Rough Cut to Final Cut

Here is how the work lines up. Canadian edit refinement runs through a defined sequence — assembly, director's cut, producer's cut, fine cut, picture lock — built around editors trained in the NFB / ONF Montreal documentary tradition and the Toronto and Vancouver feature-and-series cut rooms. Long-form drama made for CBC, CTV, Global, Hallmark TV, Crave, Bell Media, Corus, and the streamer slate (Netflix Canada, Amazon Prime Video Canada, Disney+, Crave) by Cineflix, Boat Rocker, Marblemedia, Entertainment One, Take The Shot, Sphere Media, and Sienna Films carries different rhythms from prestige feature work for Denis Villeneuve, Atom Egoyan, David Cronenberg, Sarah Polley, Patricia Rozema, and Xavier Dolan — but the same disciplined refinement loop applies.

Here is the breakdown. Editors in this lineage have Joe Klotz (Sicario), Ralph Brunjes (Atanarjuat), Susan Korda, Annie Ilkow, Avril Jacobson, Geoff Ashenhurst, and Glen MacPherson, with the wider community recognised at the Canadian Screen Awards and the DGC Discovery Awards each year. Our edit planning secures suite-time at Tattersall Sound & Picture Toronto, Mr.

Here is what that looks like on the ground. X / Folks Toronto, MELS Post Montreal, Lakeside Toronto, Pixomondo Toronto, DNEG Vancouver, or independent editor rooms across Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Halifax, and Winnipeg, then keeps the cadence of review sessions so directors and producers have clear, structured points at which to shape pacing, performance, and dramatic arc.

Here is how the picture comes together. Standard packages have two to three revision rounds from rough cut through picture lock, with extra rounds added where the project's submission calendar. TIFF Toronto, Hot Docs, VIFF Vancouver, Fantasia Montreal, Festival du nouveau cinéma Montreal, Canadian Screen Awards — demands. Short-form commercials and branded content often lock in two to four weeks. Features and long-form documentaries run four to eight weeks, with CBC, Radio-Canada, CTV, and Global series mapped against broadcast slot calendars and Telefilm Canada / CMF (Canada Media Fund) finance milestones.

Here is what we have to work with. Review sessions use Frame.io or Evercast for remote attendance. Our editors take detailed notes in session, returning revised cuts with clearly tracked changes for producer sign-off. Performance refinement, alternate-take selection, and subplot rebalancing happen inside Avid Media Composer (the Canadian broadcast standard for CBC / CTV / Global / Hallmark TV), DaVinci Resolve Studio for cinema work, or Adobe Premiere Pro for documentary and commercial pipelines. Picture-locked deliveries arrive with ordered AAF, EDL, and XML hand-offs to Tattersall sound or Mr. X / Folks colour, SOCAN / CMRRA music clearance integrated, IATSE / DGC compliance logged, and bilingual EN/FR conform metadata intact.