Editing interview-driven films
What is a paper edit?
The film cut on paper before it is cut on the timeline.
A paper edit is the story of a film written out as an ordered list of chosen lines from timecoded transcripts, each with its source clip and its in and out times, so the structure is settled in a document before an editor builds a single sequence. It sits between the transcripts and the radio edit, and it is a common way for documentary and interview-led work to get from hours of talk to a first cut.
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By uncompressed.io · Updated September 2026
The short answer
A paper edit is the story as a list,
before it becomes a timeline.
On a film built from interviews, the story is not written in advance. It is found in hours of talk. A paper edit is where that finding happens on the page: the producer, director or editor reads the transcripts, picks the lines worth using, and puts them in the order the film should tell them. Every line keeps its source clip and its times, so the editor can build it without searching.
The reason to do it on paper is cost. Reading is faster than watching, a document is easier to reorder than a sequence, and several people can argue about structure in the same file without touching the project. Trying a different opening on paper means moving a few rows, not rebuilding a sequence.
It is used in documentary, corporate interview films, testimonials, branded storytelling and unscripted television, anywhere the words come from people answering questions rather than reading lines. Scripted drama rarely needs one, because the script already did that work.
Where it sits
Five stages,
each one feeding the next.
A paper edit only makes sense next to what comes before and after it. The chain runs from the raw interview to the first cut with picture, and each stage hands the next one something smaller and more ordered.
Teams merge and rename these. Some skip a formal selects pass and highlight straight into the paper edit; some call the radio edit a dialogue cut. The order does not change: text first, sound second, picture third.
What a line looks like
A beat,
a source, two times and the words.
There is no standard template. A spreadsheet or a two-column document works, as long as every row answers the same four questions: where in the story, which clip, which times, and what is said.
Three rows of a paper edit
The example is invented to show the shape. The beat label lets the team move whole sections at once. The clip name and times let the editor find the line in seconds. The words let everyone else judge the story without opening the project. The bracketed row is a picture note, which is where the paper edit starts thinking about the assembly.
Read the finished document aloud before anyone cuts it. A paper edit that sounds stilted read out will sound the same on the timeline, and fixing it on the page is still cheap.
What breaks a paper edit
The times have to
point back to the right clip.
A paper edit is only as useful as its references. If a line says 00:12:04 and the editor lands somewhere else, the document stops being trusted and people go back to scrubbing. Three habits prevent that.
One transcript per source clip. A transcript made from a stringout or a long exported sequence carries the times of that sequence, not of the original clips, so its references stop working the moment the sequence changes. Transcribe the clips the editor will actually cut from.
Know what the times count from. A transcript made from an uploaded file counts from the start of that file. That is not the same thing as the camera’s source timecode written into the clip, so if your editor works in source timecode, note the offset once per clip or cut from a file that starts where the clip starts.
Correct the transcript before pulling selects. Names, places, product words and jargon are what a machine transcript gets wrong and what a paper edit leans on. A wrong name in the transcript becomes a wrong name in the document, and a line nobody can find by searching is a line nobody selects.
From paper to picture
The radio edit proves the story,
then the assembly covers it.
The paper edit decides what is said and in what order. The radio edit is the first time anyone hears it, and the assembly is the first time anyone sees it.
Build it as sound
The editor cuts each line of the paper edit onto the timeline in order and listens with the picture ignored. Jump cuts and mismatched framing do not matter yet. What matters is whether the argument holds and the pace carries.
Expect the page to lie a little
Some lines that read well play badly: a trailing breath, a flat delivery, a sentence that needs the question before it. The radio edit is where those get swapped for alternates from the selects, which is why the selects list should be longer than the paper edit.
Then cover the joins
The assembly adds picture. Interview shots go where the speaker should be seen, and cutaways or b-roll go over the joins the radio edit created. The paper edit's picture notes are the starting list for what to find.
On uncompressed.io
Caption the interview,
then read, search and export it.
uncompressed.io is not a paper-edit tool. It does not build selects, stringouts or sequences, and the cutting stays in your editor. What it does is turn an uploaded interview into timed text that a team can read, correct, search and take away, which is the raw material a paper edit is written from.
Generate the transcript
The owner clicks Generate captions on a film and a speech-to-text service writes the cues. Nothing runs until someone clicks. Minutes are metered per calendar month by plan, 20 a month on the free Starter plan. A film in the archive has to be restored first.
Read and correct it
In the owner's caption editor the transcript follows playback, any line or timestamp jumps the player there, and text is edited inline. A reviewer who spots a wrong name submits a correction, and the owner decides whether to apply it.
Search the dialogue
In the review room, anyone holding the share link can read the transcript, search it by word and jump to the line, with no account. A producer writing the paper edit can find a half-remembered answer without asking the editor for a timecode.
Take the text away
The saved track downloads as .srt or .vtt, plain text with a start and end time on every cue, ready to paste into a paper edit document. The owner can always download it; anyone else only from a Public or Unlisted film that is not in the vault.
Upload each interview as its own film so each transcript maps to one clip, and name the film after the clip so the name travels with the text. The step-by-step workflow, from upload to a printed transcript, is in how to transcribe interview footage for editing, and the file format, with the two rules that break hand-made files, in how to export an SRT file.
When this is the wrong tool
Questions
Frequently asked
Is a paper edit the same as a script?
No. A script is written before the shoot and describes what will be said. A paper edit is written after the shoot from what was actually said, and every line in it points to a real clip and a real time. On an interview-led film it does the job a script does on a drama, but it can only use words that exist in the footage.
What is the difference between a paper edit and a radio edit?
The paper edit is the plan, in a document. The radio edit is that plan built on the timeline as sound: the chosen lines cut together in order, listened to without worrying about picture. The paper edit tells you whether the story reads; the radio edit tells you whether it plays, because pace, breaths and delivery only show up when you hear it.
Is a paper edit the same as a string out?
Not quite. A string out is usually every usable take or bite laid end to end on a timeline, roughly in source or topic order, so someone can review the material. A paper edit is already a selection in story order. Some teams build a string out of selects first, then write the paper edit from it.
Can I build a paper edit from an .srt file?
Yes, as long as each file covers one source clip. An .srt is plain text with a start and end time on every cue, so you can open it, copy the lines you want into your paper edit document and keep the times beside them. Add the clip name to every line, because the file itself does not carry it once the text is pasted somewhere else.
What is a frankenbite?
An edit that joins parts of different sentences, or different answers, so a speaker appears to say something in one breath that they said in pieces. Paper edits make them easy to write because the words sit side by side on the page. In documentary work, check each join against what the person meant before it reaches the radio edit.
Turn an interview into timed text you can read
Generate captions on a film, correct them, search the dialogue in the review room and download the track as .srt or .vtt. Caption minutes are metered by plan, from 20 minutes a month on the free Starter plan to 200 hours on Studio.