Top 94 On Editing Quotes
#1. A good deal of editing a manuscript looks like mechanical work, as if anyone with time on their hands and a magnifying glass could do it. But at a certain point, you need a strong interpretive conviction and, as you say, an "intangible" relationship to what you are doing.
Oliver Harris
#2. Bobby is really the one who did all the editing on that stuff. And he did all the mixing. I particularly like the record we did with Logic because Scott Harding did a great job mixing it. He's really a killing engineer.
Charlie Hunter
#3. I get very, very anxious on the set. I have a thousand ideas and I don't censor myself. I wind up cutting some of them out in the editing room. I shoot needless footage and then don't use it later on in the process.
Steven Spielberg
#4. I grew up on film sets but more around the process of making films. I saw a lot of the editing process and the writing process, which takes years. That really affected me growing up, that side of it.
Alice Englert
#5. I think that anybody that wants to direct, particularly writers, should spend some time in an editing room, whether it's a film of theirs or someone else's, or shoot their own picture on video and cut it.
Joe Dante
#6. Rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, build on to that which is already excellent.
Auliq Ice
#7. When you're editing the film, you use a temp track. So you're putting music in there for a rough cut to keep track of what's going on. It can be a hindrance if wrong, it can be an enormous asset if you get it right.
Nicholas Jarecki
#8. When I'm editing, it's such a tough call, and I get challenged on it all the time. You've got to go with your gut - sometimes when you look at a photograph, you just know it's the shot. Sometimes it's about the connection, or about the simplicity of the composition.
Russell James
#9. You have to know what you're shooting. Don't just make your movie in the editing room and just get everything you can on the day.
Patrick Wilson
#10. Professional humorists and cartoonists have to go through a stage in which they have to kill their own internal editor just so they can get stuff out. So whether they believe it or not, they need me on the other end to do that editing for them.
Robert Mankoff
#11. I hate sitting around and waiting; that's why I always have an editing suite on set.
Til Schweiger
#12. I remember doing one day of work, and I was so good I ended up doing 25 days on that movie. And all of it ended up on the editing room floor. That was my first Hollywood lesson: Just because you filmed a movie doesn't necessarily mean that you're in it.
Eddie Griffin
#13. I like to edit my sentences as I write them. I rearrange a sentence many times before moving on to the next one. For me, that editing process feels like a form of play, like a puzzle that needs solving, and it's one of the most satisfying parts of writing.
Karen Thompson Walker
#14. Believe it or not, I don't collaborate with women, though my agent and editor are both females. For the most part, they do little editing on my characters.
Nicholas Sparks
#15. If you re-read your work, you can find on re-reading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by re-reading and editing.
William Safire
#16. Editing is the very edge of your knowledge forced to grow
a test you can't cheat on.
S. Kelley Harrell
#17. Since I was a child, I've liked telling stories. Maybe because my father's a director, I grew up loving stories. I'm not good at spinning them at a dinner table because I do go on a bit, but I love writing them, and directing is just a way of editing the story.
Mary Stuart Masterson
#18. [S]torytelling, in ancient and modern practice, is always a contemplation of the experience of time passing. A story depends on things not standing still, on the built-in condition of impermanence.
Joan Silber
#19. I've always been a relaxed person on set, but I think the main thing is I think about it from an editing point of view way more than I did before.
Taika Waititi
#20. I like to kind of change my performance so that there's more to play with in the editing suite. At the same time I think by the time you've done say 55 takes you're exhausted and you've kind of lost the power behind it that you had on take #1 or take #2.
Eleanor Tomlinson
#21. I was asked the age old question today: why are you an author? I suppose there are lots of answers to this question that would suffice, but for me there is really only one answer that will do: the blank paper taunts me, and I am weak.
Richard Due
#22. In 'Serena,' stuff happens, then nastier stuff, without ever engaging the viewer's rooting interest or sick fear. Sometimes it's a question of sloppiness on the set or in the editing room.
Richard Corliss
#23. Once you sign on as an actor, you know, you don't go to the editing room, you don't see how they cut, you don't see how they score, you don't see how they cast the rest of the movie.
