Chatty Hollywood

In Hollywood, there are only a few directors who can get the final editing rights.

The larger the investment scale of the film, the more obvious this situation becomes.

It is the producer who truly has the final say.

This can be said to be the greatest manifestation of Hollywood’s producer-centered system, but specifically, the reasons are actually divided into two aspects -

On the one hand, it is too cruel to let the director, the creator of the film, do the editing.

Many directors treat their films as if they were their own children, and they don't touch them at all.

If you let them edit by themselves, 80% of the time they won’t be willing to cut any scenes, resulting in the final film being too long.

This is obviously not possible.

So they need someone to edit on their behalf.

On the other hand, compared to directors who focus on film shooting, producers who always pay attention to the market have a better understanding of the current audience's tastes.

Through final editing, they can adjust the director's more self-produced works into a finished film that best suits the audience's preferences.

——Or goods.

In this regard, because the information between the two parties is asymmetric, it is difficult for ordinary directors to confront professional producers who study market data every day.

——At least before the movie was released, this was often the case when the two sides were quarreling with each other.

Of course, what we are talking about here are those producers who have truly studied enough market data and thoroughly grasped the laws of the market.

As for how many such big producers there are, we can only say that the market is elusive...

In fact, when it comes to whose opinions are more in line with the market, many people actually talk on paper. In the end, what really determines the direction of editing is not who is right or wrong, but who has more power.

As a representative of the employer, the producer is certainly more powerful than the director, a senior wage earner.

then……

Counter-examples in this regard are not uncommon, such as the famous "Kingdom of Heaven", which is a typical example of being tricked to death by random cuts by the producers.

In fact, because the producers would cheat from time to time, a special movie version was created——

Director's Cut!

As the name suggests, this is a version edited entirely in accordance with the director's will.

On the surface, this is a form of compensation for directors who do not have editing rights.

In fact, the director's cut was created for the purpose of selling DVDs and videotapes -

For a movie that is successful at the box office, if movie fans hear that there is a different director's cut available, they are likely to pay more out of curiosity.

As for movies that fail at the box office, a director's cut that is different from the premiere version is a great tool for the film studio to recover costs.

At this time, news often comes out that producers cut films indiscriminately regardless of the director's opinions - although this is often true - and this creates a tragic feeling for the directors that their hard work has been wasted.

Therefore, the audience often spends money based on their sympathy for the weak and the curiosity of "Can it be worse than it is now?"

Then, the film studio that was originally losing money may have recovered its costs without even realizing it...

Therefore, many times, producers and directors who compete with each other for the control of the film are actually a pair of double insurances to ensure profitability.

The producer ensures that the director will not go crazy so that he can make a film that meets market demand and makes money.

Once the producer makes a mistake and the film fails at the box office, the director can safely blame the former and then use a director's cut to see if he can turn the tide and recover costs.

However, this latter trick can only be used by some famous directors, such as Ridley Scott - at least "Kingdom of Heaven" did use this method to reduce a lot of losses.

Of course, despite this fact, the directors do not necessarily understand the management's ghostland tactics. They simply hope that the movie will live up to their expectations.

In fact, the director's cut of most movies will receive better reviews than the producer-led release version, but this does not change who owns the final cut.

Because there is something fishy about this kind of praise——

First of all, compared to the theatrical version, the director's cut is usually released on DVD or videotape.

This version does not need to consider grading issues and can add some more impactful shots;

There is no need to consider the length of this version, so there is more time to tell the story clearly.

In addition, when movie fans watch videos and DVDs, they can skip, fast forward and pause, and can take a break at any time, so their sensitivity to duration is much lower than in movie theaters.

——In the cinema, the audience can only watch the movie in one sitting, and it is easy to feel tired. And even if their bodies don't tire, their bladders will.

Secondly, movie fans who watch the director's cut generally have a certain favorable impression of the movie they watch.

This is actually equivalent to screening the audience before watching the movie.

The chosen audience will be more loyal and will naturally receive better evaluations.

As for the last point, it can really be said to be cheating——

Just think about when the Director’s Cut came out!

Generally, DVDs or video tapes appear one year after the film is released, and the shortest is three months. During this time, the director can sum up the lessons learned from the released movie and re-edit it.

If this edited version, which stands on the shoulders of its predecessors, doesn't get better reviews, wouldn't it be unreasonable?

Therefore, no matter how well the director's cut is received, it cannot shake the producer's control over the final editing rights.

However, when we arrived in Charlotte, things were different again——

No matter "Fatal Turn" or "Happy Death Day", he does not have the final editing rights in name, but the actual released versions are all edited according to his will.

There are many reasons for this strange situation -

First of all, the producer Mr. Westwood is not very good at editing, so he is given more power.

In order to save costs in the early days of "Fatal Turn", the crew was not even prepared to use an editor.

In the later stages, Mr. Westwood was busy using the Vials Valley series of events for publicity, and in order to meet the deadline, he had to open up editing rights to Charlotte.

By the time of "Happy Death Day", Mr. Westwood already had more trust in Charlotte.

As for Jodie Foster, the other second producer who could dictate the editing, she had to obey him because of the painting incident...

The above situation led to the fact that in the two films, Charlotte clearly did not have the final editing rights, but actually controlled the editing.

However, this good thing will probably no longer exist in "Sleepy Hollow".

Because based on Charlotte's memories of the original world, the production cost of this movie was $65 million. Even if this is not a super-large production, it is still an ordinary large-scale production.

With this level of investment, will investors trust Charlotte, a director who has only made two films, and let him edit it?

Even if he is the director, many investors may be very worried.

This is more troublesome.

As a time traveler, Charlotte asked herself that in terms of editing, he would actually be more rational than ordinary directors.

In particular, he had seen the finished film in the original world, which allowed him to stand on the shoulders of "predecessors" when editing, just like those director's cuts...

Therefore, he felt that by taking the lead in editing, he could get better results——

"In the final analysis, a director who doesn't want editing rights is definitely not a good director!"

Charlotte sighed helplessly.

This time he came to Jodie Foster not only to discuss the film itself, but also to get the actress's support on the issue of final editing rights.

To this end, he also specially prepared a trump card——

"If you have this, it should be fine!"

Charlotte thought to herself as she touched the human skin book in her handbag.

PS1; "Director's Cut" is a feature film released in South Korea in 2014. PS2: Originally, I just wanted to briefly introduce the editing issue, but the car suddenly stopped. Sorry, I will give you a popular science chapter.