The most time-consuming part of creating any wedding film is editing.

You can film a wedding in one day. Editing it? That can take days, sometimes weeks. And as someone who has edited literally hundreds of wedding films, I can confidently say most of your editing time is spent discovering and shaping the story.

You are digging through ceremony audio, the officiant’s message, vows, toasts, letters, interviews, and all of those emotional in-between moments. You sit there, headphones on, scrubbing through hours of A-roll trying to find the heart of the day.

It is one of the most creative parts of editing.

It is also one of the most time-consuming.

But what if there was a tool that could listen to all of that for you, identify the most powerful moments, and assemble them into a structured story on your timeline?

That tool exists.

It’s called Plotline.

My name is Matt Johnson, and today I want to walk you through what Plotline does, how well it works, and yes, talk about the elephant in the room: it uses AI.

And anytime you say “AI” in a creative space, people have opinions.

For the record, this is not sponsored. Plotline was created by my friend Maclean Carlson of Hello Tomorrow Films, one of the most talented wedding filmmakers I know. He built it because he wanted to save time on one of the most exhausting parts of wedding editing: story assembly.

But, if you signup for Plotline using this affiliate link, I will get a small commission, plus you can use the coupon code “WHOISMATT” for 30% off your first 3 months.

So let’s break it down.

---

How Plotline Works

For this test, I used DaVinci Resolve, but Plotline works with all major editing platforms including Adobe Premiere and Final Cut.

Here’s the basic workflow:

1. Import and sync all your footage.
2. Build a timeline with your full A-roll: letters, ceremony, vows, toasts, etc.
3. Export an FCPXML file of that timeline.
4. Export a full MP3 of the timeline audio.
5. Upload both files to Plotline.

That’s it.

Once uploaded, Plotline analyzes the audio, transcribes everything, combines that with your XML data, and starts building a story.

Maclean confirmed that your files are not used to train AI models. They remain private.

---

Speaker Detection and Transcripts

Once processing is complete, you get a full transcript with labeled speakers.

You can manually name them, or you can hit “Identify Speakers” and let the AI do it. It’s impressively accurate.

From there, you move into the real magic: the Story Script.

---

AI Story Generation

Click “Create Story Script” and you’ll be asked a few questions:

• Short, medium, or long film?
• High dialogue or minimal dialogue?
• Which themes should be emphasized?
• Which moments are must-include or exclude?
• Do certain speakers need guaranteed segments?

You can even weight the edit toward vows, toasts, ceremony, reception, or write a custom focus.

And yes, you can automatically remove things like:

• Legal formalities
• DJ filler chatter
• “For those of you who don’t know me…”

Once you hit generate, it takes about 45–60 seconds.

Then you’re presented with a fully structured story script, broken into emotional beats with clear narrative flow.

Hook.
Origins.
Development.
Emotional peaks.
Resolution.

You can preview the audio, tweak settings, regenerate, or export an XML and drop it directly back into your editing software.

And just like that, you have a fully assembled A-roll timeline.

It honestly feels like magic.

---

Is It Actually Good?

This is the real question.

Storytelling is subjective. But from a quality standpoint, I was impressed.

The AI built a competent, emotionally structured story that absolutely would work for a wedding film. It understood tone. It identified recurring motifs. It surfaced powerful lines.

Maclean has said it’s trained on a large dataset of well-edited wedding films, and it shows. It understands pacing and narrative arcs in a way that feels intentional.

What really stood out to me is how much control you have. You are not just pressing a button and accepting whatever it spits out. You can heavily tailor the story to your style.

Can it fully edit your film?

No.

It only handles the A-roll story assembly.

You still need to:

• Add music
• Mix audio
• Layer B-roll
• Color grade
• Shape pacing
• Fine-tune emotional beats

There are still hours of creative work left.

But Plotline removes a massive chunk of the initial heavy lifting.

---

The AI Debate

Now let’s talk about the controversial part.

AI.

Some people will love this. Others will hate it.

I can see high-volume wedding filmmakers using Plotline to dramatically speed up their workflow and deliver films faster.

I can see wedding photographers moving into video using this as a bridge, since editing audio-driven stories is very different from editing still images.

I can see filmmakers who primarily use music in their edits using Plotline to finally explore story-driven films.

But I can also see more established wedding filmmakers being frustrated.

Because discovering and structuring the story is arguably the most creative part of the edit.

Yes, it is time-consuming.
Yes, it is exhausting.
But it is deeply artistic.

I think this debate really comes down to philosophy.

Some people approach wedding filmmaking as a business. Efficiency matters. Speed matters. Throughput matters.

Others approach it as art. They would never relinquish creative control over story structure to AI.

Personally?

I love the editing process. Discovering the story is my favorite part.

So I don’t see myself using Plotline in my workflow.

But that doesn’t mean it’s bad. It just means it doesn’t align with how I enjoy creating.

There are two sides to AI right now.

There’s generative AI that creates art from text prompts, trained on millions of artists’ work. That understandably upsets many creatives.

Then there are AI tools that save time on tedious tasks. Think of the auto audio mixer in DaVinci Resolve. It levels everything in seconds instead of hours.

Plotline feels much closer to that second category.

It’s not replacing your creativity.
It’s compressing busy work.

But I genuinely want to know what you think.

Would you use it?
Do you think it could build a wedding story better than you?
Where do you fall on the AI spectrum?

You can check out Plotline and use coupon code “WhoisMatt” to save 30% off your first three months.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks so much for reading, and have a great day.