Quotes About Editing

For me, the movie's always evolving as I'm doing it. I throw things in as we shoot, and I take things out as we go. I want to create a whole life and then select the pieces that best sort of describe it later, you know? So there's a lot of wastage when I make a film.

I write slowly. I actually write quickly, but I throw out so much material.

When you take something extremely broad, then it is not a work of expansion or work of compression. It's hard because you have to decide what to throw out.

Seventy percent of what I write, I throw out. I can write very easily, but writing original things is the hard bit.

And then the really awful thing is that at the end of the day after crying and experiencing things, then you look at what you've written and you're like, 'Hmm, there's half a page that's good here.' Then you throw out everything else.

With film sometimes you're thrown in there and you literally hit the ground running, taking your best shot and just leave it up to the editing.

As a writer, you write the book, you give it to your editor, it's copy edited, it's published, it's thrown out there, and then there's a response.

Maybe other writers have perfect first drafts, but I am not one of them. I always try to get the book as tight as I can, but you reach a point as the author where you have lost all perspective.

Anyone can make an article longer; the skill is keeping it tight and lean.

I just think a lot of movies are too long. I want to know how to make my movie as tight as possible.

Here I am paying big money to you writers and what for? All you do is change the words.

Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

An old tutor of a college said to one of his pupils: Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

I have definitely started to edit a lot of things that I would not have thought twice about saying 10 or 15 years ago. It simply isn't worth it to be exposed to the unsophisticated thinking of so many people. I've learned how to recalibrate my approach to social commentary.

In the editing room, 20 percent of the time you're using stuff from before the actor knew the camera was rolling or you're taking a line from somewhere else and putting it in his mouth.

If I had more time, I would have written less.

But I suppose film is distinctive because of its nature, of its being able to cut through time with editing.

I do a lot of revising. Certain chapters six or seven times. Occasionally you can hit it right the first time. More often, you don't.

I spend a lot of time in preproduction working with authors, and a lot of time in postproduction.: editing, music, all that sort of stuff. Casting. On the set there's not a lot for me to do.

Part of the writer's task is to recognize what he's done, then dive back in and make the connections clearer. I'm a strong believer in getting things right the ninth or tenth time.

Omissions are not accidents.

Once the first draft is done, the really tough work begins.

I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.

A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.