Like most beginners, I made a lot of mistakes when I first started making hunting films.

But this was the biggest one, by far:

Every cut I made was made to hit a beat on a music track.

Here’s what happened:

It was so easy to make cuts this way and viewers seemed to like it.

But, it’s also worth acknowledging that making this mistake taught me a ton.

But it was a mistake, and it’s one I see editors in the hunting space making all the time. Beat cuts have a place, no doubt. They’re good in short pieces, promotional pieces, montages, etc. But they’re problematic when you’re telling a story for two reasons.

The first reason is that it lets your audio track drive the rhythm of what’s happening instead of what’s happening drive the rhythm. You are putting what’s most important at the mercy of what’s much less important. Sometimes a clip needs to breath to sink in to move the plot along, but music beats happen at regularly timed intervals.

The second reason is that it draws attention to the edit and the editor itself. And I suspect this is a big reason why we do it. Editing is an invisible job. You’re the man behind the curtain pulling the strings. Nobody knows you. But with a bunch of beat cuts, everyone pays attention to your work. You get recognized.

The best cuts are invisible cuts, cuts that don’t detract from the story, or pull the viewers attention from what they’re watching. Invisible cuts let the viewer put themselves into your work as if they were there. Beat cuts pull them out of that experience, as they realize they are outside looking in.

It took me a long time to realize this.

This is why I encourage everyone to see their mistakes (and “failures”) as necessary steps along the path.

There is always a lesson to be learned.