The EXACT Technique Documentary Editors Use to Organize Interviews

Reduct Video Workflow Overview [00:00]

• Reduct Video is presented as a tool to transform terabytes of documentary footage into a first rough cut.
• The workflow involves transcribing interviews, highlighting and organizing quotes, creating a paper edit (script), and exporting this into editing software.
• The paper edit is described as a text-based version of the film made from transcribed interview quotes, serving as a blueprint for the editing timeline.

"And by the end of this video, you'll be able to use it to transcribe all of your interviews, highlight, organize, and catalog all of your quotes, create a paper edit or a script for your film, and then export everything and get it back into your editing software so that you can begin editing your rough cut."

The Paper Edit Concept and Reduct's Advantages [00:39]

• The paper edit workflow is championed for clarifying story structure and providing a blueprint for the editing process.
• Reduct facilitates this by transcribing interviews, allowing for quote highlighting with color-coding, and tagging quotes for themes and ideas.
• A key feature is the ability to drag quotes into "reels" to build scenes for the paper edit.
• Reduct can export reels directly, creating a timeline of quotes importable into editing software like Da Vinci Resolve or Premiere Pro.

"And if you've never heard of the term paperedit, it's essentially a texton version of your film. You can think of it as basically a script for your edit that's made entirely out of quotes from transcribed interviews."

Exporting Interviews for Transcription [02:34]

• The first step is exporting interviews from editing software (e.g., Da Vinci Resolve, Premiere Pro) for uploading to Reduct.
• For Da Vinci Resolve, users export the full master interview timelines, ensuring audio is synced but without any editing.
• These exports can be lightweight, such as 720p, as the final quality will be relinked to the original source footage later.
• This intermediary file is solely for the transcription process in Reduct.

"So, as you can see here, I've got three timelines, which are three different interviews. And all these timelines are are the full master interview. All you want to be doing in this stage is just syncing up your audio."

Uploading and Transcribing in Reduct [04:05]

• New projects in Reduct start with a "new recording" option to upload files from the computer.
• Reduct uses an AI transcription service which is free and generally effective (around 95% accuracy).
• For accents or niche information, an optional paid human transcription upgrade is available, though AI transcription with manual correction is often sufficient.

"So it uses an AI transcription service and that's totally free. It does a pretty good job. It gets you probably like 95% of the way there."

Highlighting and Tagging Quotes in Reduct [05:11]

• Transcribed interviews can be reviewed by reading or playing the video.
• Users highlight quotes, using different colors to signify importance (e.g., yellow for usable, orange for interesting, red for "banger" quotes).
• The tagging feature is crucial for grouping quotes by themes or ideas, with Reduct suggesting tags based on content.
• Tags can be applied across different interviews to group themes and ideas cohesively.

"So everything that's usable that's not just like flubber or in between moments, I'll use yellow for. If it's something that I think is interesting and might be used in the film, then I'll use orange and so on."

Utilizing Tags for Quote Organization [07:18]

• The "highlights" tab allows viewing all highlighted quotes, which can be filtered by color or custom tags.
• Selecting a specific tag (e.g., "Y Bluewater") brings up all related quotes from interviews, aiding in story beat construction.
• This system effectively categorizes and groups quotes for easy access and assembly.

"So, let's say I wanted to create a intro beat, a story beat about why choose this company for your particular job. Well, then I could hit this Y bluewater tag and it'll bring up every quote from my interviews that's related to this idea of why you should choose this company for your project."

Storyboarding and Reel Assembly [08:06]

• Reduct has a "video boards" feature for storyboarding, though it's described as clunky.
• For more complex story structures, external tools like Milanote are recommended for their flexibility.
• Once the story structure is defined, users move to the "reels" section to assemble quotes according to that structure.
• Reels allow for creating scene titles and subtitles, and then dragging relevant tagged quotes from interviews into the reel to build a text-based assembly cut.

"It's just a little clunky. It's not fully there for my liking. This is where I still like to use Millanote personally. I just like the flexibility of it for laying out story boards."

Exporting the Assembly Cut [12:40]

• The most crucial step is exporting the text-based assembly cut back into editing software.
• Reduct offers an export option for "other NLEs" as a Final Cut Pro XML, which can be imported into Da Vinci Resolve or Premiere Pro.
• For Premiere Pro users, a more robust extension is available.

"The last step of the process is actually the most crucial step. And as I mentioned, this is a step that I had never found before in my workflow. There was always a huge gap."

Relinking to High-Quality Footage in Resolve [13:38]

• When importing the XML into Da Vinci Resolve, it attempts to link to the low-quality exported files.
• To ensure it links to original high-quality footage, the exported interview files from the editing software must be renamed to match the names of the files uploaded to Reduct.
• When importing the XML into Resolve, users must uncheck options that pull in media and instead direct Resolve to link to media already in the project.
• By decomposing the imported clips "in place using clips only," Resolve relinks to the original source quality footage.

"So, the only thing you need to do to actually do that is to go back to wherever you exported your interviews from and rename these timelines to whatever name the file was that you uploaded to Reduct for that specific interview."

Finalizing the Rough Cut Process [15:54]

• With the assembly cut imported and linked to high-quality footage in Resolve, filmmakers can begin refining interview quotes into specific scenes.
• This workflow, powered by Reduct, eliminates the need to sift through timelines in editing software for quotes.
• Everything is searchable, highlightable, and taggable within Reduct, and can then be exported back to the editor.

"So, that is the beauty of Reduct. You can take all of your interviews, you can sort all of them, you can build this paper edit and then bring it back into a timeline and get started with your editing immediately."