It’s one of the age-old questions an editor asks themselves at some point in their career… should I go in-house at a production company, broadcaster, or studio. Or should I throw caution to the wind and jump into a freelance lifestyle?

What happens when we spend hours cutting a sequence, we think we’ve done a great job but then the client comes in and doesn’t like it at all? An every day occurrence in a pro edit suite.

On this week’s show I’ll be talking about a mindset that is hugely important in long form. Creative actions and the creative reactions that happen on our timeline as a result.

On this week’s show I’ll be talking about sequence archetypes/scene modelling. The benefits we gain as editors in analysing and categorising as many different scenes and sequences in other people’s work as possible, is incredibly useful. It widens our abilities and makes us better editors.

And we’re back. Did you miss us? We missed you! We’re kicking off Season Four of Once Upon a Timeline with an in depth discussion around the checks and balances of  sequence quality. There’s so many creative skills we need to apply to any one scene or sequence and it can be daunting trying to remember them all before we hand a cut over to our client for approval.

We can learn an enormous amount about editing from listening to editors. But we can also learn an enormous amount from listening to the creative people we work with every single day, the people who employ us... directors.

As editors we spend most of our careers talking to just one person... a director. The quality of that communication and how we craft that relationship is often the difference between a successful or unsuccessful career. And so it makes perfect sense to try and understand the thought process of these important creative people in our lives.

This week we're talking subtly! After an editor has mastered all of the more obvious fundamental skills of building scenes they are then forced to wade through the thousands of shades of grey, the shades that can show exactly where they are in creative maturity. One such shade is the art of Narrative Sprinkling.

This week we're going a bit left field. There is a phenomenon in quantum mechanics known as The Observer Effect. It states that a situation is often changed by observing it. The fascinating thing is that applying it to certain aspects of filmmaking can make us better editors.

One of the most well trodden paths in the editing world is to start off in short form promo content and then move onto longer form projects. It's a difficult journey as clients won't trust us with the larger budgets that long form requires until we've proven we can work to briefs, communicate well in the edit suite and deliver on time.

Ok, play time is over. This week, we are going supersonic with the concluding part of our exclusive Top Gun Maverick special episode of Once Upon a Timeline. Hollywood editor Eddie Hamilton is back on the show to tell us what really went on during the edit of one of the most anticipated movies of the decade.

What was is like editing one of the most anticipated Hollywood action movies of the decade? We’re really excited to have our dear friend Eddie Hamilton back on the show this week to give us an in depth discussion on how he cut the recent big budget smash hit Top Gun Maverick.

One of the biggest things that gets skipped over in the early stages of the creative editing process is around selecting what will be pulled out of the raw footage for a rough cut and what will be left on the cutting room floor.

It's rare that we go back to the fundamentals of our art form. But on this week's show Paddy dispenses with complex creative theories and takes us back to that most basic of questions... what is the eye drawn to in each shot?

Building a career in editing can be a tricky business. Not only do we have to master a huge range of creative skills but we also have to build a roster of clients who want to work with us repeatedly.

On this week's episode of Once Upon a Timeline we're going to be discussing the essential subject of visual grammar. There's a whole bunch of rules and regulations that we must obey when cutting our sequences and knowing what they are and why they exist is a must for any pro editor.

Happy new year! I hope you had a fantastic holiday break and are raring to go for 2022! We've got a great show for you this week with a few new features to talk about.

From high-octane Formula One promo editing to assisting on a Keira Knightley feature film to teaching a famous film director how to use Avid during the Covid Lockdown, the hugely talented Carly Brown tells the concluding part of her inspirational story on this week's show.

One of the parts of an editor's personal story that I find truly inspiring is how they've managed to rise through the ranks. We all have a unique path into our art form but listening to the struggles, sacrifices and choices that fellow artists made along the way to success is often one of the most useful and motivating things we can take on board.

Jump Cuts, what a pain. They create areas we have to hide, they create continuity issues and can often ruin the fluidity of our cutting patterns. What's to love?

Directors... The most important relationships we'll ever have throughout our careers. The power they wield in how successful we become is astonishing. We can be amazing creative editors but if we do not put as much care and attention into cultivating the director/editor relationship we are putting our careers and earning potential at risk.

What is a Story Arc? Are they important? How do we build one on our timeline? Very important questions for us to ask as creative editors. But for me they only scratch the surface of the things we need to consider when crafting high end films.

GAS. Gear Acquisition Syndrome. Yeah, it's a problem and in my opinion, it is a major hindrance to filmmaking. On this week's show, I talk about when and how I first spotted this problem in the industry, its effects on filmmakers and most importantly how they can break free.

There are three magical words in editing, especially in the non-scripted genres that every editor covets, hunts and searches for. These three words get us out of a thousand different problems and so we could say they are super words!