I don’t do any editing while we’re making the movie. I sit down and watch it all with my editor, we make longhand notes on pads, and then we begin our work.
I loved editing, and being a cookbook editor is a really a great job.
In late 1999, I was walking down Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks with my late producing partner Sharyn Lane after a day of editing ‘Sordid Lives.’ We passed the Psychic Book Store and decided to go in and get a reading. We weren’t believers, but what the hell? We needed a sign.
I think the only reason people use PCs is because they have to. Mac is the most streamlined computer there is. I started using the Mac in college because I was doing editing, and they were the only computers we could use to do that.
If you’re writing a screenplay for a feature, you don’t have any involvement with the casting process, the editing process, the set design, the costume design, or any of that stuff.
When I first started editing a ‘Year’s Best’ volume in the ’70s, the job was pretty straightforward – there were three or four monthly magazines to read and a few original anthologies from trade publishers every year.
From the time we open our eyes, we live in a Steadicam form, and the only editing is when we talk about our lives or remember things.
I used to sit on the editing table to see where I may have gone wrong because after editing, only the good parts go on screen.
‘The New Yorker’ was really my first experience with serious editing. Previously, I’d more or less just had copyediting with a few suggestions – not much.
With portable cameras and affordable data and non-linear digital editing, I think this is a golden age of documentary filmmaking. These new technologies mean we can make complicated, beautifully crafted and cinematic films about real-life stories.
I love directing more than anything in the world, and I love being in the editing room. I love cutting. When I’m shooting, I cut it in my head anyway. That’s not to say that it always turns out that way, but you have a sense when you’re composing a sequence or a scene how you want it to look anyway.
If, like me, you’ve never watched ‘Game of Thrones’, the podcast ‘Binge Mode: ‘Game of Thrones” ought to be unlistenable. It isn’t, thanks to the energy of the two expert presenters Mallory Rubin and Jason Concepcion, who have the wit to laugh at their own deep-dive devotion and are helped out by some smart editing.
I confess that Roy was a little bit dictatorial in his editing and he ruined quite a number of my pictures, which he stopped doing later. He used to punch a hole through a negative. Some of them were incredibly valuable. He didn’t understand at the time.
Any editing, software work, and mail is done in this exported Plan 9.
I was directing as a kid in movies, and that was always my strongest interest. When I was under contract at Universal, I conned an editing room out of them and spent my money to rent a camera and shoot film and make some movies.
We have a really aggressive travel schedule at ‘Expedition Unknown.’ We spend a lot of time out of the country and we spend most of the time that we are back either preparing for the next expedition or writing, editing and getting shows ready to air. It really is a year-round lifestyle.
People will like to say that ‘Eastern Promises’ is brutal, but the only reason they say that is because the scenes stick with them. They are realistic. They are in-your-face and you see the consequences. It’s not a bunch of quick editing cuts.
Well, you always discover a lot in the editing room. Particularly the action, because you have to over-shoot a lot and shoot an enormous amount of material because many of the sequences have to be discovered in the editing and manipulation of it.
A lot of people in Nashville think that the best song is the catchiest or the one that sells the most copies. They’re editing songs in a way that make them seem more consumable, I guess. I’m trying to edit them in a way that makes them more honest.
I’m in awe of directors like the Coen brothers who can shoot their script and edit it, and that’s the movie. They’re not discovering the movie in postproduction. They’re editing the script they shot.
This whole blogging stuff has been bugging me for years. Talk about no filter on things. People feel free to do and say whatever they want with no vetting, with no editing, with nothing.
When you’re editing the film, you use a temp track. So you’re putting music in there for a rough cut to keep track of what’s going on. It can be a hindrance if wrong, it can be an enormous asset if you get it right.
All you’re trying to do in an improvisation is get as much material as possible for the editing room.
