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FilmSkool — a free film school

Rule of Six Editing: How to Cut Footage LIKE A PRO

A clear walkthrough of Walter Murch's famous Rule of Six — emotion, story, rhythm, eye-trace, and the two spatial planes — with concrete footage examples showing the hierarchy in action.

Jay Lippman | Riot Anthem Studios · 12 min · Intermediate · EDT · Editing · 2022

What you take away

When criteria conflict, sacrifice technical rules like eye-trace before you ever sacrifice emotional truth.

Watch it

Filed under

Films cut by Walter Murch

Oscar winners for editing

Books on editing

The cutting room

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Samsung 990 PRO 4TB NVMe — The scratch disk a grade runs off
Crucial T705 2TB — PCIe 5.0 scratch disk — the fastest consumer NVMe
Dell UltraSharp U2723QE — The sensible 4K second monitor
Apple Mac mini M4 — The cheapest Mac that cuts 4K without complaint
Samsung T9 portable SSD 4TB — The shuttle drive rushes go home on

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