during this stage and how we cultivate this particular mindset. If we get it right, the sense of satisfaction and completion is utterly addictive!

But there’s one place where we actually need to be amoral, Machiavellian and downright ruthless and that place is the timeline. Developing an unsentimental attitude to the vast majority of our raw footage is not just a good idea, it’s essential to our creative survival.If we don’t master the art of subtracting content and never looking back we’ll never meet a deadline or be confident in any of our creative decisions. On this week’s show I talk through this unique perspective and see how it can be utilised for maximum effect.

It doesn’t have a name, so I’ve decided to call it The Narrative Tuning Fork. Its sole purpose is to identify the core emotions within any sequence and use creative techniques to maximise the effect on the audience.I always try to remind myself, even after editing for 20 plus years, that I’m designing an emotional experience for the viewer, so identifying and constructing the strongest emotions of any scene should be paramount when cutting. I hope you enjoy this week’s discussion and find a way to use it in your creative workflow.

Across this broad range of genres, we often need to make the audience feel that what they are watching is real, is happening right now, and immediately pulls them deep into our narrative. And of course, like anything in high-end editing, there’s a specific mindset and set of techniques that are required.On this week's show, as an intro to this month's live Actuality Bootcamp on the 24th of April, I’m gonna talk about the philosophy and psychology of this complex and mysterious part of our art form.

Dan Crinnion ACE started as a production runner at the legendary Ealing Studios in London and worked his way up from assistant editor on massive dramas like Downton Abbey, all the way up to the award-winning Killing Eve and Batman spinoff, Pennyworth.Along the way, he's grabbed a BAFTA nomination, an Emmy nomination and won an Eddie award for best edited Drama Series, so I think it’s safe to say he knows what he’s talking about!Aside from all that, he’s just a loveable and likeable guy who talks so openly about the creative demons we all wrestle with. I know you’re gonna enjoy what he has to say on this week’s show!

Dan Crinnion has been nominated for a BAFTA, nominated for an Emmy, won the prestigious ACE EDDIE award for television drama, and he has come face to face with these internal struggles. In this week's show, not only does he tell us his story of how he rose through the ranks, but he also gives a ton of wisdom around battling the inner demons of creative confidence.We’re really lucky to have this amazing editor on the show this week to learn from his journey!

This has to be one of the best questions I’ve ever been asked, as it really gets to the core of what it means to be an editor. There is a very specific mindset that we need to cultivate in order to patiently sift through that mountain of footage and craft the best scene out of thousands of possibilities.Failure is not an option as we’re being paid by our client to hit the target every single time.It’s great to be back after our short break and I hope you enjoy another stacked show!

Another contributing factor was that we never want to put out any substandard content to you, our wonderful community. Every single podcast episode, every single tutorial in our creative editing course, every single Bootcamp that we make has to be of exceptionally high quality. That has always been our philosophy at Inside The Edit and so putting out something that didn’t meet that was never an option.The schools have opened again and we are raring to go. We’ve got tons of new content lined up for Once Upon a Timeline and we’ll be back to our normal release schedule next week on Thursday 25th March.

In this week's show, I talk through how creating a backstory for any scene or sequence we’re cutting has a remarkable effect on distilling the shot and dialogue selection process. It is yet another fantastic technique that can help you turn into a powerful creative editor.Also, don't forget to sign up to our latest Bootcamp webinar tomorrow afternoon! If you want to learn dozens of theories and techniques around picture cutting that’ll make your sequences shoot through the roof, you gotta join me at 3pm GMT tomorrow.Have a great weekend dear friend!

There are strong parallels with some economic theories in how we approach the design of any film, and in today’s episode I talk through a huge range of creative principles that helped me design my long form timelines. The only strange thing was, they came from economic and not film theory!Don’t forget, you can now book your spot on this month’s 4 hour live webinar!

I first discovered the idea of The Renaissance Editor nearly 20 years ago when reading about Italian history: the idea that if someone wanted to progress in this art form, they would need to become an editing polymath, someone who was talented in every single one of the dozen or so separate art forms within editing.In this week’s podcast, I take a detailed look at this concept and how it can help anyone move up the ranks of narrative editing.

