Power of The Assembly Cut

First, a quick announcement: we currently have two talented editors who will be available soon. Email me if you are interested.

Out of the hundreds of filmmakers we work with, every single director knows what a rough cut is. But interestingly, only one in three know what an Assembly Cut is.

So in today’s Part 2 of the Stages of Post Production, we’ll see how this underutilized tool can help unveil your film’s structure–without wasting time by overcutting a rough cut.

The Assembly Cut is a quick and dirty first edit. It’s so ugly that it should not be screened to anyone outside the film’s editorial team! (In fact, we just delivered an Assembly Cut and I had to warn the director: this will not look like a film!)

But for editors, directors, and creative advisors who can see a film in the bare bones of an Assembly Cut, the pay-off is huge.  The Assembly Cut’s function is to see the big picture, the film in broad strokes, when shooting is roughly ninety percent complete.

The chief questions that the Assembly Cut should answer are “Is there a story here?” “Is this an essay documentary?” “Which characters and themes can be cut?”

Most importantly, “What’s the likely structure?”

For this reason, length should be no more than 140 percent of final film.  If longer, it is difficult to assess the film’s structure and rhythm.  So for a 60-minute documentary, the assembly should be no more than 84 minutes.

Some so-called Assembly Cuts are 4-5 hours long. These cuts are more accurately termed “String Outs”. While too long to be very helpful in judging structure, a String Out at least shows you the breadth of the film’s best footage, and can be used as a preliminary tool to editing the Assembly Cut.

A word about radio cuts. For films that are heavy on talking-heads, editors often employ transcripts that are cut and pasted into a “paper edit”, which then gets turned into a “radio cut”. A radio cut is a type of Assembly Cut, driven strictly by sound with no regard for visuals.

The strength of the radio cut is that it can help organize ideas, an excellent instrument for an essay-style film.

The potential weakness of a radio cut is that your first edit will be dialogue-heavy and you may miss the potential of verite scenes and visual moments.

When do you edit your Assembly Cut? Generally, after ninety percent of your footage is shot, ingested, logged–and you have some kind of structure on paper.  This could be a treatment, a paper edit, or simply index cards pinned to a wall.

Remember, the Assembly Cut is your best first guess at structure (apart from a treatment).  If you don’t know where to start, try a strictly chronological approach.

Include all your killer emotional moments—and a little of every scene that might make it in the film.

Edit the assembly quickly, within a few weeks if possible.  Sequences should be bulky-represented by two or three long unedited shots.  Resist the temptation to finesse edits.

Edit with sync sound. No L cuts, J cuts or VO (voiceover). This level of fine cutting can be a waste of time because you may change scenes later or delete them entirely.  Also, you don’t need to see cutaways, etc. to tell that a film’s structure is working.

At this early stage, I recommend including none of the following: music, narration, dissolves, inserts, special effects. Jump cuts are fine.

Use cards for missing interviews, archival footage, etc.

After viewing the assembly, determine if a viable film exists. What additional shooting may be needed?

What characters can be dropped because they are not pertinent or they are repetitious?

What ideas/themes can be dropped?

What scenes are not needed?

We currently have two talented editors who will be finishing up projects soon. Both can work remotely. Please email me for a free consultation on how we can help you edit a compelling film!