I wish to understand point one more.

Cutting in Stereo or Mono is two very different ways to approaching an edit.

Why would it need to work in mono first? (apart from deliverables down the line)

In my opinion it needs to work in stereo first. (especially if this is you ultimate deliverable)

I’m an editor and in my experience I feel its important you are aware of your convergence points from cut to cut.
Also (like you mention in point 6) you need to be aware of where your eyes are going and that the viewers aren’t going to be overwhelmed and get lost within the shot. As you know with mono you can cheat/force a viewer to a point within the frame using depth of field etc, but you can’t do this as much with stereoscopic.

When I first started out cutting stereo, I found I would view the edit mostly in mono (or using ‘one eye’ as I kept hearing it refereed too).
As my experience developed I realised I needed to often switch viewing my edited sequence between stereo and mono. I found that most of the work I cut in mono was cut to ‘fast’ when I reviewed it back in stereo, I would have to reedit the sequence and ‘slow’ the cuts down.

I’m a big believer that a lot of the editing rules have gone out the window for stereoscopic editing. I feel like I’m watching theater on TV now.

Exciting times.

Thanks again Mike for all your valuable tips.

b