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Ask for a reel

A good brief gets you a first cut worth editing: the right shots, in a sensible order, holding for sensible lengths. You still make the final reel; the assistant saves you the first pass.

Before you start

  • An assistant connected to Shotwork. See Connect an AI assistant.
  • Ratings and tags on your shots. The assistant treats your rating as the most reliable signal it has, and it searches by your own tag words, so a rated, tagged library gets a better cut.

Steps

  1. Ask what is in your library first: What's in my Shotwork library? The answer lists the tags you actually use, which is how a client's "creature performance" gets matched to your creature and animation.

  2. Give the brief. Say who the reel is for, how long it can run, what to lead with, and whether restricted work may appear:

    A reel for a client doing a quadruped feature. They care about creature performance more than technical rigging. Under 90 seconds, nothing restricted.

  3. If you want cuts on the beat, name the song by its file path. The assistant reads the song's beats before it chooses how long each shot holds.

  4. Ask it to explain its order. It saves a short note that you see when you open the reel.
  5. Read what it reports: the clips in order, the running time, and any warnings.
  6. Open the reel it made, and review it the way the next section describes.

What comes back

Two files, named from the name the assistant gave the reel, in the Shotwork Reels folder in your home folder:

File What it is
<name>.xml A Final Cut Pro XML timeline that Resolve, Premiere and Final Cut open.
<name>.swreel The same edit as a Shotwork reel, to review and change.

The reel is added to your Library, so it shows up wherever reels are listed.

If the edit has a problem, nothing is written. The assistant gets every problem at once and can fix them and try again: a shot asked to hold longer than it runs, a shot that does not exist, or a restricted shot you did not allow.

Review it in Shotwork

  1. Choose File › Open… and open the .swreel from Shotwork Reels, or double-click it in the Library window.
  2. Read the assistant's note, shown at the top of This Reel in the settings panel.
  3. Play the reel, then change what you disagree with. See Arrange clips and Holds and shortening.
  4. Export it yourself, as a video or as a timeline.

The .xml the assistant wrote does not follow your changes. Once you edit the reel, export a new timeline from it.

What this means when you

  • ...give a length: the assistant plans to it. A cut that runs over comes back with a warning rather than a refusal, so you can decide what to drop.
  • ...cut to a song: a cut that lands within a few frames of a beat is moved onto it, two frames early by default so the new shot has settled when the beat hits. The assistant still chooses which beats to cut on.
  • ...want restricted work in a private reel: say so in the brief. Without that, restricted shots stay out of its searches, and Shotwork refuses to build a timeline that contains one.
  • ...rate or tag shots mid-conversation: save the shot list, and the next question sees the change. Nothing needs restarting.