When you’re a movie lover, you know that good movie directors hate the “tests” producers organize with films.
They show the movie privately, in a theater, then the audience has to answer questionnaires.
According to the results, then they cut and alter the movie. That’s horrible, right?
It’s pretty rare that the director has the “Final Cut”…
But this week I’ve been a little surprised by this :
Sydney Pollack, in the bonuses of “The Way We Were”, explains that the movie had a problem after he made a preview. The balance is always hard to find, but here he says that it was a failure. Thus he simply cut a few scenes, like with an axe, and showed it to another room the day after. Big success.
I supposed that if he did this, it’s because he “felt” there was a problem – which came here from the balance between the love story and the political story.
Then I read, in Walter Murch‘s book “In the blink of an eye” (he’s a great film editor – Apocalypse Now), that he was not against film preveiws. I was VERY surprised, but he explains that one should not ask the audience anything after the preview, but day(s) after, in interviews (IRL or phone).
Here’s my tool :
When you have a bold, decided opinion about something “one SHOULD NOT do, ever”, it can be interesting (or at least a game for the mind) to hear people you respect having another opinion. If you listen, you’ll discover subtleties, knacks, and delicious exceptions. After all, there’s one risk : you could expand your knowledge, or at least add a facet to it…
Hmmm, what’s the next step?
Thanks for reading!
a french toolbox 