JD
EL
SOURCE TRANSCRIPT
MARCUS T.00:02:18

When the call came in, I was already at the console. I knew exactly what those readings meant.

INTERVIEWER00:04:22

Take me back to that night. Did you have any idea what was going to happen?

ELENA M.00:04:31

It wasn't planned. None of it was. We were just sitting there, waiting for the call, and then the lights went out across the entire grid.

ELENA M.00:04:48

That's what they said later in the reports. But that's a lie. Marcus had them too. He just chose not to use them.

MARCUS T.00:05:12

NARRATIVE BEATS
02The Blackout
The inciting incident. Power grid fails. Confusion turns to panic as backup systems fail to engage.
01The Arrival
Establish setting. The calm before the storm. Introduction of key players in the control room.
03First Refusal
Marcus refuses to authorize manual override. The schism forms between engineering and command.
PAPER CUT: ACT 1
03:12
INSPEAKERTEXT
01:12:04DAVID R.We had run the simulation a hundred times.
00:04:31ELENA M.It wasn't planned. None of it was. We were sitting there... and then the lights went out.
02:44:11MARCUS T.I followed protocol. That's all I'll say about that night.
00:04:48ELENA M.That's what the reports said. But that's a lie.

The Interview Suite
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Real-time or Archival, Ready to Edit. Producers keep transcripts in one app, build selects in another, and write the beat sheet somewhere that talks to neither. You retype the timecode and the clip name for every quote that crosses between them. PaperCuts holds the whole project, from the first word spoken in the room to the paper cut your editor opens.

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LIVE

Nothing gets lost between the subject and the transcript.

Transcription and translation run side by side as the interview happens. Speakers are separated and labelled automatically. Share a live view with your translator or remote producer without them needing to be on set.

LIVE SESSION · RECORDING
papercuts
ESPAÑOL · ORIGINAL
00:12:47
ENTREVISTADOR

¿Cuándo se dio cuenta de que el puente no resistiría?

ELENA M.

ENGLISH · TRANSLATION
+38ms
⟶ translating in real time
INTERVIEWER

When did you first realize the bridge wouldn't hold?

ELENA M.

SPEAKERS

One name. Every appearance. Across every file.

Voice prints are matched automatically across your entire project. Rename a speaker once and the change ripples across every interview they appear in, including the ones you uploaded last month.

SPEAKERS · PROJECT-WIDE
papercuts
EM
Elena Marín
Auto-matched across 14 files · 6.2h
+10
MT
Marcus Thorne
Auto-matched across 9 files · 4.7h
+5
DR
David Reyes
Auto-matched across 7 files · 3.1h
+3
?
Unknown Voice
Auto-matched across 2 files · 0.4h
Voice prints matched automatically. Rename once, applied across every file.
ARCHIVE

300 hours of rushes. Find the line you need in seconds.

Upload your entire project library and let transcription run in the background. Every word across every sitting is searchable from day one, by meaning rather than keyword alone. When a character returns to the same idea across different interviews, you know about it.

PROJECT ARCHIVE · 312h
papercuts
3 matches · 0.4s
ELENA M.·Day 04 · Marin Interview.wav
00:24:11

"The numbers stopped making sense. That was the moment we knew."

DAVID R.·Day 11 · Reyes Cutaway.mov
01:02:47

"No one talked about it. Everyone could see the numbers were wrong."

MARCUS T.·Day 17 · Thorne Followup.wav
00:08:33

"I told the board the math wasn't adding up in the third quarter."

BULK TRANSCRIPTION

Transcribe and translate your entire library hands-free.

Drop in a folder of interviews and walk away. PaperCuts queues every file, runs transcription across them in parallel, and translates into your target language automatically. By the time you sit down to review, the whole library is indexed and searchable.

BULK TRANSCRIPTION · 3 FILES QUEUED
papercuts
Day 03 · Marin Interview.wav
1h 22mQueued
Day 07 · Thorne Followup.mp4
47mQueued
Day 14 · Reyes Cutaway.wav
58mQueued
Translate to English
ES → EN
Processing in the background
0 / 3 complete
BEATS

Shape the story before you cut the picture.

Group moments into beat sheets that mirror the arc you're writing toward. Drag, reorder, and annotate without ever leaving the transcript that fed the idea. The structure of the film starts taking shape weeks before you sit in the edit bay.

ACT 1 · NARRATIVE BEATS
papercuts
01The Arrival
Setting + key players in the control room.
02The Blackout
Power grid fails. Confusion turns to panic.
03First Refusal
Marcus refuses manual override. Schism forms.
04The Override
Elena bypasses the chain of command.
05Aftermath
The reports. The lies. Who chose silence.
EDIT

Build your paper cut without leaving the transcript.

Pull selects directly from any transcript and arrange them into a spreadsheet-style assembly. Timecodes, speaker labels, and section headers travel with every quote. Export in a format your editor can open on day one of the offline.

PAPER CUT · ACT 1
papercuts
INOUTSPEAKERTEXT
00:04:3100:04:42ELENA M.It wasn't planned. None of it was.
00:31:1500:31:28ELENA M.The numbers told a different story.
01:12:0401:12:18DAVID R.We had run the simulation a hundred times.
02:44:1102:44:26MARCUS T.I followed protocol. That's all I'll say.
00:04:4800:04:55ELENA M.That's what the reports said. But that's a lie.
03:21:0903:21:33DAVID R.Marcus had the codes. He just chose not to use them.
5 selects · 03:12Export → .docx · .xlsx · .fcpxml
CHARACTER OVERVIEW

Every subject, fully understood before the offline begins.

PaperCuts reads across every transcript a subject appears in and assembles a portrait of their key themes, recurring positions, and most revealing moments. Hand it to your director, your editor, or your research team without writing a word yourself.

CHARACTER OVERVIEW
papercuts
Assembling portrait from indexed transcripts…
EM
Elena Marín
14 files · 6.2h of material indexed
Portrait
Key Themes
Power and accountability
Institutional silence
Personal cost of dissent
Standout Quotes
ELENA M.

"We knew by the second week. The numbers stopped making sense."

ELENA M.

"I told the board. No one wanted to hear it."

Export as .docx · share with your editor or director

The gaps between your tools are where the week goes.

Drives arrive from the field with hours of footage. Transcripts come back days later in a format nothing else on the project reads. Selects go into a spreadsheet that has never seen the footage, and the beat sheet sits in a third document that cannot point at a single frame.

A feature-length paper cut can run into the hundreds of selects, and each one carries a timecode and a clip name you copy across by hand. Add the revision passes and it becomes thousands of small transfers. None of them is the work you were hired to do.

PaperCuts keeps the project in one place. Audio becomes a searchable transcript when it lands, and speaker names carry across every file, so fixing a name once fixes it everywhere that person appears.

Selects move from the transcript into the paper cut with their timecodes attached. The beat sheet reads from those same selects, and the character work draws on the transcripts underneath them. You never retype any of it.

You still cut the film in your NLE. What lands there is a plan that already knows where every clip lives.

Put the whole project in one place.

Transcripts, selects, and the beat sheet all read against the same footage, so your hours go to what people said in the room.

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