How long is too long for a movie at the cinema?

magpie wrote:

Ah, so I get it now. You make it longer and worse?

Oh I get it, you're trying to be funny!

Good luck with that, hope it works out.

magpie wrote:

So if editors don't make films shorter and better what do they do?

Thelma Schoonmaker (Sorcese's editor) was brought onto a film called "grace of my heart". Sorcese was executive producing for the film and the cut was in trouble. the film set in the fifties and sixties had lots of touches in character and setting that evoked the time and place of the film. The director fairly inexperienced was brow beaten by the far more experienced editor, who was originally cutting the film, and had removed all these moments cause he felt they were "kinda lame" and "kitsch". First thing as the Schoomaker did was to "put em all back in" and the film regained the charm the director was striving for.

It depends on the film. On many films the editor is an effective set of eyes, he's not being on set during that torturous shot so isn't emotional invested in that shot that took three hours to get and we're not losing it! he/she (it's a very misogynistic industry but women tend to excel in editing *shrug* one of those things) is divorced from the shoot and can be a surgeon emotional detached and look at the film honestly (unlike say a direct who hates an actress, in it, that he had an affair with but since been dumped) and get the best cut.

Editors can be script writes the last day of script writing is the last day of cutting. they can move scenes around explore alternative structures of the film. I've seen films rejunvenatived just by putting a scene ten or fifteen minutes earlier/later in the running order of a film. I'm not just talking in your magnolia or memento, on any film.

You're the person who has the most control of an actors performance aside from the direct and the actor. You can change the timing of a delivery by cut away from an actor at the right moment, or massage a good performance from bad one.

They're technicians understanding complex post production technology, as well as craftsman and the people who generally know the film backwards (I literally know how to say two lines of dialogue backwards from my first student film) It's one of the most unknown aspects of filmmaking but behind the scenes the most important.

it's not just making it shorter and therefore "better"

sceptre wrote:

And there was me thinking that when you were young they used show Pathé newsreels or Buster Crabbe's Flash Gordon before the movie:D

A few years back the IFI (when it was the IFC) would show classics, complete with Tom and Jerry cartoon and the newsreel that preceded the film in the year it was released.