Editing Tip 001: The script is not written in stone
When you’re working on a narrative feature the script is very important — it’s a vital roadmap that keeps you on track and gives you a clear direction to go in. However, following it to a “T” will probably not create the best movie. Words on a script do not come across the same as visuals on a screen.
I began editing my first feature film, “Into the Void, ” (Which will hopefully be released later this year) by simply starting with scene 001 and following along with the script. By the time I had all the scenes put together, the movie was 160 minutes long. The script was only about 90 pages, and even though it was dense in some areas, I didn’t expect a movie of this length. The Director yelled out (on Facebook), “We have an epic!”
Realizing that there was still a lot of fluff in the cut, I began making my second cut by going through and cutting the “fat” — removing unnecessary pauses, finding better takes, eliminating lines of dialogue, etc… After many sets of revisions, the movie was down to 120 minutes. I felt pretty good about it at the time, but it still felt “off”.
Now I realize that it was awful. There were too many subplots, the scenes and sequences weren’t meshing together, there was a ton of unnecessary dialogue or that did too much “telling”, and most importantly, there were scenes that didn’t add any real value to the story.
I followed the script though — how could I have drifted so far off course?
It’s kind of like a movie that is adapted from a novel. If you were to include everything from the novel in the movie, the movie would be crazy long and include way too many different story elements that are not essential. They are totally different mediums. I think it’s a great starting place to begin editing the movie based on the script. After that initial cut though, there is still a serious amount of work to do that can take the story above and beyond the script.
Here is a list of some of those things:
- Remove scenes (Just because they work in the script, or were at least expected to, doesn’t mean they will work in the movie)
- Re-arrange scenes, and sequences of scenes, to get the most emotional impact
- Cut dialogue (Dialogue can sometimes get too wordy or might not sound like something the character would say or be feeling at a given moment)
- New scenes or dialogue may need to be added to fill gaps in story
- Your movie shouldn’t be 160 minutes unless it truly is an epic… 90 minutes is a good target for most movies I think.
I’m happy to report that “Into the Void” is now at 90 minutes and is extremely close to a final cut. This was accomplished by using the tips above and many more that I will continue to share every week.
These tips are gathered from experience and study, but as anything in life, are up for debate. If you have any comments/suggestions leave them below or if you would like to write a guest post with an E.T. you have, email me at: jeremywanek@gmail.com.
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