Finally, as the digestive canal is a complex system, a series of separate chemical laboratories, I cut the connections between them in order to investigate the course of phenomena in each particular laboratory; thus I resolved the digestive canal into several separate parts.
— Ivan Pavlov
Most Powerful Final Cut quotations
I think we were the first picture to cut on Final Cut Pro.
So we were the guinea pigs, because we got a deal on the system. But with that comes all sorts of technological problems I couldn't begin to describe.
I would like to have the original ending to my Lord of the Rings instead of the one they released. In my original cut I had the victory at Helm's Deep as the final sequence.
As for the flood carving Grand Canyon, why don't they explain to us why the top of the Canyon is 4,000ft higher than where the river (Colorado River) enters the canyon? Why don't they explain to us how rivers miraculously flowed up-hill for millions of years to finally cut the groove deep enough so they could flow downhill?
Final cut is overrated. Only fools keep insisting on always having the final word. The wise swallow their pride in order to get to the best possible cut.
For the Christian church.... to ignore, euphemize, or otherwise mute the lethal reality of sin is to cut the nerve of the gospel. For the sober truth is that without full disclosure on sin, the gospel of grace becomes impertinent, unnecessary, and finally uninteresting.
For me, the most important word in cinema is the word freedom.
For example, in Europe, we've got freedom, we've got the final cut and that's something which is marvellous.
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.
I was literally living on the edge of life, to the point where I didn't know what was going to happen, not caring, taking chances and finally landing in prison and once there, all my lines were cut.
I often can't remember which scenes are and aren't in the final product, because I saw so many different versions of the Lemony Snicket that I forget which ended up on the cutting-room floor.
It is a tragic hour, that hour when we are finally driven to reckon with ourselves, when every avenue of mental distraction has been cut off and our own life and all its ineffaceable failures closes about us like the walls of that old torture chamber of the Inquisition.
Historically, filmmakers always fall in love with every frame, but now that even neophytes are given final cut, this love affair carries with it serious economic implications.
When the space shuttle's engines cut off, and you're finally in space, in orbit, weightless... I remember unstrapping from my seat, floating over to the window, and that's when I got my first view of Earth. Just a spectacular view, and a chance to see our planet as a planet.
They say now in America that final cut doesn't mean anything.
As Harvey Weinstein said to some film-maker, 'You can have final cut. I'll open your film in Arkansas.'
You seldom get that in film where you're lucky if you get any say at all in the final cut.
I was very disappointed that so much of the work I did on The Haunted Mansion didn't arrive in the final cut.
Maxims in times of danger are useless, experience is incommunicable.
The knotted strands of life, desire, assumptions, and moral codes cannot be unsnarled; they can only be cut, which is what happens when an air raid occurs, with a silencing fortissimo like the finale of a Beethoven symphony.
That was a very different emotion and I felt Dido's words would be good and I had a template with my voice in it. Then, when he heard it, he wanted both our voices together in it and that's the scene when he sees the boy and then he gets charged to go on that final cutting effort.
When you cut human beings down to size, we're really quite simple creatures;
food, shelter, warmth, light, heat and you build it up from there really until you finally go Gucci shoes or whatever it is or whatever your consumer desires are. All those desires are ultimately, they're about gratification.
There are times to cultivate and create, when you nurture your world and give birth to new ideas and ventures. There are times of flourishing and abundance, when life feels in full bloom, energized and expanding. And there are times of fruition, when things come to an end. They have reached their climax and must be harvested before they begin to fade. And finally of course, there are times that are cold, and cutting and empty, times when the spring of new beginnings seems like a distant dream. Those rhythms in life are natural events. They weave into one another as day follows night, bringing, not messages of hope and fear, but messages of how things are.
I like bats much better than bureaucrats.
I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of Admin. The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid dens of crime that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern.
We must take away the government's credit card.
With limits on both tax revenue and borrowing, the Federal government would finally be forced to get serious about spending cuts.
I have ten commandments. The first nine are, thou shalt not bore. The tenth is, thou shalt have right of final cut.
I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of Admin.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid dens of crime that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern. [From the Preface]
But at the same time, never having final cut before, I really learned an interesting thing for any studio executive who is reading this: that if a director has final cut, it's actually easier and more interesting to listen to notes.
As soon as a redwood is cut down or burned, it sends up a crowd of eager, hopeful shoots, which, if allowed to grow, would in a few decades attain a height of a hundred feet, and the strongest of them would finally become giants as great as the original tree.
Particularly in the final stages I always find that I'm rushed.
It's dangerous when you're rushed in the editing stage, most of my early films are flawed in the cutting.
I never watch the dailies. What I usually do is have a look at the rough or final cut, and I just get something from the story. Sometimes I start composing even before the director has shot anything. The dailies don't help me at all.
Giancarlo Giammetti has a lot of nervous energy.
He's a director, really. He was trying to direct the Valentino movie over my shoulder. I don't blame him - that's been his job for 50 years. But I had final cut in the movie by contract and I wouldn't have made the movie if I had not been completely independent.
We had one moment in history where we were disseminating what we now call the Islamic State. That's when we finally cut the deal with the insurgents.
God built the Earth in seven days and seven nights, that's how I'm going to approach doing the album. So when it's time for me to actually finish up the album and do final cuts of everything, I'm going to line it up in seven days and seven nights. I'm going to document it, out the footage out, show people it's not a fluke.
In editing, you really face what the movie is.
When you shoot it, you have this illusion that you're making the masterpieces that you're inspired by. But when you finally edit the movie, the movie is just a movie, so there is always a hint of disappointment, particularly when you see your first cut.
The film [ Wyatt Earp and the Holy Grail] was shot on a KODAK Zi8 camera as well as on multiple camera phones. It was processed using the effects of FINAL CUT X and then edited in FINAL CUT 7.
I was going to be credited as Wray Nerely, my role in Con Man.
It got cut in the reshoots. I was like, "Wait a second. I'm cut." It's a better telling of the story, but unfortunately, Wray Nerely gets cut, which is actually exactly right because if Wray Nerely was ever in Star Wars, he wouldn't make it to the final edit.
Actually, I had a really nice part in that movie [Ladies And Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains]. I mean, I have, like, one second in the final-cut version, where I say "You're fired" to Diane Lane. That's about all you see of me.
