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View Full Version : Why don't directors edit their own movies?



Watashi
11-03-2007, 03:42 AM
This has been on my mind for the past few days, and I really couldn't figure out an answer.

I hear a lot about filmmakers not being pleased with their final cut of their film due to studio interference or creative differences with the editor. Ridley Scott is notorious for this always unhappy and re-editing until he gets his final vision right (Oliver Stone is guilty of this too). Why don't more directors take the time and edit their own film instead of relying it on someone else? I really wish Buff was here because he would give me a detailed response in a heartbeat.

The Coen Brothers are the only current directors I know of that edit their own films. I don't think I've ever seen one of their films I would call overlong, horribly paced or misleading. All of their films have pitch-perfect editing, which makes me wonder why more directors don't follow suit? Is it just too time consuming? Most, if not all, directors were editors at the beginning of their career during their early films/student projects. Is editing that hard of a job?

Mysterious Dude
11-03-2007, 03:53 AM
I think many directors don't have a choice. They directed the movie, but they don't own it, so they don't always get to decide what the end product will be like exactly.

I'm not sure what Ridley Scott's excuse is, though, since he's rich and produces most of his own movies.

Mr. Valentine
11-03-2007, 04:19 AM
Robert Rodriguez i'm pretty sure edits his own films.

Ezee E
11-03-2007, 04:24 AM
Soderbergh also edits his own movies.

But that would still be the director's cut. The director works extremely close with the editor for each scene and the progress. The most well-known is probably Scorsese with Schoonmaker because she comes up with things that even Scorsese didn't think of. Plus, having a different editor put together scenes is a good idea I think. It creates a little separation from the project so that the director doesn't get completely caught up in an idea that may not work when edited. In the end, the director approves of the scene and can tell the editor to make some changes if he/she doesn't like it. I learned this very well in film school.

However, when a studio comes in and demands changes due to audience reactions, the editor follows their direction. If Soderbergh were told to make a change, he'd naturally say, "Fuck you," and then the studio would get their own editor to make the changes, and would most likely be uncredited.

Mal
11-03-2007, 04:53 AM
http://img2.timeinc.net/ew/dynamic/imgs/070110/cameron1_l.jpg

MadMan
11-03-2007, 04:54 AM
Personally I think directors had more control over their films in the past, with it peaking in the 1960s and 1970s. Of course there still was a studio system and directors like Orsen Welles had to battle for their vision to get through. Plus the failure of films like Heaven's Gate did indeed lead to the decline of director control in the 1980s. But yeah there are still film makers who have creative control over their pictures, although as E pointed out they can still be overrode by the studios.

Sycophant
11-03-2007, 07:16 AM
Yeah, it's really usually more of a studio issue than a difference of opinion between the editor and the director. Usually, the editor is complete subservient to the director's desires, and the director is usually intimately involved in the post-production process.

Back in the classic studio system days, editing was actually rarely done with much input from the director, as it wasn't seen as quite the same creative force that it is today.

That said, a lot of Japanese directors edit their own stuff. Kitano does. And he's both an awesome editor and director.

Rowland
11-03-2007, 06:23 PM
That said, a lot of Japanese directors edit their own stuff. Kitano does. And he's both an awesome editor and director.As do Tsukamoto and K. Kurosawa.

Sycophant
11-03-2007, 06:32 PM
As do Tsukamoto and K. Kurosawa.Ishii and Kore-eda as well. Iwai's also edited about half his projects.

eternity
11-03-2007, 06:43 PM
I can understand why many directors don't solely edit their films, but if you're aren't very involved with the editing process and you're not pleased with the final product, it's your fault, and your fault aone.

Philosophe_rouge
11-03-2007, 07:05 PM
I can understand why many directors don't solely edit their films, but if you're aren't very involved with the editing process and you're not pleased with the final product, it's your fault, and your fault aone.
Unless it's taken out of your contol, which certainly does happen.

eternity
11-03-2007, 07:35 PM
Unless it's taken out of your contol, which certainly does happen.True. If I was a director and the studio took all control from me (partial control I would be fine with), I would disown the film. They'd have to attach someone else's name to it.

lovejuice
11-03-2007, 07:39 PM
editing i think requires highly technical skills. not that directors don't know how to do it. kinda like in science where a big name always have grad students running model, doing calculation, and other dirty jobs. besides money talks, and unless you really feel attached to the project, there is no point why you need to waste time with that.

chrisnu
11-03-2007, 08:24 PM
editing i think requires highly technical skills. not that directors don't know how to do it. kinda like in science where a big name always have grad students running model, doing calculation, and other dirty jobs. besides money talks, and unless you really feel attached to the project, there is no point why you need to waste time with that.
I agree with this, and it can be good to have another creative mind on the same wavelength. Hence why Mary Sweeney edited David Lynch's last four features before Inland Empire, and yet the movies are still 100% Lynch.