Albert Brooks
#24. To be a film director is not a democracy, it's really a tyranny. You're the head of the project, for better rather than worse. I write the film and I direct the film, I decide who's going to be in it, I decide on the editing, I put in the music from my own record collection.
Woody Allen
#25. I moved to New York City when I was 20 years old, started making movies non-stop. I didn't have any friends, so I would just sit at home all night editing on my iMac.
Casey Neistat
#26. As the trees turned red, then white, then naked as pitchforks, Margot and Xiao Chen immersed themselves in several forests' worth of pages, and I watched, tortured, as brick after brick of a new development was laid on the wasteland of Midtown West like slabs of gold bullion.
Carolyn Jess-Cooke
#27. Writing is like riding a bike. Once you gain momentum, the hills are easier. Editing, however, requires a motor and some horsepower.
Gina McKnight
#28. To make a movie charming, you have to be playful on all levels and open to ideas, and you have to have an idea for how to do that within the confines of the shooting schedule and editing and all that.
Lasse Hallstrom
#29. Remove the comma, replace the comma, remove the comma, replace the comma ...
R.D. Ronald
#30. I'm making art and making decisions and editing things. I don't live my life to broadcast it into the art world; I don't see it as my life on the stage.
Frances Stark
#31. When I started editing on my home computer, I said to myself, 'Well, I could be at home studying for a class or I could be at home editing a video.'
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
#32. It's been 50 years since I was on the roof of my parents' house shooting Hag in a Black Leather Jacket when I didn't even know there was such a thing as editing. I thought you just shot the film and showed it. That's exactly what I did. I'm not that different 50 years later.
John Waters
#33. It's interesting, editing can be so immersive for me that I've noticed that the authors I edit have a pretty profound effect on how I hear language for a while.
Danielle Dutton
#34. Sound and Visual Effects and Editing are sometimes referred to as technical awards. They're not technical awards. They're given for artistic decisions. And sometimes we make them better than others, and I guess we made a couple of good ones on this one.
Randy Thom
#35. I am hard at work on the second draft ... Second draft is really a misnomer as there are a gazillion revisions, large and small, that go into the writing of a book.
Libba Bray
#36. My photographs are not really about photography. They are about editing. I use photography but they are all taken from the TV screen. Anybody can do that, but it's the order I put the pictures in to try to create a new kind of movie, something that you can put on your wall.
John Waters
#37. Every writer, of course, has very specific ideas about editors. But writers seldom get the last word on anything.
Terry McDonell
#38. It's an ongoing process, in the script, on the set and in the editing room, to make sure you are being true to the emotion of the film without turning it into a melodrama, and making sure you're getting all the laughs you can without it turning into just some stupid comedy.
Jon Turteltaub
#39. I like being a musician that's also a fly on the wall. I like people coming in the room and doing what they do and then leaving. I like attention, but it actually gives me a little less to work with as a performer if people are editing themselves and not being them.
Travis Morrison
#40. 'The Conversation' was the first film I edited on a flatbed machine - a KEM editing machine. I've been using Final Cut or the AVID for 12 years now, so I was interested in looking at this film and seeing if I could tell if it had been edited the old way.
Walter Murch
#41. Because the Pang brothers are twins, they would rotate days on set. One of them would be editing, and one of them would be shooting.
Kristen Stewart
#42. When you're in the editing room, as a director, you get the opportunity to look at your work. As a writer, you can rewrite. But as an actor, unless you're watching playback, you really rely on the director to help you.
Zoe Kazan
#43. This whole blogging stuff has been bugging me for years. Talk about no filter on things. People feel free to do and say whatever they want with no vetting, with no editing, with nothing.
Rick Moranis
#44. It's not words, but years we should be editing. Remember: time spent on bad art is a form of redundancy, doing the same thing twice is a form of tautology, and wasting precious moments complaining about life is a form of pleonasm. We should all learn to live our lives concisely.
Anthony Marais
#45. Edit your manuscript until your fingers bleed and you have memorized every last word. Then, when you are certain you are on the verge of insanity ... edit one more time!
