Must a balanced and collaborative approach be adopted between editor and director to produce a compelling watch? Across commercial film, fiction and documentary there are arguments that suggest the pitfalls of a director’s cut over an editor’s cut, and visa versa. This article will explore these arguments and attempt to explain why a collaborative approach between director and editor can often be the most effective way to produce a film that is a compelling watch.
Director Rene Pannevis argues that when it comes to making a commercial film, the director’s cut will always be better because the director’s ambition will be to make a beautiful, compelling film. The editor on the other hand will be following the producer’s directions, whose main ambition will be to promote the product they’re selling in the ad. This relationship can often confuse the balance and dynamic of the film, resulting in a less compelling end result.
In fiction however, the situation for a director is quite different. Having been on the shoots, directors of fictional films are often prone to feeling too emotionally attached to certain shots. A prime example of this is the director’s cut of The Return of the King (Lord of the Rings), which is over four hours in length. Editors will often delete scenes because they slow down the pace of the film or are irrelevant to the story line; an extended version cut by a director may be longer, but is often a less impressive cinematic experience. The editor, not necessarily knowing how much energy, time or money was spent on a certain shoot, will pick and choose the best shots in a much more objective manner. Ideally, the editor and the director should collaborate on the final cut to find a happy balance.
Having a director’s cut can also simply be a marketing strategy employed to sell more DVDs. An extended version, uncut version or a director’s cut has scenes added that were filmed, but were cut out of the theatrical version. Most often, these versions are created to entice people who have already seen the movie in theatres to purchase a DVD. On the other hand, the extra scenes may have been omitted to preserve the film’s rating; in this case, the longer version may involve a significant amount more violence or sexuality. Such a version may also be called an ‘International’ or ‘European’ version. There are lots of cases where a director’s vision for a film has been significantly different to the studio’s. In these cases, the director’s cut may leave out or reorder scenes from the theatrical version, or make other changes to the plot. A well-known example is the director’s cut of Blade Runner, in which the voice-over narration is omitted and the ending is entirely different.
When it comes to documentaries, things can vary again. Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentary The Act of Killing is a good example. As the director, Oppenheimer said himself during an interview: “It took three years to make the director’s cut [the documentary took over ten years to produce], three months to bring it down to 90 minutes, and three weeks to expand it to two hours. I guess most people who have seen both like the longer version better. At least, that’s what they tell me. But as the maker, I would say it’s my [choice]. Otherwise it wouldn’t have existed and it would have been set aside as another rough cut.”
It seems the ideal situation for producing a successful film in most cases, depends on a good director-editor relationship, where a collaborative approach can be adopted. John Douglas (director of GunShop, Rogan Productions’ latest commission for Channel 4), gave us his take on collaborating with editors and why he thinks trust is the key to producing a compelling film: “As a documentary director, the thing I crave most once a shoot is over is the perspective, distance and honesty an experienced editor brings to the hours of material filmed over months of shooting.While shooting observational documentaries, directors make decisions about what to film in a fluid way. Things rarely go to plan and you have to work very hard to gain access to people, organisations and situations re-assessing your plans for the film as you go.The biggest mistake you can make when back in the cutting room is to allow the memory of how difficult/moving something was to film, or the complexity of gaining access to something to cloud your judgement over whether it has a place in the film. An editor will view the rushes unencumbered by the emotional, directorial baggage of the shoot, thinking only of how the many hours of rushes can be shaped to create the very best film. Trust is essential to the success of this process – directors, especially self-shooting ones, can be very protective and defensive over their rushes.Having trust between director and editor means that by the time the edit is over there should be very little difference between the way director and editor think about the material with both of you falling in and out of love with elements of the material.Programme duration for broadcasters often means that you have to make tough decisions about what to leave out of the film.If the creative process has worked well these moments will be missed as keenly by both the director and editor in the final film.”
