Re: Edit Times

[Mark Suszko] "Walter Murch says that on a good day, they made one edit per day. "

That's not exactly what he said. As I remember, he said that if you took the number of cuts in the movie, divided it by the number of days in post, it came out to around one cut a day in the FINAL film. The "cut a day" figure doesn't account for are all of the "dead ends" that they went down, scenes that never made it to the final print. If you've ever seen "Redux" you know that there were plenty of scenes that were cut, but didn't make it to the final movie.

The misnomer is that he sat around pondering just a single edit all day. That's not how it works. It's more like try this, try that, try this again. It's all about changing your mind.

So, to answer the original question: I always say, I can cut as fast as you can change your mind. Also, keep in mind the approvals process. If YOU are the final say, then great, you're done. If you need to submit to executives for approval... that can take days. Make sure that you're on the clock while waiting for them to decide.

Mark