Directing
Directing decides what a piece is about, then holds that line through every take, every cut and every review. Twenty five years of it, from a PBS children's series to founder videos for startups, taught me one thing above all: the footage is the master, and that drives the cut.
Shot to be cut
Editors get brought on to direct because they know the pacing, and the hero shots that sell the rest of the scene. For KangaRoddy, I cut the pilot, the cut worked, and the show got funded for a season with me directing six of the twelve episodes and running editorial on all of them. Pat Morita would give you a different flavor every take, each one usable, each a different way to cut the scene. That is a director's dream.
On set I am watching for the cut. This $3M PBS series with a 20‑person crew had little room for rehearsal, so the first take went wide: any mistake sits small in the frame, and the wide is the shot a dance number uses least against its mediums and close‑ups. A trick learned from Robert Altman, who often shot the wide first so his actors could settle into the performance. Two cameras, one of them on a large jib arm, four takes, different angles every pass, and the numbers arrived in the cutting room as eight separate angles with cinematic appeal.
On MGMT, the interviews went on green screen against factory floor plates, matched for focal length, which bought clean sound instead of a loud warehouse. A director/editor's decision, made in pre‑production, so the cut finishes cleanly.