Empty at nine.
Finished by five.
Creative Sprout, all day
Footage shot properly
Music and sound to cut with
A Resolve project to start from
A colour pipeline that works
Export presets
Small room, real feedback
Me, on the floor, all day
You bring the laptop. I bring everything you cut.
WHAT'S IN THE ROOM
The bit that makes it worth R2 495.
Most editing courses are a screen recording. This is a room where someone watches you cut and tells you why it isn't working yet.
SET 03 — INTERVIEW
WHAT YOU LEAVE WITH
A finished film, and the project to prove it.
YOUR FILM
A cut, graded, mixed and exported film, finished in the room
THE MANUAL
A printed workshop manual to work from afterwards
CERTIFICATE
A Conniston Studios certificate of completion
THE PROJECT FILES
The full Resolve project, to keep and pull apart at home
Every edit in the room is made from the same footage, so you can see exactly what a different decision does. Take the project home and recut it until it's yours.
No. On Thursday everyone cuts the same properly shot footage I supply, so you see exactly what each decision does. Take your Tuesday cards home and recut them with what you learned.
Tuesday: your camera, lenses, batteries, cards and a way to offload. Thursday: a laptop with DaVinci Resolve installed (the free version is fine), headphones and a drive with about 50GB free. I send a setup checklist the week before.
They're two separate workshops with their own rooms, and other people book them individually. Wednesday is a day to look at what you shot before you learn to cut it.
No, the kit is two standard seats. If you want the Make The Cut Pro seat on Thursday, book the two days separately.
Creative Sprout in Ballito. Tuesday 1 December and Thursday 3 December, 09:00 to 17:00 both days. Nothing on Wednesday.
Your kit transfers to the next running of both days, or to someone else, up to seven days before. Just tell me.
STRAIGHT ANSWERS
Before you ask.
If it isn't here, email me. I'd rather talk you out of a seat than take R2 495 for a day that was never going to help you.
BOTH DAYS
R4 965
BOOKED SEPARATELY
R6 620 — the kit saves you R1 655
THE OTHER HALF
Want to shoot
it too?
All The Gear No Idea runs on Tuesday 1 December and fills your cards with footage worth cutting. Book both days as the Filmmaker's Kit and save 25%.
Almost nobody who books this day lacks tutorials. You know where the razor tool is. You've watched people cut on YouTube for hours. What you haven't done is cut enough to feel why an edit goes flat.
Every shot roughly the same length. Every moment carrying the same weight. Music laid underneath instead of driving anything. Nothing builds, nothing drops, and the viewer is gone by second eight.
This day is about the decisions, not the buttons: where the cut goes, how long a beat holds, and when to give the viewer room.
THE DIAGNOSIS
It isn't a software problem.
Bring a laptop with DaVinci Resolve installed. The free version is enough. Everyone cuts the same footage I supply, so the only variable is the decisions.
01
Setup, workspace and selects
A project that doesn't fight you at hour six, and deciding what's alive in the footage before you cut a frame.
02
The draft timeline
A rough shape down fast. Structure before finish, so you know the film works before you polish it.
03
Pacing and cadence
The core of the day: where the cut goes, how long a beat holds, how you build and then give the viewer room.
04
Editing techniques
Match cuts, J and L cuts, montage logic, and when not to use any of them.
05
Colour and sound
Balance first, look second. Dialogue, atmospheres and a mix that holds up on a phone speaker.
06
Export and deliver
Master, cutdowns, verticals and subtitles, rendered before you leave.
THE DAY