Brief an editor

What this is about

The most expensive sentence in post-production is 'do something cool with it'. It sounds like creative freedom and works like a lottery ticket: the editor invests days into one interpretation among many, and the odds of it matching the picture in the client's head are low. A real briefing removes the lottery without removing the creativity — it fixes the destination and leaves the route open. What must this film make its audience do or feel, what material carries that, what tone do the references define, and what deliverables hang off the master. Everything else stays the editor's craft.

The order matters more than the tools. Skip a step and you usually notice two steps later — by which point the fix costs several times as much.

What runs differently here

In planning terms, that means:

• The film's job fits one sentence — audience, message, intended action — and that sentence outranks every taste debate later
• References work when annotated: not three links, but three links with 'take the pacing from this one, the tone from that one'
• Must-use and must-avoid lists prevent the two worst review surprises: the missing CEO sentence and the shot of the departed employee
• Deliverables belong in the briefing, not after picture lock — a vertical version changes framing decisions from cut one

Step by step

This order gets you there fastest:

1. Write the one-sentence job of the film and read it to the editor in person or on a call. If you cannot say it, the edit cannot cut it — sharpen it before handover, not during review.
2. Provide the structure you owe: a script, a paper edit of interview selects, or at minimum a beginning-middle-end intention. The editor argues with structure productively; with a void, expensively.
3. Mark must-use material by name — the sentence from the CEO, the shot the client already loves — and must-avoid material with reasons: departed people, off-limits claims, outdated branding.
4. Attach two or three annotated references and say per reference what to borrow: rhythm, tone, graphics style. References without annotation are a mood board; with annotation they are a contract.
5. Hand over organized media with the take log and continuity notes, and walk the editor through it for fifteen minutes. The tour costs little and prevents the classic week-one wrong turn.
6. List every deliverable with length, format and platform now: the master, the cutdowns, the vertical, the mute version with burned subtitles. Late-discovered deliverables reopen locked pictures.
7. Agree the working rhythm: when the first cut lands, how many rounds are planned, who consolidates feedback, and through which channel. Calendar clarity is creative protection.
8. Stay reachable in the first days and answer fast — the early questions are cheap steering. An editor who waits three days for answers builds three days of the wrong film.

Common pitfalls

What most often goes wrong in practice:

• 'Make something cool from this' as the entire creative direction
• References sent as bare links, interpreted freely, disowned at review
• The deliverables list arriving after picture lock and reopening everything

With TillyGen

A TillyGen project hands the editor more than footage: the briefing, the shot list and the storyboard travel along as the intended structure, so the first cut argues with the plan instead of guessing at one.

Change one constraint and the consequences travel through the whole plan: affected shots are flagged, the call sheet is regenerated, and nobody keeps working from yesterday's version.