Video editing

Offline edit

Rushes in, picture lock out. That means watching everything, pulling selects, building a structure, and cutting until the thing holds — not assembling a timeline in the order the script was written and calling it an edit.

Interview-led corporate work gets a paper edit first, so the argument is agreed before a single shot goes down. Commercial and music work usually starts on the timeline, because the rhythm is the point and it can only be found by cutting.

• Selects, paper edit and structure
• First cut, then rounds of changes against timecoded notes
• Temp music, temp sound design and temp graphics so the cut reads as intended
• Picture lock, with a change list your finishing team can work from

Online and delivery

After the lock: relinking to full-resolution media, conforming the timeline, laying in the finished graphics and comps, and exporting the masters. Every deliverable is made from one master, so the sixteen-by-nine broadcast cut and the nine-by-sixteen social version cannot drift apart.

Caption files, thumbnails, cutdowns and language variants are made in the same pass rather than being reopened later.

Tools

Premiere Pro, with After Effects live-linked for anything that moves. Projects are media-managed and handed back in the structure they arrived in.

• Premiere Pro
• After Effects
• Media Encoder
• Audition
• Photoshop

What lands on this desk most often

• Corporate films: internal comms, case studies, leadership and results videos
• Commercials and brand films, online and broadcast
• Social cutdowns and vertical versions from an existing master
• Long-form: conference recordings, documentaries and event films
• Music videos

What it costs

R6,500 per day, excluding VAT, wherever the job comes from. What a day covers is set out on the pricing page.