Ridley Scott Quotes

I think it's almost impossible to edit something to death. I think you can make things better almost indefinitely.

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 the writing process, the more a story cooks, the better.

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.

The film is made in the editing room. The shooting of the film is about shopping, almost. It's like going to get all the ingredients together, and you've got to make sure before you leave the store that you got all the ingredients. And then you take those ingredients and you can make a good cake - or not.

Feature filmmaking is a different kind of complication as documentary comes in the editing room.

When you're doing a TV show, it's not like you just shoot for six weeks and you're in an editing room with all of your footage. It's like a guitar or a car, you have to fine tune things. You stop doing what's not working, you work on what is working and you add things that do work.

I love directing more than anything in the world, and I love being in the editing room. I love cutting. When I'm shooting, I cut it in my head anyway. That's not to say that it always turns out that way, but you have a sense when you're composing a sequence or a scene how you want it to look anyway.

When it comes to the ratings, I don't know what the rating system is. So when it comes to me, I've learned, with the little experience that I have, that when I feel really good about a movie in the editing room, it works. And when I've felt like a movie wasn't working, it didn't work.

When I write something, I constantly rewrite.

You should always go through the first draft of a book all at once, I think, to get the best results. You can take time off after the first draft and come back to it fresh.

I write everything out in longhand in one fast go. And then I throw out the first few and start over again. By the end of the first draft, the whole thing's messy and disgusting and horrible, but you really understand the foundational stuff.

I don't think enough directors know enough about editing.

I feel like the job in editing is to let the movie tell you what it is. So again, it's like sculpture. You just start taking away, you add a nose here, you cut off, like, the side of the cheek over here in the crease, and you have a face. But it really reveals to you what it means to be over time, and if you have enough time.

Of course, when you're making a documentary, you don't have actors, but nonetheless, there is a writing process that does take place in the editing room.

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.

My first cut is always pretty similar to the final cut.

Whenever I'm not shooting, I'm in the editing room with my footage. While the crew is taking 15 minutes to an hour to set up the next shot, I'm behind the Avid, putting the flick together.

The film is made in the editing room.

I'm not one of those directors who can just kind of walk away from the edit room and come back and check in.

Then I will tape the sets and even though I'm not very successful sometimes I will try to cut out the fat and put the jokes closer together.

The writer’s life is a life of revisions.

My writing is a process of rewriting, of going back and changing and filling in. in the rewriting process you discover what's going on, and you go back and bring it up to that point.

When you are acting in a film, you have no idea what scene the editor is going to choose. For instance, after you have directed, you feel more comfortable delivering a performance. Because you know the real performance is put together in the editing room.

My dad told me, 'Your movie's never as good as the dailies and never as bad as the rough cut.