Review with a specific question
Watch for story, continuity and craft before deciding what to fix.
2 min read
In this lesson
- Prioritise issues that affect understanding
- Choose between keeping, editing and regenerating
Watch once as the audience
Play the sequence without stopping. Can you understand the goal, the action and the change? Note where your attention drifts or the story becomes confusing. Do this before examining tiny visual imperfections; a technically attractive sequence can still fail to communicate its purpose.
Then review the important moments more closely. Check identity, hands, object ownership, entrances, eyelines, speech and sound. Compare the end of one shot with the beginning of the next. Describe an issue as an observation, not a verdict: “The note changes hands between shots” points to a fix.
Choose the smallest effective intervention
Keep material that already serves the story. Trim a pause if the issue is duration, choose another saved take if it solves the performance, use Refix for a targeted supported correction, or generate a new take when the shot needs a different approach. Rebuilding the whole production is rarely the first useful response.
Separate essential corrections from preferences. A wrong speaker changes the scene; a slightly different background detail may not. Prioritise by audience impact and cost. A successful generation that you dislike is not automatically a failed service or a free replacement, so review the quote before accepting additional work.
Put it into practice
Write a review with three observations. For each, choose keep, edit, Refix or new take, and explain how that choice addresses the issue.
- The highest-priority issue affects the viewer’s understanding
- Each proposed fix has an observable result
Go deeper in the handbook
Review, select and regenerate a shot