REELS: A ‘playful parameter’ developed by Cormac Donnelly

Eddie Hamilton’s editing timeline for reel 4 from Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation from https://www.eddiehamilton.com/timelines

This exercise is based on the editing practice where a feature film is often split into reels during the edit. These reels are often (but not always) in the region of 18 – 21 minutes in length, a limiting factor imposed by the maximum amount of 35mm film which could fit on a physical reel (2000 feet). Despite editing being almost exclusively handled in the digital domain now, many editors still use the ‘reel’ as a way of managing their editing timelines (see some more of Eddie Hamilton’s timelines here).

Guidelines:

Pick a film – any film, but ideally over 60 minutes long.
Choose to centre your selected clips around either 18, 19, 20, or 21 minute reel lengths.
Where you choose to cut either side of the reel points is entirely up to you, but try and keep each clip to less than 30 seconds.
String your chosen clips together and export.

Examples:

Ferris Bueller (Cormac)
Almost Famous (Jemma)
In both cases, we selected clips based on 19 minute reels so have cut (very much to taste) either side of the following; 19 mins, 38 mins, 57 mins, 1:16, 1:35 etc.

We were very pleased to present a selection of Reels exercises at our BAFTSS panel in Bournemouth in April 2026. You can read more about our BAFTSS experience and see the Reels here.

And if you complete a Reel we’d love to hear how it went. Any thoughts or comments on this or anything else Fragments related please drop us a line, editorial@fragments.video

…and finally, please bear in mind ‘Restrictions are productive, they are arbitrary but never random (and meant to be overstepped).’ (Kreuzer & Binotto, 2023)
https://zfmedienwissenschaft.de/en/online/videography-blog/manifesto-videographic-vulnerability