Logging the rushes and building the first assembly

Logging, transcribing and pulling selects used to be assistant editor work counted in days on any project with dialogue. It is now a search over a transcript, and the first assembly of an interview can be built without looking at a picture. The tool is blind outside speech, since footage with no dialogue produces no transcript, which is most of what a film is made of. Editors still cut, and what the transcript cannot tell anyone is which take is alive, how long a shot should hold, where a scene ends, or what the film is about. No tool proposes a rhythm, and rhythm is the whole of the craft.