---
name: editorial-design
description: Design event-protected cuts, holds and temporal organization from approved coverage. Use for Editorial Bible authoring and review; no media generation.
---

# Editorial Design

When reducing coverage, compare the selected Director audience experience with
what remains audible and visible. Remaining musicians or dancers do not alone
prove that cooperation was experienced; remaining dialogue does not alone protect
the time in which someone expected an answer. Use the existing protected events,
cut rationale and PictureEditPlan to explain a consequential loss or a better
alternative. This does not require every original hold, a minimum duration or an
extra review gate. Optional examples: [film practice](../director/references/film-practice.md).

## Role and authority

Develop cuts, holds and temporal organization with Director, Blocking and Camera
while coverage is provisional; project the Host-selected result from approved
coverage into formal records.

Own: Cut motivation, reaction duration, compression, montage, scene transitions and pacing.

Read [professional department architecture](../../docs/professional-departments.md) for the registry, Bible envelope, source/approval rules and Host handoff. Author only this department’s records; references never transfer ownership. Mark each record MIGRATED_FROM_R1 or NEW_PROFESSIONAL_ELABORATION when migrating a locked baseline.

## Inputs and dependencies

Selected complete scene and Director intent; provisional coverage and Blocking/
Camera proposals for creative exploration. Formal records use current Shot Bible,
Performance and Sound/Music originals.

## Professional decisions

Read each adjacent pair as one audience experience. Locate a proposed outgoing
action phase and incoming phase, the attention carried across them, and the
relationship gained by cutting. Compare alternatives such as a reaction cut,
action match, held view or meaningful ellipsis by their effect on this encounter.
Identify duplicate action, missing consequence and accidental time jumps before
production. An intentional repeat or discontinuity is valid when selected for its
effect; identical state strings and frame similarity are not artistic evidence.
Offer useful entry/exit handles without completing the next shot's action. If
the actual footage ends later than the useful cut, distinguish that official tail
from the editorial exit. Review revised neighbors together; finishing will measure
the real source ranges and audio relationship after footage exists.

Name what is learned, withheld or felt across each beat, and the event a cut or
hold must wait for. Build the time estimate from required precedence and permitted
overlap: handling, listening and speech can share a window. Voice supplies the
reading estimate; Action supplies contact/support dependencies; Performance the
receiving opportunity. Protect intelligibility, recognition and consequence.
Use local approximate windows when useful, otherwise event-relative language;
mark rehearsal-free estimates. Neither equal blocks nor fixed seconds are required.

Distinguish change within one take, an authored film cut and a technical generation
boundary. A new file does not repeat a line, reset a grip or start a new push-in.
State the shot's end condition and any expressive hold after it. If a necessary
sequence cannot fit the selected duration, return its estimate to planning;
do not accelerate words, add idle loops or hide a cut. Plan J/L relations through
Sound and preserve screen direction. Actual sourceIn/sourceOut and fine trims
belong to Finishing after media observation.

Assess whether narrative, psychological tension or the picture/sound relation
continues to carry a hold. Meaningful stillness and silence need no minimum motion.
When expression lapses, propose a source-bound trim, reorganization or sound relation
while protecting necessary words and events. No fixed duration cap, automatic speed-up
or fast-cut template follows from this assessment. Planning duration is neither a
provider clip duration nor a measured instruction to fill unused seconds.

Choose whether time continues, compresses, omits an interval, runs in parallel,
repeats or changes order. Name what survives the transition, what is omitted and
what remains unknown from the approved material. A later image may reinterpret
an earlier one; repetition can expose a changed relation without requiring a
recurring motif. An ellipsis may retain a meaningful gap rather than explain
every cause; it does not authorize inventing an offscreen event.

Montage works through relations between images and sounds, not simply rapid
cuts or music synchronization. A graphic match can connect different times or
places; match-on-action carries an action phase across views. A dissolve, morph
or concealed cut is a means, not evidence of that relation or of continuous
action. Choose the narrative relation before the transition effect. Hard cuts,
deliberate discontinuity, long holds and energetic montage remain available when
they serve the approved meaning; seamlessness is not the goal of every cut.

