Ken Burns Quotes

I used to sit on the editing table to see where I may have gone wrong because after editing, only the good parts go on screen.

Editing is where movies are made or broken. Many a film has been saved and many a film has been ruined in the editing room.

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.

Consistency is very important when you're making films.

Same thing with film, by the time you've finished shooting and you've really been into everything, you've touched up everything in the editing room. You've gone in there and taken little bits from everything.

Particularly in the final stages I always find that I'm rushed. It's dangerous when you're rushed in the editing stage, most of my early films are flawed in the cutting.

I'll tell you one thing. I've never heard a director saying that the dailies suck.

Four months of preparation and about 12 hours of shooting turned into about 30 seconds of screen time.

It took me a year just to edit 'Shotgun Stories.' Actually, it took me two years to edit 'Shotgun Stories.'

Usually you always see first cut is an extended version, because it's basically everything you shot, and you have that version and then you start cutting stuff out.

I often can't remember which scenes are and aren't in the final product, because I saw so many different versions of the Lemony Snicket that I forget which ended up on the cutting-room floor.

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.

Normally, if you're lucky, the idea of a film you have in your head is more or less what you get back when you see it after the editing and the whole post-production process.

I love the idea that the editing room is the final time you write. You should still be creatively solving problems even at that point. It's not really until you're locked that you can call it quits.

In making films, you're dealing with hundreds of people and a crew, but eventually, it's you and an editor, and that part of it, I liked it a lot. The experience on 'Up in Smoke' was great. I really enjoyed it.

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.

The bottom line is that your performance is made in the editing room.

Of course, a movie is in constant flux.

I've never heard of a comedy that hasn't had reshoots, especially for the ending of a movie in a comedy.

You know, post-production is a bit of a grind to me. If I'm producing a film, I really... I mean I like editing, but all the other crap, the color mixing and... it's all a grind. And so as a result I cut back producing the number of films I was producing.

I'm amazed that movies ever get finished at all - much less come out good once in a while. It's an awful lot of work and it can go wrong a thousand different ways.

I have no control over a film. I don't know what will be left on the cutting floor.

David and I got cut out the editing process on that. We were able to affect it more than not. We sent in our notes, we were able to see cuts. We weren't allowed to see dailies and we weren't allowed to sit in the editing room and just work.

I've cut myself out... I've cut scenes out that I was in and that's when you realize that you've got to make the best movie you can.

I usually do about five cuts as a director. I haven't ever directed a film where I haven't made five passes through the movie, and that takes a long time.