Steven Soderbergh Quotes

Movies get found in the editing room. The movie that you make is not always necessarily the movie that comes out of the editing room. The trick is to perfect the movie that you have and make it the best version of what you've shot, regardless of what the intent may have been.

The idea of being able to polish something for nine months - it's the perfect way to hone your film.

Editing is fun for me. That's where you make things happen. Filming a movie, I just try to set things up and see where it goes. Editing is a puzzle. I often don't even know what I'm trying to say. I'm just trying to make myself laugh. That's it. It's musical, or something.

Once I'm in the editing room, forget about what I intended to shoot. I take a cold, hard look at what I really did shoot, and then I edit that because, if you try to edit what you intended and you missed somewhere, that will show up.

A movie goes from several stages, from idea to script. As you continue shooting, you will make some adjustments. You're constantly adjusting. It's like a piece of music. You're constantly trying to make it better.

I generally edit quite heavily. In general, there aren't many scenes that are sitting where they sat in the script in the final form.

I like pre-production and post the best. I don't like shooting at all. I find it grueling and tough, but I love post and the whole process of seeing the film finally come together. You start ironing out all the rough spots, and the really bad bits you just throw away. So from day one of post to the last day, you see nothing but improvements.

Any film I've made, I've only really begun to understand in the cutting room. That's when the story shows itself to you, like a wreck coming out of the sea.

Making a movie and not directing the little moments is like drinking a soda and leaving the little slurp puddle for someone else.

It's all about having fun and shooting something that you like. Where it goes afterwards is up to the movie gods.

I love editing. It's one of my favorite parts about filmmaking.

What I've learned is sometimes it's good not to have all the same actions and have all the same takes. The variety you provide gives the director later on in post-production the ability to construct a more interesting performance as he puts the movie together.

There are so many details in a movie that it's amazing how much work you'll do to change what adds up to not that much material.

I never watch the dailies. What I usually do is have a look at the rough or final cut, and I just get something from the story. Sometimes I start composing even before the director has shot anything. The dailies don't help me at all.

I have a tendency to overcut my movies.

A film ingeniously directed does indeed give the impression of having been laid end to end, but a film ingeniously edited gives the impression of having suppressed all direction.

You never have any idea where your movie's going to go when you're shooting - you're in this little bubble. Everything you care about is getting the next step right: getting the script right, finding the right actors, shooting it. Then you spend half a year in a dark room editing your film, and you don't talk to anybody.

I believe you make a movie three times: once in the development process - putting the ingredients like the script, cast and crew together - once in the shooting process, and once in the editing process.

I never think about it much, the visual aspect of it, until we start making the movie. I don't really think about it when we write. When we finish, and I start putting the film together, and we pick the locations, I do think about that a lot.

It's not writing in the traditional sense, but I've always said that the writing process continues on the set and even into the editing room.

In editing, you really face what the movie is. When you shoot it, you have this illusion that you're making the masterpieces that you're inspired by. But when you finally edit the movie, the movie is just a movie, so there is always a hint of disappointment, particularly when you see your first cut.

I love the editing process of making movies. I just wish that life had one.

Whenever I'm doing any film, there's always three different things. There's the script, which is really just a blueprint. And then, you shoot the movie and it's an entirely different experience than you would expect from reading the script. And then, there's the whole post process and the editing, and it becomes something else entirely.

You see the movie with the music and the editing and all the parts that you weren't there for when it was being filmed, and you really appreciate all the names that are scrolling by. You realize that you accomplished so much.

I never watched a frame of the film until it was finished.