Most rough cuts are too long for the same reason: nobody has decided what the film is about yet. Footage is possibility; a cut is a decision. My first job on any project is to find the single sentence the whole edit serves — the promise every scene must keep.
For a brand film, that sentence might be “this tool gives you back your evenings.” For a wedding, “these two people are deeply, specifically loved.” Once the sentence exists, decisions get fast. A gorgeous drone shot that serves another film? Gone. A shaky phone clip that proves the sentence? It stays, and we grade around it.
Kill your darlings on schedule
I cut in passes with strict rules. The assembly keeps everything. The first selects pass removes anything that repeats an idea. The second pass removes anything the viewer could predict. What survives is usually forty percent of what we shot — and it plays twice as long in the viewer’s memory.
An edit is not a container for footage. It is an argument for attention, made one cut at a time.
The final test is simple: watch the cut with the sound off, then listen to it with the picture off. If the structure survives both, the intent is in the bones of the film — and no single shot can sink it.