You want to or need to work with another editor because you’re gotten busy with extra work or like me, you know you’re ok or maybe even good at editing but not great. You need an awesomely creative and technical editor to bring your work to another level. Especially if you need to open up AE to animate or Devinci Resolve for color grading.
But how do you communicate with them? Sure you have a script but a lot is going on visually, especially if it’s a non-narrative video like our how-to’s where the timing of when information and assets are shown is important. Well, the assembly edit to the rescue.
Traditionally an assembly referred to narrative work, where an editor of more likely their assistant pulled the circle takes, synced them to the magnetic audio track, and spliced them together in shot-order for a scene. No editing, no cutting, just shot after shot. This way you could see what you’ve got to work with and start digging into the scene. With a non-narrative project, your assembly edit can be a little more detailed.
We use assembly edits on all our videos particularly when I write and shoot an episode instead of me giving a folder of shot, a script, and other assets. It's a visual way of communicating to Manu, the editor, what I would like done. He'll not only polish it but also clean it up, condense it, speed up parts if needed. Jazzing it up beyond my capabilities.
He might choose a different take, create a mosaic of shots or other visual setups to help communicate what I'm trying to get across to the viewer.
The A/V Script
We start with an A/V script, audio/visual, with one column for the narration, like my on-camera shots right now, and the visual column denoting when I want to show something else on screen with that narration.
For example, here I want to show an AV script, I’ll just take the asset, here a pdf of that page of the script, and throw it onto the timeline. I’m not zooming in on it or panning, using keyframes. None of that stuff. I’m leaving that in Manu’s capable and creative hands. I’m just importing and assembling the assets for him so he doesn’t have to search for them and let him know where and when I would like to show them. I’m acting as an editor’s assistant, facilitating the process as much as I can.
In the video, you can see where he took my rough assembly of assets for that section and polished it up. This means there's no pressure on me to make a great edit. I just need to put a rough assembly together and send that project file over to him.
Remember, only the editor will see what you're assembly. And you'll find as you work together and get feedback from them, you'll get better at editing. My Assembly edits have gotten more polished. I uhm, even started um taking out my uhms. And I started playing around with keyframes, creating mosaics, and other editing effects. He’ll take those and polish them as well.
One other advantage of using an editor is the extra set of eyes on your work. Since we’re a how-to series, Manu is my test audience. If a section doesn’t make sense to him that’s valuable feedback that we use to fix it. And if he understands it and is excited about what he learned, that’s great news because it means it’s working.
Using Assembly Edits Internally
There’s one thing about assembly edits. We use them internally but can not show them to clients unless they are very experienced with video. They have to know how to watch and listen to an edit without being distracted by missing shots, the lack of color grading and incomplete, unmixed audio.
We can watch a video knowing that eventually bed music will be added here, these animations smoothed out, and the overall edit polished. A lot of our work is with agencies and they generally can watch an assembly along with our list of the caveats of what’s not complete yet.
How detailed you create your assembly is really up to you and your editor. I’m not going to lay in bed music as that messes up Manu’s process. He handles that at the very end. But I will throw in sound effects now and then if I think it would work. He may use them or make his own choices.
If you want more info on the A/V script we have a video we produced on that. Note there’s no right order to the columns by the way, just what works for you and your team. So if someone tries to tell you the visual column is supposed to come first just tell them to shut the hell up. You know who’s right. The client who sent it to me. The same ones that sent me a check.