C.K. Webb
#46. We sometimes allow writers to publish their work without editing on io9.
Annalee Newitz
#47. Even a fiction film is hard to end. You can going on shooting and editing a documentary forever.
Leos Carax
#48. You really like putting it all on display, don't you? No editing."
"I'm not playing games with you, Sam. I have no intention of hiding what I want; I won't make that mistake again.
Genna Rulon
#49. Editing one's writing is as easy as lighting a match while riding a bicycle.
Fennel Hudson
#50. With all editing, no matter how sensitive - and I've been very lucky here - I react sulkily at first, but then I settle down and get on with it, and a year later I have my book in my hand.
Michael Morpurgo
#51. I really only became an editor, or started doing my own editing because I was filming the docs and you simply can't keep an editor on for as long as it takes so.
John Hyams
#52. 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.
Bob Odenkirk
#53. I can hire out for editing, proofreading, formatting, and cover design, and those are fixed, sunk costs. Once those are paid, I can earn 70% on a self-pubbed ebook.
J.A. Konrath
#54. A film is born in my head and I kill it on paper. It is brought back to life by the actors and then killed in the camera. It is then resurrected into a third and final life in the editing room where the dismembered pieces are assembled into their finished form.
Robert Bresson
#55. And I watch all the dailies and I grade the jokes or the moments, you know, on a scale from ... so I know exactly what we have. And so I can then go into the editing room and be like "I want you to do this moment, this moment, this joke, that joke. I'd like to see 3 versions."
Nicholas Stoller
#56. Love how editing makes you more confident with your book ...but also makes you want to set it on fire at the same time.
Kira Hawke
#57. 'Close To The Edge,' we actually had played it from beginning to end before we recorded it in the studio. So we knew how long it was, and we knew it would fit on the album fine, so we didn't do any editing.
Chris Squire
#58. There are plenty of bad editors who try to impose their own vision on a book. ( ... )
A good novel editor is invisible.
Terri Windling
#59. On the Web, we can be whoever we wish to be, editing the face we show to others in ways that aren't possible in physical space. We can also fine-tune the complexity and depth of our interactions and relationships.
Walter Kirn
#60. For me, shooting, editing, and scoring rely on rhythm.
Donnie Yen
#61. For most people, I edit. Most people are definitely getting along on the Cliffs Notes.
Suzanne Finnamore
#62. I don't think music affects what words I choose to type in what order, within what punctuation, at this point, because I'm rereading and editing each sentence, at this point, in my published books, probably 100-150 times each, on average, and listening to probably 20-60 different songs in that time.
Tao Lin
#63. Editing is like strawberries put on the table as a centerpiece, before the full course meal, but, you don't want them to become spoiled, or your guests will go to the neighbor's house next door.
Angel M.B. Chadwick
#64. The greatest films ever made in our history were cut on film, and I'm tenaciously hanging on to the process. I just love going into an editing room and smelling the photochemistry and seeing my editor wearing mini-strands of film around his neck.
Steven Spielberg
#65. (R)eality TV (is) a medium dedicated to the proposition that with the help of judicious editing, carefully chosen half-wits can hold the attention of millions of their fellow half-wits for weeks on end.
Terry Teachout
#66. A lot of it is found in the editing room and part of that is due to some of the improvisational tactics we employ on set. Part of it is that the shot goes a little bit long and they end up coming down to fit time.
Mark Duplass
#67. 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.
Barry Sonnenfeld
#68. I am somebody who usually writes out the rough draft in longhand. Then I type it into the computer, and that is where I do my editing. I find that if I write it on the computer, I go too quick. So I like getting that first draft out and then typing it in; you are less self-conscious about it.
Barack Obama
#69. I spend a lot of time in preproduction working with authors, and a lot of time in postproduction.: editing, music, all that sort of stuff. Casting. On the set there's not a lot for me to do.
Charlie Kaufman
#70. Editing is such a voyeuristic treat for me. I land on a theme and ask authors to pen works that fit the topic.
