Story editors play a pivotal role finding the strongest moments in footage, shaping the story, structuring episodes, and elevating the material.
Learn practical tips and techniques that will take you from the basics of the job to maximizing your collaborative relationship with the video editor, creating strong scenes, developing character arcs, narration writing and world building.
Topics to be covered include:
- What’s a story editor and what is their role?
- How the process differs between lifestyle series, episodic docu-series, serialized occu-docs and other formats, and how that impacts the story editing process.
- Viewing footage and making string outs of key moments.
- Structuring an episode – A, B, and C stories.
- The building blocks of a scene – actuality, On the Fly interviews (shot in the moment in the field) and sit-down interviews.
- Building conflict, drama and tension into a scene.
- Character arcs and character development over an episode and a season.
- Writing narration.
- Collaborating with a video editor.
Workshop Instructor
Cheryl Binning is a Vancouver-based showrunner, producer and writer working in factual and documentary television. She is the showrunner of season 5 and 6 of the Discovery series Jade Fever, and season 5 of History’s Yukon Gold. Cheryl has also worked as a senior story editor on Yukon Gold and Klondike Trappers (History US and History Canada), the true crime series Very Bad Men (Investigation Discovery), and story edited numerous episodes of Discovery’s long-running series Highway Thru Hell.
When: Saturday Sept. 21 (10am-4pm)
Where: Regina Soundstage