Every sitting produces more frames than the series needs, and the surplus is not a problem to hide — it is the raw material of quality. The mistake is where the cutting falls. Studios that dislike a sitting often reach for the character: a new card, a new face, a restart. This room prunes the sitting instead, because the woman was settled once, on her card, and unsettling her to save a sitting trades a season’s continuity for an afternoon’s frustration.
How the cull runs here
First pass: identity only
Against the pruning-shears card, thumbnail size, no exceptions for beauty. This pass usually halves the sitting.
Second pass: craft
Hands, edges, light, clutter. Frames that fail craft but pass identity earn one edit consideration, not an upscale.
Third pass: purpose
Each survivor names its job — cover, feed, clip start. No job, no keeping. What remains is typically a third of the sitting.
The culled frames rest in the private library, unjudged and unspent-on. They are the prunings on the ground under the tree: proof the tree is kept, not wasted effort. A series pruned this way reads, frame after frame, as one woman in one life — which is the whole point of keeping a family tree at all.
Questions
Is a third a rule?
It is a centre of gravity, not a quota. Strong sittings keep more, weak ones fewer; the passes, not the fraction, are the discipline.
When do I cull — during or after?
After, cold, in one review. Culling mid-generation teaches the sitting your mood instead of your standard.
What happens to culled frames?
They rest private in your library. Some return as edit candidates; most simply stand as the price of the keepers.