Alison Tyler
#71. You know, I do music. If you look under the hood of the industry I'm in, it's all based on technology. From radio to phonographs to CDs, it's all technology. Microphones, reel-to-reels, cameras, editing, chips, it's all technology.
Will.i.am
#72. So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.
Dr. Seuss
#73. Editing is now the easiest thing on earth to do, and all the things that evolved out of word processing - 'Oh, let's put that sentence there, let's get rid of this' - have become commonplace in films and music too.
Brian Eno
#74. I have an amazing team; I have amazing producers; I have amazing writers, but at the end of it, it's me making the decisions on the writing, the tone, the editing.
Ellen DeGeneres
#75. I'm a fierce editor! I don't edit out things that I began by saying, usually. The editing is on the micro level - a comma here, a word there.
Lydia Davis
#76. If you're working on a computer and you're editing bass, it looks like a warm curvy, sort of feminine object.
Colin Greenwood
#77. I like every part [of the film process ] except the business and admin stuff. The initial idea. Writing. Re-writing. Casting. Directing, Editing. If I had to chose I'd say writing, followed by putting music on the picture. That is magical.
Ricky Gervais
#78. In editing, it's amazing how you choose the in and out points. What you cut on is everything for creating tension. It's amazing how expanding a shot by five seconds can just ruin the tension.
Sean Durkin
#79. I think the hardest thing to teach a student is that what he or she puts down on paper is changeable. It's not the final thing, it's the first thing, which may just be the suggestive, vague identification of something that you have to come back to and rewrite.
M.H. Abrams
#80. Remember the waterfront shack with the sign FRESH FISH SOLD HERE. Of course it's fresh, we're on the ocean. Of course it's for sale, we're not giving it away. Of course it's here, otherwise the sign would be someplace else. The final sign: FISH.
Peggy Noonan
#81. And after you've done the acting, there's a lot of places you can put your input - in the editing, in the production of it, in the rewriting of it and so on.
Paul Reiser
#82. What you write on the page has nothing to do with when you're on set. When you're on set, it has nothing to do with when you're in the editing room. And when you're in the editing room, it has nothing to do with the final movie. You just have to let it go.
Lori Petty
#83. The great thing about doing physical comedy for film is that if it doesn't work you're not exposed. It ends up on the editing room floor, so it gives you a lot more room to experiment I guess. But I really enjoy doing it. I'm very comfortable tapping into my inner idiot.
Isla Fisher
#84. There is anxiety, but it comes after you've finished filming because it's out of your hands; people are editing it, they're cutting it, marketing it. And it's ... part your career sort of rides on that. But when you're actually filming it's a team thing and it really feels good there for me.
Hugh Jackman
#85. He presses his forehead down on the podium and I watched his shoulders shake, and then finally, he said, "Goddamn it, Augustus, editing your own eulogy."
"Don't swear in the Literal Heart of Jesus," Gus said.
John Green
#86. 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.
Chris Pratt
#87. The hunger for knowing is what excites me. I get to geek out about editing, be on set, give notes to writers - I love it all.
Sue Naegle
#89. When you're directing, you see your ideas. You see them created right in front of you on the monitor and the sound stage. You get that experience all over again when you get into the editing room and you start playing with it.
Christopher Gorham
#90. Art, it seems to me, should simplify finding what conventions of form and what detail one can do without and yet preserve the spirit of the whole - so that all that one has suppressed and cut away is there to the reader's consciousness as much as if it were in type on the page.
Willa Cather
#91. Certainly it's very difficult to keep momentum going through a film which has as many characters as this does, and the piece took on a life of its own to try and shape it. That took all the time we had in editing.
John Crowley
#92. There's no point in writing my kind of stuff, when they're printing that kind of stuff. So I gave up and started drinking.
Charles Bukowski
#93. Sometimes a fresh perspective is all you need to get a second wind on the revision process. Try viewing your material on a different medium; it will shed a new light on the inconsistencies in the dark.
V.S. Watson
#94. Editing is very satisfying process. You spend hours working on something and then you get to watch it. It's immediately satisfying where everything else is just kind of waiting and waiting and waiting.
Shane Carruth
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