Short-form cuts

What short-form cutting is

Short-form cutting takes one long recording — an interview, a talk, a recorded call, a demonstration — and produces a small number of clips under a minute, each trimmed to start at the right moment, finished with the text a silent viewer needs, and delivered in the shape the feed wants.

The cutting is arranged through the editors described on the video editing page. The part I do is the selection: watching the whole recording, marking what is worth taking and, more usefully, refusing the parts that are not. That is the skill in this job. Trimming a clip is a technical task anyone can learn in an afternoon. Knowing which forty seconds of a ninety-minute conversation will hold a stranger is the bit that is hard, and it is a writing judgement rather than an editing one.

It is not a promise of reach, and it is not a viral strategy. Most business clips are watched by a few hundred people who matter.

When you need it

You have already recorded something long and it is doing nothing. A podcast episode, a conference talk, a customer interview, a training session: the recording exists, the effort is spent, and the only thing standing between it and a fortnight of posts is somebody watching it properly with a notepad.

The other case is a business that has decided to post video regularly and does not want to film every week. One recording session a month, cut properly, covers the month. That is a far easier habit to keep than filming something new every Tuesday.

You do not need this if the recording is a sixty-minute webinar with slides, which has its own shape and its own problems and is sold as webinar and interview clips. And you do not need it if what you actually want is one short film of the best moments rather than separate posts, which is a highlight reel and is a different edit entirely.

What goes in it

• A full watch. The whole recording, at normal speed, with a timecoded list of every candidate moment and a one-line note on what makes each one work without the hour around it.
• The selection. The candidates cut down to the ones worth the money, ranked. An hour of decent conversation usually yields something like half a dozen genuinely usable moments. Sometimes as few as two. It is rarely more than ten, and a supplier who promises thirty is selling you filler.
• The in and out points. Each clip starts on the sentence that makes sense cold, not on the question that prompted it, and ends before the speaker trails off.
• The framing text. A title card and the on-screen lines the clip needs to stand alone, because nobody watching it has any of the context you have.
• The post. A short written caption per clip, so the thing is publishable rather than merely finished.

What you get

The clips. Each one finished, captioned, delivered vertically for feeds and squarely or widely where you need it, in a folder you own.

The selection document. The timecoded list of every candidate, including the ones not used and the reason. This is the part clients keep, because it tells them what they are actually good at saying.

A caption per clip. The written post the clip goes out with, and a suggested order and spacing for publishing them over a few weeks rather than all on one afternoon.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A Calgary commercial insurance brokerage records a seventy-minute conversation between two of its brokers about the claims small contractors get refused. It is posted in full on the firm's website, where it is watched by almost nobody, because seventy minutes is a commitment.

Watched properly, it contains seven moments worth taking. Four are stories about a specific refused claim, each complete in under a minute. Two are plain explanations of a policy term that contractors get wrong. One is the moment where a broker disagrees with her colleague, which is the best forty seconds in the recording and would never have been scripted. Each is cut, captioned, given a title card, and published over five weeks with a written post. The eleven minutes of the recording that were worth anything now exist in the form people will watch, and the other fifty-nine are on the site for the two people who want them.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. What the recording is, how long it runs, where the clips will be posted and what you want them to do. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. Per recording, with the number of clips stated, agreed before anything starts.
3. The files. You send the recording, a transcript if one exists, and a list of names and terms that must be spelt correctly.
4. The watch and the selection. The timecoded list comes back to you within about three working days, for you to say yes or no to each candidate before any editing is paid for.
5. The cutting. Five to eight working days for a set of clips from one recording, with the first clip approved before the rest are finished.
6. Delivery. Clips, captions, the selection document and a publishing order, in a folder you own.

What it costs

Quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call. The price depends on how long the source recording is, how many clips come out of it, how many shapes each clip is needed in, and whether a checked transcript already exists to work from. A standing arrangement for a monthly recording is priced per session and stated in writing. The pricing page shows the four ways of working, and the figure is agreed before anything is cut.

What happens next

The same recording almost always has more in it than clips. Repurposing turns it into an article, a newsletter section and a page of answered questions from the same hour of talking. If the clips are good and you want one short film that uses the best of them, that is a highlight reel. And the posts that carry the clips can be written properly rather than typed in a hurry on the day. None of that is required. A set of finished clips with captions is a complete job and can be the end of it.