Quotes About Editing

Every time I take a photo, it goes into SnapSeed. Even if it's just a price tag on something, it still goes into SnapSeed, and I start editing it. I'm not a photographer, so I need all the help I can get when it comes to make a picture look cool.

In certain fight scenes in 'Raging Bull' - for example, the shorter ones - I literally just took the head and tail of the shot and put it together, and it all worked beautifully.

I don't want to do 85 scenes in a film that has no head or tail.

Film editing is now something almost everyone can do at a simple level and enjoy it, but to take it to a higher level requires the same dedication and persistence that any art form does.

Reality TV finds talented people. There are no scripts. The editing is what it's all about. Great editing makes those shows.

It was only after the Grimms published two editions primarily for adults that they changed their attitude and decided to produce a shorter edition for middle-class families. This led to Wilhelm's editing and censoring many of the tales.

We talked a lot about The Best Intentions and how we could shoot certain scenes in different ways with slightly different bits of dialogue and information, so that later on, we could cut the piece more easily and it would still feel complete, even though it was shorter.

There are editing procedures for talks just as there are editing procedures in jazz improvisation.

But I couldn't cut that whole septic tank scene out because the audience liked it so much. So I sort of fell right back into getting a cheap laugh, but I still loved it.

You have to give an editor something to change, or he gets frustrated. After he pees in it himself, he likes the flavor much better, so he buys it.

But this later bit of bilocation-by-editing (Welles in Paris prompting Elmyr in Ibiza) also blatantly reminds you of what the editing room suggests: Orson has orchestrated everything to create, not a "normal" documentary, but a satire on the mind-set that believes in documentaries. Just like the "war of the worlds" satirized those who believe in official media versions of the news.

Similarly, the Russians discovered, in the 1920s, that an actor ordered to show no emotion as he looks out a window will seem to show any emotion the director wishes, if in the editing we, the audience, see something outside the window. Do we see a dying child? The expressionless actor seems to project grief so deep it cannot find expression yet. A dog playing? The same actor with the same non-expression seems to project quiet amusement . . .

The brain never remembers like a tape recorder or repeats like a parrot. Even the most rigid and compulsive types (Catholics, Marxists, members of CSICOP, etc.) do a lot more re-associating, re-framing and creative editing than they consciously realize.

Crossing out is an art that is, perhaps, even more difficult than writing. It requires the sharpest eye to decide what is superfluous and must be removed. And it requires ruthlessness toward yourself -- the greatest ruthlessness and self-sacrifice. You must know how to sacrifice parts in the name of the whole.

It seems to me that on one page I recognized a portion of an old diary of mine which mysteriously disappeared shortly after my marriage, and, also, scraps of letters which, though considerably edited, sound to me vaguely familiar. In fact, Mr. Fitzgerald (I believe that is how he spells his name) seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home.

I spent fifteen years working for various publishers editing text and reference books, including a beautifully edited but mind-numbing accounting textbook. That didn't get me any closer to being a published novelist, though it made me a crackerjack editor.

To cut and tighten sentences is the secret of mastery.

El secreto de escribir un buen e-mail es tener un buen comienzo y un buen final; y para mantener a los dos tan cerca como sea posible con el mensaje efectivo en el medio. Buena escritura e-mail siempre es 1% inspiración y 99% de eliminación.

One of underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material.

A good writer gets better only by learning to cut, to remove the ornamental, the descriptive, the narrative, and especially the deeply felt and meaningful. What remains? The story remains.

May 13 Deduction. Reduction. Redaction. How much has been redacted from the carefully curated version of our story?

The one thing Leonard won't tolerate is fancy prose. As he states in his 10 Rules of Writing: If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

Leave out the parts that readers tend to skip.

I try to leave out the parts that people skip.