Documentary assembly
A first assembly of a documentary from many interviews and observational footage: an opening question, the evidence, and a resolution, ready to refine in your editing app.
Made for: Documentary editors and producers who want a structured first assembly to react to.
What it needs
- Footage
- Interviews with several contributors
- Observational footage and b-roll
- Optional archive
- Backgrounder
- Strongly recommended. The treatment or outline, contributor names and roles, and research notes.
- Brand kit
- Not used.
- You fill in
- Target length — a number from 5 to 60 minutes
- What is the film about? — your own words
- Pacing — Room to breathe / Natural
What Eddie does
- 1Read everythingEddie reads every interview and the treatment or outline in your Backgrounder.
- 2Find the structureIt proposes an opening question, three or four sequences of evidence and a resolution.
- 3Weave the assemblyIt weaves interviews with observational footage, keeping each contributor's context.
- 4Hand overIt names contributors, marks open questions as comments, and shares a review link.
The Style it uses
A heavy serif on warm near-black cards with an ochre accent. Reads like a documentary title card.
Titles, lower thirds, stats and captions use this Style. If your project has a brand kit, its font and colors win.
What it costs
120–580 credits a run
Worked out for a project with about 4 hours of footage. A run is priced on the work Eddie does, so most runs land inside this range, and footage length changes it only a little.
- Importing that footage is separate: 1000 credits, at 250 credits an hour. Footage already in the project is not charged again.
- Downloading the result as an MP4 is free for the first 10 each day, then 50 credits. An export to Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve or Final Cut Pro is 100 credits.
- Adding the recipe to your workspace is free.
The brief Eddie follows
This is the recipe's prompt. The parts in {curly brackets} are the blanks you fill in when you run it. You can edit the brief after you add the recipe to your workspace.
Documentary assembly
Build a {target_minutes}-minute documentary assembly from this project in 16:9. The film is about: {editorial_focus}. Read every interview transcript and the project's Backgrounder (treatment, outline, research) before you cut. Propose the structure to me first: an opening question, three or four sequences of evidence, and a resolution, with the contributors you will use in each. Then build it with create_edit_result at the target length with {pacing} pacing. Weave interviews with observational footage and b-roll using add_brolls. Keep each contributor's statements in context; separate what a speaker claims from what the footage shows, and never imply that two people are answering each other if they were recorded apart. Add a lower third with add_graphic for each contributor's first appearance. Use only names, titles, numbers and claims that are in the footage, my notes or the project's Backgrounder. If a name or title is uncertain, ask me before you put it on screen. Where a sequence is thin or a claim needs a source, add a comment with add_comment at that point instead of filling the gap. No music and no captions in this pass. Style: call set_style_pack with pack "editorial-bold" as soon as the edit exists, before you place any title, lower third, stat or caption. Do not switch to another pack. When you finish, tell me the finished length against the target, list each item above as done or not done with the reason, and create a review link with share_review_link.