To put it mildly: Editing is the most important part of filmmaking. You can write the most beautiful, perfect script in the world. Something, many things, will be out of your control, and your beautiful, perfect script will change.
Then you will get into the editing room. But in the editing room, that second version of your movie, the one you shot based off that beautiful, perfect script, will morph into yet another form. Hopefully, the story you originally wanted to tell. Wrote a kick-ass funny scene with some wicked dialog. It was fast, it was funny, it rocked. Then we get on set.
I love oners. But thankfully I had the wherewithal to go into closeups on the six leads. Because once I got into the editing room, the scene though funny as a whole, just slowed down the first act, and along with other too-long scenes, pushed the end of the first act to the 40 minute mark. About 12 to 15 minutes too long. If your first act is more than 30 minutes, you film will fail in every way. It will suck. No one will care.
End of story. Which made chopping it up a bit of a task. All through the film, the character of Brad, played to perfection by Brendon Bradley, talks about his rules β rules of sex, rules of friendship, rules of life. List the rules. Actually put in a list. White letters on a black background.
A hundred rules in all. Scrolling past, super fast, with the cheesiest of music. That would allow me to then cut further into the scene. The flow had already been broken. People would be laughing. It would appear seemless. And it so worked. And I was able to cut the 9 plus minute scene down to under 4 minutes. But was this use of the list anything I thought of during the writing process, or during filming?