Sxottlan
11-04-2007, 07:23 AM
Is editing that hard of a job?

It can be very time consuming. It takes my editors about an hour to cut a two minute news package for air.

Perhaps some directors just don't have the technical experience to do it, although often time it's a collaborative effort and the director is sitting right there next to the editor.

That's my experience anyway.

balmakboor
11-04-2007, 08:16 PM
True. If I was a director and the studio took all control from me (partial control I would be fine with), I would disown the film. They'd have to attach someone else's name to it.

It not that easy. A director can't simply say "I'm not happy. Put someone's else's name on it." His contract as director stipulates that his name will go on it as the director. It takes a re-negotiation of the contract to get Alan Smithee to direct it.

In reply to the original question posed by the thread title, most directors are involved in the editing of their films. Most choose not to do the editing themselves because they are too close to the material and need a new pair of expert eyes to get the best results. When directors are not happy with the end result, it is usually that the studio has forced certain editorial decisions that they are unhappy with. Either that or the director is simply frustrated by his own ineptitude, Ridley Scott for example.

Buffaluffasaurus
01-04-2008, 11:43 PM
I really wish Buff was here because he would give me a detailed response in a heartbeat.
*Appears in a cloud of smoke*

There really are number of issues here as to why they don't:

1) It's time-consuming. After a long pre-production and production period, the last thing a director feels like doing is sitting in a dark room and sifting through dozens of takes and shots. Directors will often cite preferred takes/angles/cuts for their editor to put together what's called an "assembly" edit - basically a compilations of the best takes of everything that was shot. This is perhaps the most time-consuming of parts because it's laborious and doesn't require a lot of creative input at this stage - ergo, easily handled by an editor with minimal input from the director.

Once this is complete, directors will usually come on board and then begin to shape the story and overall flow of scenes.

2) It's very technical. Sure, most directors (particularly in this day and age) could figure out how to handle Final Cut (a lot already have) or even AVID, but in order to handle a massive project like a feature film, you have to be on top of a myriad of technical issues like codecs, down- and up-converting, storage issues, media management, audio sampling, timecodes and all kinds of things that are fiddly and easy to stuff-up. A good editor will be on top of all this, and the director can then just focus on the purely creative stuff.

3) Editing is an art. It's a highly skilled profession. Knowing when and where to cut, even for something as simple as cutting two shots of an actor walking together, requires a knowledge of editorial theory. Some directors will know a lot of this, some directors will have an intuition about this, but it is specialised enough that its often best to have someone who's a pro at it handling stuff. It's the same reason why directors don't often shoot their own movies (although it is quite notable that the ones that do are often the ones that also edit their own movies, like Rodriguez and Soderbergh) - you have more important, bigger-picture stuff to worry about rather than having to stuff around setting focal lengths and checking the gate every shot.

4) It's often better to have an outside opinion. By the time a film gets to the editing stage, the director is so steeped in the film that it can be hard to sit back and objectively judge what's working and what's not. For example, they may have spent a long time and a helluva lot of money getting a shot that doesn't work, but the director can't see it because it was so painful to get. A good editor who has the trust of the director can say "It's not working" because they're removed from the logistics and creative decisions of the shoot.


Finally, the other part of your question, which is why directors don't edit even though they often have problems with studio interference, has nothing to do with editing really. Studios get final cut on their films, which is purely a business decision written into the director's contract. They stump up the cash, so they get final say on what the public gets to see, which is entirely fair enough.

When a movie doesn't set the world on fire or gets panned, the first thing a director will do is blame the studio because they don't want the world to know they're a lousy director. But when a film's a success, no matter how much a studio has meddled with it, the director won't say squat because it's not in their interest to distance themselves from it. You'll notice for every "Director's Cut" of a film, there are dozens of films that directors don't say anything about, which have probably had as much or more interference as anything else. Consider this - Pretty Woman originally had a sad ending where they didn't end up together. Was the studio wrong to intervene and change it? Of course not - they were spot on.

origami_mustache
01-05-2008, 01:54 AM
The director and producers have a say in the editing process, but the editor is important because they approach the film from a fresh and more objective perspective and aren't attached to certain scenes that don't work.

Yxklyx
01-07-2008, 02:19 PM
From what I'm seeing of modern movies, it seems to me that in general directors have more control over the editing process than in the past - and this in turn is creating more bloated movies with more superfluous/extraneous scenes being included. Sometimes it seems that scenes are included merely to give more exposure to an actor - or perhaps there was just not enough footage filmed and there's this artificial need to fill up 90 minutes of time even when the movie would work better at 60 minutes - I guess the producer would be at fault in such a case.