Paper Edit Template: What Should It Include?

A paper edit is a written representation of a potential edit.

Instead of working directly with video clips in the timeline, you organize selected material—often from interview transcripts—into a possible narrative structure.

A paper edit can help you:

• organize interview material
• compare different answers
• test story structures
• identify repetition
• find gaps
• decide what information the audience needs
• plan B-roll and other visuals
• prepare for the stringout and rough cut

It sits between selecting material and assembling the actual edit.

There is no mandatory list of fields.

However, for an interview-heavy project, a useful paper edit will usually include several of the following:

• Speaker
• Interview/source
• Timecode
• Transcript excerpt
• Story section
• Theme
• Editorial notes
• B-roll or visual notes
• Alternatives
• Missing information or questions

Not every project needs all of them.

The goal is to include enough information to make the paper edit useful when you move into the timeline.

Start by identifying who is speaking.

For example:

This becomes particularly important when you're working with multiple interviews.

A paper edit containing dozens of quotes becomes difficult to follow if you can't immediately tell who is providing each piece of information.

Speaker alone may not be enough.

If you've interviewed the same person more than once, or have multiple source recordings, identify the specific source.

For example:

Sarah — Interview 02

This allows you to trace the material back to the correct recording.

It becomes especially useful later when you're assembling the stringout and need to locate the original footage.

Timecode is one of the most practical pieces of information in a paper edit.

For example:

Without a timecode, the quote may still be useful for understanding the story.

But you'll eventually have to find it again.

With a timecode, you can move directly from the paper edit to the source material.

The actual words being considered are the core of an interview-based paper edit.

You don't necessarily need to copy entire sections of an interview.

Include the relevant passage.

For example:

“We had already spent six months working on the original approach. When we realized it wasn't going to work, we had to start again.”

The transcript allows you to evaluate the content without repeatedly opening the footage.

Once you're moving beyond simple selects, organize the material according to the developing story.

For example:

The Problem

Sarah explains what happened.

The Decision

Mark explains why the team changed direction.

The Consequence

Sarah describes what happened afterward.

The exact sections will depend on the project.

They could be chronological, thematic, character-driven, or organized around a central question.

The purpose is to make the narrative structure visible.

A theme can help you understand why a particular quote matters.

For example:

Theme: Trust

“We had to trust the team even though we didn't know whether the new approach would work.”

This can be particularly useful when working with multiple interviews.

You may discover that different people discuss the same theme using completely different language.

Grouping those passages can reveal relationships between interviews that aren't obvious when reviewing them separately. See how to find themes across interview transcripts.

Editorial notes allow you to record decisions, questions, or possibilities that aren't contained in the transcript.

For example:

• Possible opening
• Need more context
• Could replace previous quote
• Strong emotional beat
• Potential ending
• Check original performance
• May be repetitive
• Need visual support

These notes don't need to be polished.

They're there to help you think through the edit.

A paper edit can also include information about what might accompany the dialogue.

For example:

• [B-ROLL: Team working in the office]
• [ARCHIVE: Original launch footage]
• [CUT TO: Product footage]
• [Need visual coverage]

These are not necessarily final decisions.

They're a way to think about how the spoken material could eventually work with the visual material.

They can also reveal problems early.

If an entire section depends on visuals you don't have, you'll want to know before you're deep into the rough cut.

Sometimes you have several versions of the same idea.

For example:

You don't necessarily need to decide immediately.

Keeping alternatives visible can be useful while you're still testing the structure.

Once the story becomes clearer, you can choose the version that contributes the most.

One of the most useful functions of a paper edit is showing you what's missing.

You might discover:

Need someone to explain why the decision was made.

Or:

We have the problem and the response, but no material explaining the result.

These notes turn the paper edit into a working editorial document.

You can return to the transcripts and search specifically for the missing information instead of reviewing everything again.

For a relatively straightforward interview project, you could use:

This is enough to create a basic paper edit without introducing unnecessary complexity.

For a larger documentary or interview-driven project, you might add more fields:

The additional fields can be useful when the project involves many interviews, themes, and visual sources. For a documentary-specific workflow, see how to create a paper edit for a documentary.

More information isn't automatically better.

