Hello friends,
A few weeks ago, I wrote about how to start a new edit.
As I noted in that post, setting milestones is a big part of my process with editors. On my current film, the First Assembly Cut milestone is looming — it’s in January, omg!!! — so I’m right in the thick of it.
And as with so many other things in my job as a documentary director, having a weekly newsletter to write has me thinking about all the things I’ve learned that make this stage easier… and all the ways I still make it harder than it needs to be.
What is an assembly cut?
An assembly is an early, rough version of the film where you put all or most of the material you think belongs in the film into a sequence to see what you have and how it might fit together. In documentary, it usually means:
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Scenes or sections are assembled loosely, often following a first provisional outline;
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It’s long and uneven — story beats run on and on, scenes repeat ideas, transitions are missing, and there’s probably a bunch of text cards indicating missing scenes;
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The structure is still being discovered. You’re seeing which characters, themes, and structures actually work with the footage you’ve got so far.
An assembly is the first major editing milestone before the first rough cut, which makes a more deliberate argument for what the film is. An assembly asks, “What have we actually got here? Is it working? In this movie, what does ‘working’ even mean?”
But… like, how, though?
Today I’ll share how I break this essential and often misunderstood work into manageable chunks, decide what deserves time right now and what really doesn’t, and how to start finding the story structure. I’ll use examples from the assembly cutting of one of my trickier films to cut: Confessions of a Good Samaritan.
I’ll also share the one scene I cut immediately after the assembly, and another one everyone told me to cut that I instead fought for and made the emotional climax of the film.
Plus: who should actually get to see this glorious mess, and how to watch it yourself without deciding you should find another career stat!
