3 Lessons From Cutting The Eras Tour

Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour (2023)

Concert Film | Editor | Disney +

Working on Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour was one of the most demanding and rewarding edits I’ve ever done.

It’s massive in every direction:

Over 3 hours long.

Dozens of songs.

Multiple shoot nights.

Cameras everywhere.

And a fanbase that knows every single detail.

But under all that pressure, the same truths held — the things that make an edit work, no matter the scale.

Here are three lessons I took from the cut:

Energy ≠ Speed

When you’re sitting on mountains of footage — 30 cameras rolling across two full nights, every angle looking incredible — the instinct is often to move fast. Quick cuts. Lots of motion. Ride the beat.

But sometimes, what the story actually needs… is space.

Some of the strongest moments in Eras weren’t fast-paced at all — they were held. A full-body shot where she takes in the crowd. A pause at the end of a lyric. A subtle shift in expression between songs.

The lesson: momentum isn’t just about speed — it’s about control. And restraint is just as powerful as rhythm.

The fan POV isn’t a cutaway — it’s a character

This was big.

In most live edits, crowd shots are treated like B-roll: filler to break up the performance. But for Eras, we quickly realised the audience is the film.

You see it in the emotion — tears, screams, disbelief.

You see it in the details — friendship bracelets, homemade signs, faces lit by the stage.

We weren’t just cutting Taylor’s performance. We were cutting their experience of it.

That meant letting certain shots linger longer than you’d expect. Giving the crowd space. Letting their reactions lead the edit at times.

It grounded the film in feeling — and gave it emotional scale.

You’re not cutting a concert — you’re building a journey

On paper, The Eras Tour is 40+ songs across 10 albums.

But that’s not how we approached it in the timeline.

What mattered wasn’t the discography — it was the emotional arc. Where it rises. Where it dips. When it hits you with a moment, and when it lets you breathe.

We treated each “era” like a chapter — with its own tone, visual feel, and internal rhythm. And we built transitions between them with intention — not just as technical shifts, but as emotional gears.

That structure is what made the film flow. It’s why it doesn’t just feel like a show — it feels like a story.

Final thought?

There’s a moment in the film where the camera holds on her — silent, still, eyes glistening — while 70,000 people scream back every word.

It’s not a flashy cut. It’s not clever. But it lands.

That’s what great tour edits do:

They take the spectacle and find the feeling inside it.

That’s the cut I’ll always chase.