Shorts and Reels

Why no two partners get the same short-form rules

The short is cut from the vertical sequence

Selection happens against footage already framed for a phone. The highest-tempo moments come out of the vertical master and the connective shots go in between them. Building that master, clip by clip in its own 9:16 sequence, is the vertical video editing work; this page begins where that ends, with the short cut and the length law it runs under. Work from the horizontal timeline instead and every choice you make is provisional, because you are judging pace and legibility on a picture nobody will ever see in that shape.

Nearly every breath goes

Precisely the opposite of the long-form rule, and deliberately so. On a lesson video the pauses stay, because pauses are how a person thinks. On a short cut nearly all of them come out, along with the long rests and the filler, keeping only a beat a line needs. One speaker, one take, two treatments, because the two audiences arrived in completely different states of patience.

Length is set per brand, and the numbers are nowhere near each other

One partner's cuts run to a twenty-second ceiling. Another averages half a minute. A third averages a full minute. Each of those came from what that audience watches, never from a preference of ours, and the distance between them is the entire reason there is no house preference to apply. Each cut is then exported to the current duration, ratio, safe-zone and caption rules of the destination it is going to, which move often enough to be checked rather than remembered.

Show every ingredient, or two of the four

On one recipe channel, four spices going into a pan are represented by two of them and the sequence moves on, because that audience is there for the rhythm. On the other, every ingredient appears, because that audience is deciding whether to cook the thing and a missing item reads as a missing step. Both rules are right. Neither would survive being applied to the other channel.

What goes into a short cut

The ending is built to meet the beginning

Where a loop suits the idea, we shape the ending to flow into the opening. It can reward another viewing, but the piece still needs to make sense on its first pass.

Sound is a different law on every channel

One partner's short cuts carry no music whatsoever: her voice and the sounds of the kitchen, kept from the original take or added as effects where the recording missed them. Another has no music on its short cuts either. A third bans stock music across everything it publishes. The music page carries the whole of this, because it is longer than it looks.

Speeding a clip up is banned at one partner and required at the next

Pouring and stirring take a clean, quick jump cut on both recipe channels. Chopping is where they separate: one speeds the clips up to get through it, and the other forbids speed changes outright as a way of shortening a scene, so the seconds have to be found in the cut instead. Identical craft, identical food, opposite instruction. That is why pacing sits in each partner's own standards and never in ours.

What changes for you

Short videos that follow your brand’s own pacing and sound choices, with reusable material organised for the next agreed cut.

Related: Vertical video editing · Hooks and the first seconds · Music and licensing · Long-form editing