Four days of mist, cut to ninety seconds

Kessel Steelworks sent forty hours of footage on two drives and one sentence of brief: show the job the way the crews know it.

I was the editor, not the director, which is the best seat for a film like this. I hadn’t been cold at the gate at six in the morning, so I could only cut what the footage actually showed.

Watching everything once

The first week was viewing. Every clip, start to end, with a notebook and no timeline open.

Wednesday had the mist. Most of the film comes from that one morning.

Building the shift

The film follows one shift change, from the gate to the last bus. That shape came from the footage, not from the brief.

First pass: the walk in

Bikes against the fence, boots on the iron stairs, the food cart by the wall. I cut it long, at twelve minutes, to see which moments held.

Second pass: the sound

I turned the picture off and cut the ambience alone. Doors, rain on the cart’s roof and a train crossing the bridge set the pace better than any cut could.

A word of warning

Cutting to sound first is slow. It pays off only when the place makes its own noise.

Ninety seconds

The last week was cutting, mostly cutting things I liked. A shift change has a natural end, the bus pulling away, so the film stops there.

What stayed, in the end:

• The gate in the mist, held for six seconds.

• The stairs, cut on the footsteps.

• The cart, where nobody talks.

• The bus, leaving in real time.

What I took from it

Watch everything once before you cut anything. The film is usually in the footage nobody mentioned in the brief.

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