## Outputs

Produce a versioned `Editorial Bible` with current source pins, department dependencies, scope, ownership, status and continuity references. Keep known decisions separate from unresolved requirements.

Action Phase is an analysis scope, not a clip length or cut. Multiple rows may
share one native execution selection; retain scoped `protectedEvents` for every
selected row without turning each completion into a hold. For a technical split,
name the continuing viewing task and avoid restarting it at the file boundary.

When viewing actual footage, distinguish the film Shot, its generation files and
the portions the audience will see. Compare retaining a file, using part of it or
omitting it by performance, causality, speech and musical development, not by its
length. A technically joined take may remain one film view; an authored cut inside
a historical Shot owner is still a cut. Neither changes the source records.

For each proposed exit, name what is visibly completed, deliberately omitted or
still unresolved, then compare the actual next entry. If a handoff or case closure
is removed, do not claim it has been shown; choose a supported ellipsis, a different
range or report missing coverage. Keep reactions that change a relationship even
after physical action stops. Finishing records this reasoning and timed evidence
in PictureEditPlan's existing cutReason, reactionHold, matchAction and audioCarry.
The official provider tail remains a technical endpoint; a film exit or another
observed frame can inform a neighbor without impersonating that endpoint or a
new approved visual design. Changes to a candidate edit do not rewrite generation
history, automatically relink references or authorize another generation.

For native execution, `temporalStructure` explains the whole Shot. Put current
end/hold requirements in existing `protectedEvents` records scoped by `phaseIndex`,
with `spokenSelections` for narrower applicability within one Action; the system
binds exact `spokenIds`. Action carries the selected sequence and shared windows.
`spatialOrientation` preserves spatial legibility, not a recurring CUT command;
the approved Shot boundary owns a film cut. Keep each decision with its owner
instead of copying the entire timeline into every domain. Do not put local timing
into DPD or invent a parallel timing contract.

## Forbidden authority

Do not change upstream historical evidence, approved story/relationships/dialogue or another department’s records. Do not encode provider/model/workflow controls in creative content, manufacture user approval, or call media generation.

## Quality gates

Every necessary event remains perceivable; transitions preserve direction/time/meaning; montage cannot invent causality; runtime is story-derived.

## Failure and escalation

Return absent coverage to Shot Design and contradictions to Director; actual-media trims and conform belong to finishing. Do not claim that a proposed cut already exists.

## Source reads

Use supplied current originals first. For missing scoped context, read `work.get_work`, `scene.get_scene`, `script.get_script`, `episode.get_episode`, `shot.get_shot`, `asset.get_asset`, `context.build_context`. These reads do not authorize source writes or production.


## Whole-film storyboard and rehearsal viewing

When requested, use the [existing sequence-to-animatic handoff](../../docs/director-storyboard-animatic.md)
to connect selected coverage, cinematic keyframe attachments and DRAFT PictureEditPlan.
Retain each department's authority and source lineage. Host can revise or reject
the study; preview pictures/timing never automatically become firstframes,
generation requests, adopted ranges or observed performance evidence.

### Cinematic preview material

Use the [cinematic storyboard and listening handoff](../../docs/director-storyboard-animatic.md).
Cinematic pictures and available temporary sound serve artistic review; geometric
people / Blender are optional technical studies only. Missing approved images,
audio or current cost authority remain explicit preparation gaps. Never relabel
a silent rough study as a completed Cinematic Animatic.


## Optional film-craft application

Use [expression-led case reading](../director/references/film-practice.md) when it expands the current creative question. Compare what a hold or cut preserves and loses, including sound and offscreen action; do not infer timing from case duration. Read the selected case and shared-method originals, not just their titles. Retain the selected gain/cost in existing author context; write only current-scene execution into this owner’s existing facts. No lookup quota or automatic adoption.