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OT: Movies/TV Shows

WeHave showing a fundamental misunderstanding of film editing here. Of course the screenplay, acting and directing are all important as well. But a film can absolutely be saved or ruined in the editing room.

Coppola would probably disagree, but a lot of rumours suggest that The Godfather was an absolute mess initially, until the editors managed to form it into a cohesive film, and ultimately a masterpiece.
 
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zeke said:
took me a few days to get through half of that......


....but of course this guy is absolutely right and the first video guy is a dum dum.

of course this 2nd video could, ironically, really really use an editor.
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Making the same insult 8 times does seem to be overkill. The 2nd video is interesting because the dude is such a douchebag that it's virtually unwatchable, but he also appears to be right.
 
On the topic of editing, Dunkirk stands out to me as one of the best. The way it seamlessly cuts between the three perspectives & how they all intersect (one week, one day, one hour), AND keeps a tight runtime of ~90 minutes is masterwork.
 
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Not really a "traditional edit" but talk about ruining a movie; the first US theatrical release of "Once upon a time in America". Movie studio took a meat cleaver to the film & lopped off a good chunk of time *and* rearranged all the scenes so that it would be chronological order (imagine doing the later to a movie like "Momento").
 
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Some of the worst editing I've been privileged to have seen on the big screen was in my early days of teaching. My wife and two friends taught summer school that ended at noon and every Tuesday afternoon we'd go catch the worst movie playing at the cedarbrae theatres in old Scarborough.

We saw pooty Tang.
At first sight. Val kilmer and Mia sorvino. 😂
And the topper....mark wahlberg...Lou diamond Phillips,....I'll just show you the poster and you can have a laugh at this all star cast.

Anyway there are scenes with them caught in a car in a tree one second and the next edit has them running through the forest not a problem. Soo bad.
 
axlsalinger said:
WeHave showing a fundamental misunderstanding of film editing here. Of course the screenplay, acting and directing are all important as well. But a film can absolutely be saved or ruined in the editing room.

Coppola would probably disagree, but a lot of rumours suggest that The Godfather was an absolute mess initially, until the editors managed to form it into a cohesive film, and ultimately a masterpiece.
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I saw Apocalypse Now Redux with all that extra footage and while I normally prefer directors cuts, I didn't think this movie was enhanced by having those extra scenes. They were, for me, completely superfluous, especially that extended French colonial plantation scene.

On the other hand, Samuel Fuller's The Big Red One was destroyed by the editors. The original theatrical release made it into a mediocre movie that didn't make a ton of sense. But decades later when the directors cut was released on DVD all of a sudden it became a really good movie and all the stuff that didn't make sense now made sense.
 
WeHaveMoreCupsThanYou said:
I saw Apocalypse Now Redux with all that extra footage and while I normally prefer directors cuts, I didn't think this movie was enhanced by having those extra scenes. They were, for me, completely superfluous, especially that extended French colonial plantation scene.

On the other hand, Samuel Fuller's The Big Red One was destroyed by the editors. The original theatrical release made it into a mediocre movie that didn't make a ton of sense. But decades later when the directors cut was released on DVD all of a sudden it became a really good movie and all the stuff that didn't make sense now made sense.
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(spoiler alert: if you haven't watched the movie yet & are interested in watching the 'restored' version, don't click link)

www.dga.org

Sam Fuller - Reconstructing The Big Red One

Details DGA member Richard Schickel's efforts to assemble a complete version of director Sam Fuller's The Big Red One.
www.dga.org www.dga.org
 
oscarheyman said:
Not really a "traditional edit" but talk about ruining a movie; the first US theatrical release of "Once upon a time in America". Movie studio took a meat cleaver to the film & lopped off a good chunk of time *and* rearranged all the scenes so that it would be chronological order (imagine doing the later to a movie like "Momento").
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that movie is such a forgotten masterpiece.…for how good that Leone cut is, it’s kinda wild it isnt mentioned more often amongst the masterpieces of that genre. It’s maybe a little too ‘Godfather II‘ but I don’t mind having a 4+ version of the DeNiro story.

(to your point about the cut….Leone‘s original was 269 minutes….studio cut it down to 139 minutes for the American release. 🤮)
 
Feyd said:
On the topic of editing, Dunkirk stands out to me as one of the best. The way it seamlessly cuts between the three perspectives & how they all intersect (one week, one day, one hour), AND keeps a tight runtime of ~90 minutes is masterwork.
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Dunkirk is weirdly underappreciated I feel like…..to me it’s one of Nolan’s absolute best, but weirdly gets treated as if it’s one of his lesser films. I’d put it up there alongside all the great War films tho, and would take it over SPR any day.



View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpJK4MUAMDM


I loved 1917 as well…..but still found Dunkirk to be the superior of the two.
 
re: editing;

I think we might be often describing different things….there’s great editing in terms of sequencing, shot selections, timing of each shot….which seems to be what most people are focusing on with films like Dunkirk, Mad Max, etc etc….all technically brilliantly edited, but I don’t think those films necessarily needed to be “found” in the edit either.

Axl’s comment about Godfather I could absolutely see being true, and that’s more so the kind of artistic craftsmanship I’m talking about that’s lacking in modern editing of goddamn nearly any Netflix movie, or seemingly the vast majority of made for streaming flicks/shows. The technique is all there most of the time….but more often than not I feel like a superior film was likely left on the cutting room floor, or was made so by the book, and formulaically that not even takes were filmed/improvised/added for a better film to be extracted in the editing booth.

Im not even knowledgeable enough on these things to pinpoint exactly what’s missing….other than being able to tell something is definitely missing from them. Because that same feeling keeps appearing over and over and over again with these flicks.
 
WeHaveMoreCupsThanYou said:
I saw Apocalypse Now Redux with all that extra footage and while I normally prefer directors cuts, I didn't think this movie was enhanced by having those extra scenes. They were, for me, completely superfluous, especially that extended French colonial plantation scene.
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I dont think I’d call it superfluous given how drastically different it is to the rest of the film….and I think there’s value in what it does bring, but it also fucks the pacing of the film so much that I agree that it’s a better cut without it.

….that said, I think the movie is also a superior watch when you have the awareness of those scenes existing, and Coppola’s intent of the ghosts of colonialism to be swirling around the edges of the picture. So I’m both glad those scenes exist and that I’ve seen them, while agreeing the best possible cut of the film leaves them out.

(Redux did add plenty that deserves to be in a best cut tho…and every single cut is it’s own masterpiece anyway)
 
I’m hoping when Brian K Vaughan’s ‘Saga’ finally gets told that it’s (a) HBO that picks it up, and (b) if making the live action version would be too pricey, they make it with a top top notch animation studio.

It’s a ‘Game of Thrones’/Star Wars type universe & storytelling, that will be a gigantic hit one day if it’s produced properly.
 
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