Keith Ochwat Hired Us To Cut Down His Feature

Happy Halloween!

I’m co-presenting a webinar with brand new material! Join us on Nov 2 at 1pm PT for “Editing and Leveraging an Hour-Long Cut for PBS, the Classroom and Conferences.” I’ll be teaching new techniques on how to cut down your feature film to generate revenues through foreign sales, conferences, classrooms, and public television.

Can’t make the time? Register anyway. We will be recording the webinar for playback only for those who have registered.

My co-host, Keith Ochwat of Show&Tell, asked us earlier this year to edit a “TV hour” from the first feature documentary he’s acquired, My Ascension, directed by Greg Dicharry.

When we delivered the first draft to Keith and director Greg Dicharry, Keith thought to ask if we had “amputated” any scenes–as that was one of my previous webinar tips: “Amputate rather than truncate.” In other words, cut out entire characters, subplots, story lines, or scenes first, before trimming (truncating) other parts.

At that point, we had cut one scene that wasn’t needed to tell the story of suicide prevention. We quickly identified two more, which brought us to the 56:46 running time quickly! Keith called our editor “extremely talented”.

To date, he has raised $390,000 in underwriting and screening licenses. And he expects to be at $800,000 within six months. That man amazes me! And this is what he teaches filmmakers: how to monetize their docs in today’s changing film industry.

Next week, we’ll be editing a TV cutdown for another documentary aimed at NETA, and I’ll be cutting big swipes with my lady chain saw first!

Is this service for you? Check out When Do Filmmakers Need A “TV Hour”? In it, distribution consultant Peter Broderick says, “If you haven’t already cut your hour version, find an editor who specializes in this to do it for you. It will be cheaper, faster, less painful, and possibly better than if you have your team do it.” 

New Doc Editing, specializes in this unique service. It’s critical to shop around for foreign broadcasts, conferences, class rooms, as well as U.S. public television! Learn about our special service for TV cutdowns here.

Thanks to Julie Parker, Producer of the NETA-acquired Baba Bebee Skazala, for this testimonial:

“We couldn’t imagine a way to further cut from a future length documentary to an even shorter TV edit without losing critical parts of the history. Yet Karen quickly and efficiently provided TV edit recommendations that were absolutely spot on, and maintained every aspect of the story – so much so that those who watched both versions of the film, barely noticed the cuts!”