Cut by instruction.
Our edit, our systems.
We built an edit workflow that runs on instructions, then proved it on a real cut. STUDIO 4 is a short documentary about the last night of a television studio, cut from fifty rushes in CC Edit, our own edit suite. This film shows every step, and what it means for the editor.
- Made by
- Channel Changers
- Year
- 2026
- The film
- 4 min 17 sec
- The proof
- STUDIO 4 · 70 sec
- Rushes
- 50 · all AI-generated
- Edit suite
- CC Edit
- Brief to first cut
- 20 min 48 sec
- Director
- Sam Wilkinson
Ten steps between
the shoot and the screen.
Every edit runs down the same line. The big edit suites are starting to take instructions, so the software is becoming the same for everyone. What's yours is the instructions. We ran the whole line by instruction on one short documentary, in an evening, and kept a file from every step.
- Ingest
50 rushes in, one bin per camera.
- Sync
Rushes arrive with their own sound.
- Log
Every word transcribed and searchable.
- Paper edit
The cut written down against the brief.
- Assembly
Laid in CC Edit: 63 instructions.
- Notes
A note back as a new version in 9 minutes.
- Conform
None needed: the cut is built from the rushes.
- QC
Every shot checked against its rush: 24 of 24.
- Delivery
The master exported from the same timeline.
- Versions
Vertical and 30 sec from the same timeline.
Four sentences. Every cut answers to them.
An edit starts with a brief. Claude read all fifty transcripts and frame strips against it, and wrote down how it read each instruction alongside the cut.
Cut a 75-second film from these rushes.Let Maureen tell it.Enter late.Hold the payoff.
Let Maureen tell it
Maureen's interview lines carry the spine (A001_C002, C003, C004, C005, C007). Dev's four answers are good but tell the same story from the side, so none is used. Jess's own interview answers are cut too: she is seen, not heard, until the last line, where her one sentence answers Maureen's.
Enter late
The film opens inside the last thirty seconds before the show, in the gallery and on the floor, not on the building or the afternoon. The countdown itself comes in at its last numbers ("seven, six", then the fingers and the point), not at ten.
Hold the payoff
"Go and make something" is kept until the end: Maureen says it once, the studio is already dark, and Jess's answer ("so I'm going to") plays over her walking away from the building. Nothing after it.
Every word,
searchable.
At ingest, Whisper transcribed all fifty rushes word by word, and the transcripts went into CC Edit with the clips. The footage can then be searched like a script: ask for “countdown” and the line comes back.
Whisper also invents words over silence. A rule drops them and keeps them on file: 370 invented words went, 322 real ones stayed.
0.7I1.2worked1.5it1.7out1.8once.2.593.1,0003.7countdowns,4.7near4.9enough.6.8Never7.4got7.6one7.8wrong.8.6Well,9.1once.
0.9The1.5last1.8five2.1seconds,3.0you3.2don't3.5say3.7them3.9out4.1loud.4.7You5.0count5.3them5.4on5.6your5.7fingers6.2because6.8the7.0mic's7.3live.
From the transcript files · timings in seconds into each rush
Written down
before a frame is cut.
The edit is written as a list before anything is laid: which rush, where it goes in and out, and why. Seventeen selects, each with its reason, so anyone can read the cut, argue with it and change it in plain English.
Enter late: the gallery, 'Thirty seconds, studio.'
Who she is: 'Forty-one years. I've counted this place down more times than I've had hot dinners.'
'Nine thousand countdowns, near enough. Never got one wrong. Well. Once.' Starts on the number; 'I worked it out once' is lost to keep the pace.
The countdown, entered late: 'Seven, six', then the fingers and the point.
The turn: 'You don't think about the building. You think about the people. And then it's the building you miss.'
The payoff, held to the end: 'Jess asked me what she should do now. I said, go and make something.' Ends before 'That's all any of us ever did', so the line lands clean.
Six of the seventeen selects · times on the cut
Left out, and why
- A001_C001False start.