From a small village in the north of England with absolutely no connections to film or television, he relentlessly pursued a career in front of the timeline. While working in McDonald's by day, he was cutting and making films at night, and after several years he got his first big break as an assistant editor on a drama series.This week, David tells us the second part of his story… how he made that jump to lead editor. What happened, how he did it and how long it took. It’s a great story, and it’s exactly the kind of inspiring tale we love on Once Upon a Timeline.Don’t forget to book your spot on this weekend’s epic four-hour webinar! We're going to go through dozens of high-end sync cutting techniques that will turn you into a dialogue pro.

Also, you can now go and book a front-row seat to this month’s live Bootcamp webinar. Our four-hour January masterclass is going to teach you every single thing you need to know about the completely misunderstood and undervalued art of sync cutting.

A new year so often symbolises a fresh start, maybe a re-evaluation, or a kind of psychological inventory about where we are. So what better way to kick off the New Year than an in-depth look into what I think is the fuel that drives all creativity itself; our will, our drive, that inner fire to create.We can possess all the skills and abilities we need, but if we do not have that powerful drive inside us, that non-negotiable will to create and edit, then all of our endeavours will never even get off the ground. I think this is the perfect discussion for the start of 2021.Enjoy the show!

In part two of her interview, Joanna provides us with her unique insight into many subjects that are at the core of our art form: from the complexity of interpersonal dynamics in the edit suite to creating self-reliance when building your career, and the unique considerations when cutting animation. It’s great to have yet another talented editing artist on the show to share so much wisdom.

Joanna is a comedy and drama editor working out of Brooklyn, New York where she co-owns the award-winning Senior Post. She’s worked on a ton of great projects including numerous HBO comedy specials, lots of comedy commercials with big brands and multiple seasons of the Golden Globe winning comedy-drama series, Ramy.Comedy is an utterly alien genre to me as it’s probably the only genre that I haven’t worked in, so I was keen to pick the brains of a talented comedy editor, and I wasn’t disappointed. Our interview was fantastic, and Joanna gave some brilliant insight into how she approaches the genre.

On one side of the fence, some believe that having an impartial observer of the footage is a must in any kind of filmmaking. On the other side are those who think that this concept is outdated and out of touch with the new era of content creation.Like many aspects in creative editing, we at Inside The Edit don’t think there’s a simple answer, so on this week’s show we’ll be discussing the range of issues at play. It promises to be a fruitful episode!

Lasse talks about the weaknesses and strengths of documentary thinking, what can be taken from drama in terms of structural techniques, and his thoughts on visual symbolism.A masterclass in editing theory in itself, our chat with Lasse is full of insights, wisdom and laughs. I know you’re going to love it as much as I did!

It’s highly intelligent in its structure, amazingly scored and the visual style is nothing short of stunning. On today’s show we’re lucky enough to have the first in a two-part conversation with one of the editors, Lasse Järvi. Lasse and I talked for hours about some fascinating subjects and it was so interesting getting his perspective on the art of documentary editing. I learned a ton and I know you will too.

The first of three stages in edit mastery is often not talked about: the stage of imitation. One of the quickest and easiest ways to kickstart the learning process is to copy those who have mastered it before us, and this is exactly what I did.There is a massive benefit to copying the hundreds of visual techniques and structures we see in films and TV shows every day. Not only can it give us a sense of purpose and progress in those early days, but it also inspires us to be the artists we know we can be.We’re all standing on the shoulders of the giants who came before us, and in today’s episode, we take an inspirational look at that path.

How we design our cutting patterns and what we choose to select within the music track to help us create that stylisation, is a rarely talked about skill. Most of us discover it by accident as I did one day in the mid-’90s when watching a music video of one of the tracks of the famous French dance duo, Daft Punk.It hit me like a sledgehammer, and I’ve been using this creative principle ever since. In this week’s show I talk through and breakdown this concept for you to use, and I guarantee it’ll amaze you.

So many people suffer from it. We work in one area of editing but have always considered it a stepping stone and never the destination for our career. It’s a difficult subject to discuss and has many factors at play.But with some thought-out strategy, some bravery and some inside knowledge of how staffing decisions are made on productions, there's no reason why we can't jump free of the curse of pigeonholing and build the career we've always wanted.We’re also making another exciting announcement about our new Bootcamp live training, so stay tuned for that at the end of the show.