Once Upon a Timeline

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.