#205 - How long will it take?

The age old question: how long is this going to take?

When it comes to editing, most things take longer than I anticipate.

I should just add 20% more time than I said it would take, but somehow I never do...

(You should do this, by the way, and just call it "contingency".)

Editing Schedules - Learn from Other's Experience

Figuring out how long something is going to take, and scheduling it correctly is mostly guess work or budget-driven, as far as I can tell.

But with experience comes a vague sense of what is actually do-able in the time, especially if you've 'cut one like this before'.

Thankfully the Alliance of Documentary Editors have put their wise heads together and created a simple guide for anyone creating a 'humane' edit schedule from scratch, for feature and multi-episode documentaries.

You can read through the whole guide here, but in today's issue of Cut/daily we'll take a look at some of the core principles, and why a realistic schedule can actually save you more than it costs.

This Guide for Documentary Edit Schedules was created with the input of hundreds of professional editors and assistant editors currently working in documentary film and television...

We created this Guide to help producers, directors, and distributors plan a realistic documentary schedule, ensuring the most efficient and cost-effective edit while maximizing the creative contributions of the edit team.