Building Editing Skills Through Real Projects
We started teaching film editing because we got tired of courses that showed shortcuts but never explained why they mattered. Every technique we share comes from actual projects where timing, pacing, and story structure made the difference between something watchable and something memorable.
How We Actually Teach Editing
Most people think editing is about software buttons. That's like saying cooking is about turning on the stove. What matters is understanding rhythm, knowing when to hold a shot, recognizing when a scene needs air or when it needs to move faster.
Our approach focuses on decision-making. You'll work with real footage that has problems – coverage that doesn't quite match, audio that needs finessing, pacing that drags. Because that's what actual editing looks like. We walk through the thought process behind every cut, not just the mechanical steps.
Students often tell us they've taken other courses that covered the same tools but never helped them understand when to use them. That's what we're here for – the context that makes techniques actually useful.
Three Moments That Shaped Our Teaching
The Documentary That Changed Everything
Summer 2019, Montreal
We were cutting a short doc about urban gardening. Simple subject. But the footage was all over the place – some interviews were too long, the b-roll didn't match the energy we needed. One of our instructors spent three days restructuring it, not because they had to, but because they wanted to prove a point about story architecture. That project became our first real case study. Students could see every version, every choice, every mistake we made along the way.
When Software Updates Broke Our Workflow
Early 2021
A major editing platform changed their interface completely. Suddenly, the tutorials we'd created were outdated. Instead of panicking, we rebuilt everything around principles instead of buttons. Turns out, teaching concepts like continuity editing, pacing theory, and narrative structure actually helps students adapt to any software. That's when we stopped being a "how to use this program" course and became something more durable.
The Student Project That Surprised Us
Late 2023
One of our students took everything we taught about rhythm and timing, then completely ignored conventional cutting patterns to create something that worked on its own terms. It was technically "wrong" by traditional standards but emotionally perfect for the story. That's when we realized we'd actually succeeded – not in making students copy our style, but in giving them tools to develop their own judgment.
What Drives Our Curriculum
These aren't values we picked because they sound good. They're approaches that emerged from watching what actually helps people improve.
Real Footage, Real Problems
Learning Through Messiness
Clean demo projects are useless. We give you footage with continuity issues, audio that needs work, pacing problems that aren't obvious at first. Because that's what you'll encounter everywhere else. The best learning happens when you have to solve problems that don't have a single correct answer.
Context Before Technique
Understanding the Why
Anyone can show you where the ripple delete button lives. We explain why you'd use it instead of lift, and more importantly, when that choice affects story flow. Every technique gets introduced in the context of an actual editing challenge. No isolated lessons about features you might use someday.
Your Voice, Not Ours
Developing Personal Judgment
We're not trying to create editors who all cut the same way. The goal is helping you understand enough about pacing, rhythm, and structure that you can make intentional choices. Sometimes that means breaking the rules we teach. That's fine – as long as you know why you're doing it.