A paper edit can become difficult to use if every quote requires you to fill in ten different fields.

Ask what information you'll actually need later.

If speaker, source, timecode, quote, and story section are enough, don't create unnecessary metadata.

The paper edit should help you make editorial decisions.

It shouldn't become another administrative task.

A transcript records what was said.

A paper edit records what you're considering using and how it might work in the story.

For example:

Transcript

00:18:42 — Sarah

“We had been working on the project for six months…”

00:18:55 — Sarah

“There were already some signs that the original approach wasn't working…”

00:19:21 — Sarah

“So we decided to start again…”

Paper edit

THE PROBLEM

Sarah — 00:18:42

“We had been working on the project for six months…”

THE DECISION

Sarah — 00:19:21

“So we decided to start again…”

The paper edit has removed material and placed the remaining material into a narrative structure.

That's the important difference. For moving from transcript to structure, see how to make a paper edit from interview transcripts.

Selects are a collection of potentially useful material.

A paper edit starts organizing that material into a story.

You might have 50 selects from five interviews.

The paper edit could reduce those to 20 quotes arranged across six story sections.

The goal isn't simply to have fewer clips.

It's to understand how the selected material relates to one another. See how to build better selects sequences.

A paper edit is primarily concerned with story and structure.

A stringout is built from the actual selected footage in the timeline.

The paper edit might say:

The stringout contains the actual video and audio corresponding to that passage.

The paper edit helps you decide what you want to assemble.

The stringout lets you evaluate how that material actually works as footage. For that distinction, see paper edit vs stringout.

A practical process is:

Make the source material searchable.

Understand the topics, perspectives, and recurring ideas.

Mark useful quotes, information, stories, and moments. For the difference between marking and structuring, see paper edit vs highlighting.

Reduce the material to manageable candidates.

Organize quotes by theme or narrative function.

Identify the central question and possible structure.

Include speaker, source, timecode, and transcript.

Mark B-roll, alternatives, gaps, and questions.

Evaluate the story without the distraction of the timeline.

Cut repetition, reorder material, and search for anything missing.

Move the selected footage into the timeline. For placing this template inside the full interview workflow, see how to use a paper edit in an interview editing workflow.

AI can assist with the parts of the process that involve exploring large amounts of interview material.

For example, it can help you:

• search transcripts
• find relevant passages
• identify potential quotes
• compare answers
• group material by theme
• find repeated ideas
• locate specific information
• navigate from transcript passages to source footage

This can make the transition from hours of interviews to a manageable set of material faster.

But AI shouldn't determine the final story for you.

An AI system can surface five quotes about a topic.

The editor still decides:

• which quote is strongest
• which perspective matters
• what context is necessary
• what order the material should appear in
• what should be removed
• how the story should develop

The paper edit remains an editorial tool.

That depends on the project.

You may only need:

Speaker + Timecode + Quote + Notes

You may want:

Story section + Theme + Speaker + Source + Timecode + Quote + Visual notes

You may also need:

Alternatives + Archive references + B-roll + Missing information + Structural notes

There is no universal level of detail.

The right template is the one that gives you enough information to make decisions without slowing down the process.

These are the problems that usually appear when the template starts replacing editorial thinking.

A paper edit should narrow the material, not reproduce the transcript.

A short quote may look great on paper but lose its meaning when separated from the surrounding answer.

You'll eventually need to find the original footage.

A paper edit is a working document. It's okay to mark possibilities rather than pretending everything is decided.

If maintaining the document takes more time than making editorial decisions, simplify it.

There isn't a single professional paper edit format.

The structure should reflect the project and the decisions you need to make.

For most interview-heavy projects, however, the essential information is simple:

Who said it → Where it came from → What they said → Where it belongs → Why it matters

Everything else is there to support that process.

Once the structure is working, the paper edit can become the bridge between your interview material and the timeline.

Supacut helps on the exploration side of that bridge: finding relevant moments across interviews, comparing answers, identifying themes, and navigating from transcript material back to the original footage.

The editor still decides what makes the story.

Related reading: what is a paper edit, how to make a paper edit from interview transcripts, how to use a paper edit in an interview editing workflow, and how to create a paper edit for a documentary.