- A001_C006The canteen ramble: charming, off the brief.
- A001_C009"Sleep in" is a good laugh, but it undercuts the ending it would sit next to.
- A002_C001–C006 · DevDev: the brief gives the film to Maureen; A002_C004 is the phone take.
- B001_C005Angela's fluffed rehearsal line: a blooper, off the brief.
- B002_C003 · 0.0–5.6 secThe countdown from ten, with Maureen saying 'seven' twice: entered late instead.
Sixty-three instructions.
A quarter of a second.
CC Edit, our edit suite, takes instructions as well as clicks. It laid the second cut, V02, in 0.25 seconds. To show it, we sent the same instructions again to a second CC Edit window, one at a time, and captured the screen after each. Scroll to lay the cut.
A note in.
A new version out.
When an executive leaves notes on a cut we've shared, the notes become instructions, and a new version comes back on the same link. Sam watched V02 and left one note. V03 was back on the same link 8 min 58 sec later. The changes, from the note and an independent editorial review of the paper edit:
- Stray frames out. Two cutaways ended five and six frames before the next cut. Both now meet it, and the job script refuses any shot under twelve frames.
- Jess placed in the last show. One continuous move from the live floor finds her watching the show Maureen counted in.
- Ending reordered. “Go and make something” now comes before the lights go off, so the studio is never lit again once it goes dark.
“A couple of stray frames in there. In the last shot, Jess comes out of nowhere.”
on the same link · 23:43
Every shot,
back to its rush.
Every visible shot of V03 was matched frame for frame against the rush it came from. All 24 matched, at 41.8 to 47.4 dB, where anything over 40 is the same picture. There's no conform at the end, because the cut is built from the rushes in the first place.
CUT
RUSH
CUT
RUSH
CUT
RUSHThe short versions
come with the master.
The vertical and the thirty-second cut were laid in CC Edit from the master's timeline, by instruction, in under a fifth of a second each. They arrive with the master, not weeks after it.
- Instructions48
- Reframes22 sideways
- CC Edit time0.19 sec
- Instructions13
- CC Edit time0.06 sec
- CheckedEvery line whole, in order
Every AI tool,
logged for the commissioner.
Channel 4's guidelines already ask productions to record what each AI tool did and who checked it. We kept that log from our own files as we went. Where nobody checked, it says so.
| Tool | What it did | Who checked it |
|---|---|---|
| GPT Image | The anchor stills every rush was made from: two per person, one per location. Fourteen stills. | No separate review is recorded. Google Flow refused one face as looking like a real person, so that character was recast. |
| Omni Flash | 35 of the 50 rushes, through Google Flow: all the interviews and most of the actuality, each person with their own face and voice. | Whisper transcribed every take and scored it against its planned line. A frame strip of every take was read; three takes were replaced. |
| Seedance 2.0 | The 15 rushes Google declined to make, through Higgsfield. | The same transcript and frame-strip checks. Flags kept on file. |
| Whisper | A word-timed transcript of every rush at ingest, searchable in CC Edit. | Scored against the shooting plan. The rule that drops invented words was tested on these rushes. |
| Claude | Read the transcripts and frame strips against the brief, wrote the paper edits and ran the job scripts that laid each cut. | Sam's note on V02, fixed in V03. An independent editorial review of the first paper edit. CC Edit's read-back of every cut. |
| ElevenLabs | Frank, the narrator of this film. No ElevenLabs voice is in STUDIO 4. | Every line transcribed again and compared with the script. |
| CC Edit | Held the rushes, bins and transcripts; laid each cut by instruction; read it back; exported the master and versions. | Its own read-back of every clip, compared with the paper edit. |
None of this decides what the film is about. The editor does.
The searching and sorting go fast. The story keeps the weeks. What the line gives an editor is time: logging, the first lay, the conform and the versions stop eating the schedule, and the decisions get it back.
Studio 4.
Forty-one years of counting a studio down, and its last night on air. Every rush was generated with AI, then cut by instruction in CC Edit. This is V04, after the notes.
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