Greg Berlanti Quotes

There's nothing worse than a dream sequence done all in post-production.

Watching the completed version of The Two Towers for example, I was very conscious of scenes - sometimes whole sequences - that I had seen being filmed or edited but which hadn't made it into the final cut.

I don't like camera trickery and editing and doubles and all of that.

As soon as you're finished shooting, you have to go into the edit room and choose all of the shots that you're going to commit to because the visual effects vendor has to get it because they'll spend months on it. So, you're editing out of sequence before you've gotten a film for the movie and the performances.

That's the trouble with anything which essentially has a lot of bits that are physically impossible: You're left, stuck, in the studio. And that's a shame. You're making a movie. You don't want it to stay put, you want it to be a movie - to move.

Truthfully, I don't know how those special effects people do it.

Special effects are becoming more and more affordable and looking more and more like the real thing.

With the advanced editing technologies, it's not difficult to play double roles these days. It can be done easily.

In 'The Greatest Showman,' I'm back doing VFX myself, allowing me to craft exactly how something looks, one frame at a time.

With digital editing, I now can make many, many versions of a scene.

The creation of the island, or the impression of the island, as it changes in the mind of the character also came in to play... there was another very important collaborator, Rob Legato, on special visual effects. And then ultimately there's Thelma Schoonmaker, who keeps me focused during the editing of the picture.

When you're done shooting, the movie that you're going to release when you're done shooting is as bad as it will ever be. And then through editing, and finishing the effects and adding music, you get to make the movie better again. So I'm really hard on myself and on the movie.

The first cut I do is usually between five and 10 minutes shorter then the cut that we release. Anything I think isn't working or might not work, I don't even put it in the director's cut. And usually it's the studio suggesting I put stuff back in, as opposed to studios saying, "You got to lose 40 minutes," they are always saying, "You've got to gain five minutes."

You don't have your film finished when you have your director's cut finished. It's just a bunch of green screen.

I think that in big-budget movies there's a lot of other stuff going on besides acting, like special effects.

Docs, in general, are made in the edit bay, archival docs even more so.

Technology is a very important part of cinema.

Veteran' is an exercise in editing because there is a lot of moments I took out and some that almost didn't make it.

I wrote a big animation scene for 'Iron Fists,' but we couldn't afford all that.

The daily work on special effects is fairly mundane.

I edit as I write and shoot. Any extra line, any pause that I know will get chopped on the editing table is done away with then and there.

You can certainly shorten things and tighten things, we tightened up Jon's walk to Mance Rayder's tent. That was something that got tightened up a little bit because I had shot the hell out of that.

I think you should be prepared for a green-screen CGI at all times.

I mean I think people prepared me for like a lot of green screen [in Oz the Great]. I didn't have a lot of green screen. They build most sets. When this castle was tangible, Emerald City was tangible, the forest, the woods was tangible, the cemetery, everything was there.

I've made quite a number of movies like Castaway and a few others where I'm the only guy in the movie and the only place to be is right next to the camera in costume ready to go in order to get it. The years, and more specifically probably the four months prior to beginning shooting, is where the big preparation is that the director does because I knew we were going to get on the set. And the good news is, if you're the boss, if it ain't good, you don't use it. You just cut it out.