shorts that choose their hook like an editor

the short version

the shorts underway cuts from every finished episode now choose their opening the way an editor would. for each clip it writes down several possible first lines, all of them your own words from anywhere in the episode, weighs each against the first three seconds, how much life you said it with and what is landing with your audience right now, keeps the best and says why. a line where the picture is too dark to see your face never opens a clip. then it looks at its own clips, stills from their first seconds and from every cut, and changes them once if something is wrong, before anything is made.

why it changed

rich, who builds underway, watched the round-up after the editor cut it and said it looked higher quality. then he said the obvious next thing: the shorts are an integral part of the whole process now, because they are how a stranger finds the episode at all, and they should get the same thinking, above all about the hook.

the old finder read the episode as text, once, and chose a clip and its opening in the same breath. it never heard how a line was said, never saw a frame, and never compared one possible opening with another. a hook is the one decision in a short that matters more than the rest put together, and it was being made in passing.

how the opening is chosen now

• every sentence of the episode arrives marked with how it was said: louder, more movement in the voice and quicker than your usual, as a number. a flat reading of a good line loses to a lively reading of a nearly as good one.
• every sentence is also checked for light. one filmed too dark to see your face is marked, and it can never be the first frame of a clip.
• for each clip the editor writes two to four openings, the clip's own first line among them, and judges them against one test: does the first word already carry the point, and does it make sense to someone who has never heard of you.
• it reads what is working with your audience this month, the same background read the clips already used, and weighs the openings against it. you are still never shown that read, so it can never steer what you film.
• it keeps the best opening and writes a sentence on why it beat the others.

the second look

before a clip is rendered the editor sees stills from its first three seconds and from the middle of every cut after it, with the plan beside them. is the face there and lit, looking up, not mid-blink. is the first word the point. does the run pay off, or is a run-up still in it. if something is wrong it changes the plan once. on episode 58, the first look caught that a clip opened on the second half of a sentence, a dangling clause, and moved it back to the clean line before it. if that second look fails for any reason, the first plan stands and the clips are still made.

the joins

when the opening comes from later in the episode, the rest of the clip now joins it the way the round-up's moments join: your voice can start a beat before your picture, and the cut lands on the beat of the quiet music bed where your words leave room, never inside a word. very rarely, when a number or a claim lands harder seen than heard, a few of your own words are slammed full frame for under a second before the rest plays. most clips have none.

what stays exactly as it was

only your words, in the order you said them inside each run. a line you struck from the episode never comes back in a clip. the words on screen are copied from what you said. it is you, full frame, with your screen below you only when the clip's words point at it. podcast and guest interview clips are made the same way as before. and the episode itself is never touched.

every finished episode gets its shorts, made for you. start a series.