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A Mighty Cut and How it Drives the Story – Free Storytelling Sessions Webinar on May 19th

A Mighty Cut and How it Drives the Story – Free Storytelling Sessions Webinar on May 19th

UPDATE: This webinar has been pushed and will take place on May 19th, at 10 AM EDT / 4 PM CEST. (Updated link for participants to register is below.) As the great Alfred Hitchcock said, montage is not cutting the film, but rather the assembling of its pieces. By choosing the right ones and putting them into a precise order, we can not only tell a story but also partially control the effect it has on the viewers. Sounds fantastic, doesn’t it? If it does to you, congratulations, you’re in for a treat! “A Mighty Cut and How it Drives the Story” is the topic of our next webinar in the Storytelling Sessions series on MZed, free to attend and open to everyone. Save the date – May 19th – and read below to see what we’re going to talk about!

Please note: this webinar was originally scheduled for May 13th on Google Meet. It has been moved to Tuesday, May 19th at 10 AM EDT / 4 PM CEST, and will now be hosted on Microsoft Teams with a new joining link. If you registered with the previous link, please use the new one instead.

The webinar won’t be long – roughly about one hour or a little more – but we’ll try to fit in as much useful information, curious editing insights, and film theories as possible. So, regardless of whether you are an aspiring filmmaker or a seasoned editor, it’s a great community space to learn something new or refresh the already forgotten. Live attendance is free, so save the date, watch out for the webinar link, and join the webinar!

What are Storytelling Sessions on MZed?

“Storytelling Sessions” is a webinar series I host, supported by CineD and MZed. In these live sessions, we look at the tools and techniques that all serve one purpose – great storytelling. Because, more often than not, it’s not the gear or technical skills you use that matter most, but how you use them to tell the story.

Each session focuses on a specific topic from a different area of storytelling in filmmaking (visual storytelling, the language of editing, impactful writing, and more). During each webinar, we cover the key theory bits and break down iconic film scenes. For those who attend live, it is also an opportunity to ask questions and share insights with fellow filmmakers in real time.

“Storytelling Sessions” are later added to the educational platform MZed as recorded courses, as with the first session, “Storytelling Sessions: Silence in Film.”

On top of that, this project is part of the “Sessions,” our new interactive format on MZed, created to make the communication with our community more direct and two-sided. It will become a separate section on the platform and bring together different kinds of live events: webinars, Q&As with MZed educators, and regular Check-In Livestreams with Pro Members. The idea behind “Sessions” is to engage the community more actively, hear your thoughts and ideas, and make MZed feel not only like a library of courses, but also like a living exchange.

A Mighty Cut: the topic of the new webinar

In the next webinar, we’ll dive into editing. Not into setting shortcuts in DaVinci Resolve, or sorting out your footage in Adobe Premiere Pro (insert here an NLE of your choice, if you wish), and definitely not into trendy methods to capture attention on social media! No, instead, we will look at editing as a powerful storytelling tool in films. How do the cuts work? What effects can different editing techniques have on the audience? When to set your cut and why?

Combining classic editing theories with some history bits and breakdowns of iconic scenes from films and series, we will find answers to these questions and open the room for discussion in the chat. Don’t worry, I’ll guide you through the whole hour. If you’d rather only listen, you can keep your camera off and enjoy the webinar without active participation.

If you’re just starting out or only partly connected to filmmaking, that’s completely fine. The webinar is open to anyone interested in storytelling or simply watching films with a closer eye. You might hear a few new terms, but I will do my best to explain them all, and you can ask questions along the way.

What else will we talk about

In the “A Mighty Cut” webinar, we’ll touch on the following topics and theories:

  • How editing shapes our perception of a story – between the magic and the manipulation;
  • The Kuleshov effect and the legacy of Eisenstein;
  • The power of long takes without cuts.
  • Continuity editing, match cuts, jump cuts, and other techniques used in cinema.
  • Why a reaction can sometimes be more important than the action itself.
  • Where, when, and why to place a cut in a film (the blinking theory and beyond);

…and much more — with plenty of examples from films and series along the way.

A film still from “The Bear” series by Christopher Storer. Image source: Hulu

How to attend the webinar on a Mighty Cut

The webinar “A Mighty Cut and How it Drives the Story” will take place on Tuesday, May 19th, starting at 4 PM CEST / 3 PM BST (UK) / 10 AM EDT (New York) / 7 AM PDT (Los Angeles) / 11 PM JST (Tokyo, on May 19th) / 12 AM AEST (Sydney, May 20th). It will be held in English and run for approximately one hour. Live attendance is free of charge, and the session will be hosted on Microsoft Teams. 

>>> Here is the webinar link <<< — just save it and join us at the time above. If you had registered using the previous Google Meet link, please switch to this new one.

For those who can’t attend, the recorded session will be available later on the educational platform MZed.com. It will be part of the MZed Pro subscription, which includes 60+ courses with 800+ high-quality lessons from various areas of filmmaking: from stunt work to detailed color grading.

Do you like the idea of this kind of webinar? What would you like to learn about the craft of editing in terms of storytelling? Are there any aspects you are particularly interested in? Let us know in the comments below! And see you in the webinar!

Featured image: a film still from “Whiplash” by Damien Chazelle, 2014, combined with a screenshot from our previous webinar.

Full disclosure: MZed is owned by CineD.

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