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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, and it can keep revising until you take over.

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.
  • Interest ranges on the shots that have a best moment. The assistant reads them, and can start a hold there instead of at the in point. See Interest points.

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: a song in your music library by its name, any other song by its file path. The assistant attaches it to the reel and lands every cut on a downbeat, a couple of frames ahead of the beat the way editors cut. Ask for every beat if you want a faster cut.

  4. Let it look, if you allowed pictures. With Let the assistant see thumbnails of my shots on, the assistant can ask for a shot's thumbnail, or a strip of frames through it, before deciding what leads; ask it to compare two shots if you want it to choose by eye. With the box off, it works from your text alone.
  5. Ask it to explain its order. It saves a short note that you see when you open the reel.
  6. Read what it reports: the clips in order, the running time, and any warnings.

  7. Change your mind out loud: swap the third shot for something with more creature work, twenty seconds shorter, put the name at the end. The assistant revises the same reel rather than making another.

    Warning

    If you have the reel open in ShotWork while the assistant revises it, your next save wins over its change. Close the reel before asking for a revision, or reopen it afterwards.

  8. When you are happy, ask for what you need from it: a timeline for your editor, or a video to watch. Or open the reel and finish it yourself; see Review it in ShotWork.

The Cut a reel prompt

Claude Desktop lists the prompts a connected server offers, and ShotWork's is Cut a reel. Pick it and fill in the brief, the length and the song, and it walks the assistant through the steps above in the order ShotWork intends.

What comes back

Everything lands in the ShotWork Reels folder in your home folder, named after the reel:

File When What it is
<name>.swreel Every draft The edit as a ShotWork reel: to review, change and export. Revisions rewrite this file.
<name>.xml or <name>.otio When you ask for a timeline A Final Cut Pro XML or OpenTimelineIO timeline that Resolve, Premiere and Final Cut open, with its overlay images in <name>_assets beside it.
<name>.mp4 When you ask for a video A render of the reel, with its music, fades, overlay band and cards.

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, an overlay template that is not there, a restricted shot you did not allow, or, for a video, a gap in the reel, which a render refuses.

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 the reel 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.

A timeline or video the assistant wrote does not follow your changes. Once you edit the reel, export a new one, from ShotWork or by asking again.

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. A render is cut to the limit; a timeline carries the whole edit.
  • …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, and the song plays under the reel when you open it.
  • …have an overlay template: the assistant can put it on every shot, or use it for a title card, if you ask. A timeline or video it makes carries the band and the cards, drawn the same way ShotWork draws them.
  • …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 write a reel that contains one.
  • …rate or tag shots mid-conversation: save the shot selects, and the next question sees the change. Nothing needs restarting.
  • …ask for "something they haven't seen": the assistant knows which shots your existing reels already use, and can keep to the ones none of them do.