Deleted Scenes
This essay was originally posted to Twitter between September 19, 2021 and October 1, 2021. It was composed of 1,587 words across 33 tweets.
"When you make a movie, there'll be about 75 to 80 percent of it that's just fine. But there's usually about five scenes that stick out like a sore thumb, that draw attention."
- Quentin Tarantino (heavily edited for length and for Tarantino-isms)
There are misconceptions about what an editor does--that they take out the bad bits, keep the movie from running too long, or (in the case of certain documentaries) deliberately put their footage in a misleading context. While not entirely untrue, this is not the whole story.
Just as with written and spoken language, movie editing relies on a sort of grammar. Some movies--for example, The Bourne Supremacy (Greengrass, 2004)--deliberately break those rules. The chaotic effect that many viewers ascribed to fast editing was mostly disordered editing.
SUPERMAN is edited in a classical fashion, following the rules of movie editing grammar to a T. At the helm was editor Stuart Baird, a longtime collaborator of Richard Donner's (1976's The Omen, for example) and a producer and director of action/adventure movies in his own right.
Movies, even ones that rigidly stick to the script, generate many times more footage than will end up in the finished product. This is because it typically takes at least a few takes to get each shot right, and each shot most likely runs long at both the beginning and end.
That's to say nothing of movie productions that allow for moments of spontaneity--whether it's the actors improvising, the crew playing around with camera placement, trying out different ways of blocking the scene (the path the actors take as they move around the set), and so on.
The editor's job isn't so much figuring out what to leave out--after all, a majority of it is getting left out--as it is figuring out what to put in. Which version of each shot, the precise moment each shot should start and end, and how one shot should connect to the next.
This has to be done for every shot. And most movies, aside from outliers like Rope (Hitchcock, 1948), contain over a thousand shots. The editor has to have a good sense of the rhythm and flow that they're creating, and a vision of how the complete movie will turn out.
Proper editing is harder than it seems. Remember, there is no movie yet---nothing for the editor to check their work against, to see whether or not thousands of second-by-second creative decisions are turning out the way they'd hoped. In the early stages, it's an act of faith.
Eventually, the editor will complete the rough cut of the movie. The rough cut is the earliest version of the movie, where the shots are more or less in sequence, there's a reasonably good selection of takes, and the editor can finally see what works and what doesn't.
Inevitably, the rough cut will be worked and reworked into a version of the movie that is close to finalized--and by then, as described by the Tarantino quote above, the editor and the director can figure out if there are any proverbial "bad" scenes that don't belong in the film.
This is a balancing act. It isn't just a matter of individual scenes working or not. A scene that's perfectly good on its own may bog down the pace or contribute nothing to the story. Or it may be unspectacular on its own, but can nevertheless be integral to the whole movie.
In SUPERMAN, there were a dozen segments that did not survive the journey from the rough cut to the version of the movie that ultimately ended up in theaters. Many of them were small pieces taken out of scenes that did end up in the movie, but five of them were full scenes.
1. An additional conversation between Jor-El and the council.
2. A conversation between Jor-El and adult Superman.
3. A conversation between Luthor and Miss Teschmacher.
4. Superman walking through a gauntlet of obstacles.
5. A follow-up to the Luthor/Teschmacher scene.
In detail: The conversation between Jor-El and the council takes place immediately before their argument about the planet exploding. It's mostly backstory that, while interesting as a matter of trivia, doesn't contribute anything necessary and slows the pacing of the movie.
The conversation between Jor-El and Superman is a nice moment between father and son. But, again, there's nothing important to the advancement of the story, and--at over halfway into the running time--it delays the introduction of the villains, which happens in the next scene.
The conversation between Luthor and Miss Teschmacher refers elliptically to "the babies"--dangerous beasts of some kind that Luthor is keeping in a pit in his subway lair. This is particularly unnecessary, but we'll soon get to an additional reason for cutting it.
The scene of Superman walking the gauntlet of obstacles is a cool one, and perhaps the one that most exemplifies what Tarantino was talking about. It's a great scene, by itself. But we learn nothing new about Luthor or Superman, and it delays Superman's arrival at Luthor's lair.
Finally, the follow-up scene to Luthor and Miss Teschmacher's conversation about "the babies." This scene is supposed to pay off the earlier scene. It shows Luthor dangling Miss Teschmacher above the pit, as revenge for her rescue of Superman and the foiling of his scheme.
Superman saves her, which sets up his apprehension of Luthor and Otis in the final scene. Not only is this unnecessary, but the quality of the flying effects is far below the standard set by the rest of the movie. Since this scene goes, so does the earlier one with "the babies."
There are lots of minute reasons that go into deciding whether a scene gets removed by the final edit of the movie. But, in a general sense, it usually comes down to the same stuff over and over again: it doesn't contribute anything important, and it delays a scene that does.
This is where the editor's sensitivity to the rhythms and pacing of the movie comes into play. The movie has to flow like music. If there's something in there that doesn't belong, you can feel it in your own sense of rhythm--something isn't right, something is jarring you.
An excellent example of a movie that doesn't flow well is that other Supeman origin movie, Man of Steel (Snyder, 2013). Many people who saw the movie complained that the fight sequence between Superman and General Zod towards the end felt overlong and unnecessarily violent.
In my opinion--amateur though it may be--if this sequence been a more organic part of the structure of the movie, it wouldn't have caused nearly as much controversy. But the movie had already telegraphed that it was about to end. Thus, the fight feels tacked on and gratuitous.
The concept of a movie that is tightly contained, built on a structure that doesn't sprawl outward with sequel and spinoff hooks in every direction, may seem foreign to an audience accustomed to extended universes. But they all used to be made that way, once upon a time.
P.S. For completism, the full Tarantino quote:
"Now, what we're going to show you is some clips that were taken out of the movie. Now, there's a lot of laserdiscs where, like, the director kind of redoes things and puts scenes back in the movie that he took out, and whatever...
...And they have these like new 'definitive directors editions.' Now, I didn't do that on this, because I made the movie I wanted to make the first time! But I still had scenes that I took out, all right, that I really like and everything, but, you know, the film...
...You can have too much of a good thing. So we took them out. And now, I'm not putting them back in the movie, because the movie's supposed to be--but here, in this [deleted scenes] section, just if you're fans of the movie, you can look at them and just see them for yourself.
Now, it's really kind of interesting, actually, when you make a movie, because there'll be about, you know, 75 to almost 80 percent of it, alright, it's just fine. And the people you're making it with, everyone likes it, but there's usually about like five scenes...
...That kind of stick out from the movie, sort of like a sore thumb, that kind of draw attention. And everyone's like, 'Oh do we need this scene, do we need that scene, that it, uh, I don't know, I don't know about this thing, I know about that scene.' So you're always like...
...Arguing about, like, five scenes. Now, the thing is, some of them--yes, they stick out, but they're supposed to stick. You know, that's supposed to be how it is, and some of them stick out and they should, alright. And so the whole thing is trying to decide...
...You know, like Paul Newman says in Color of Money. 'You know when to say yes when it's time to say yes and no when it's time to say no, everyone goes home in a Cadillac.' So that's the thing here, you've got to figure out, as the director...
...Which scenes do you want to keep just because you liked them, and which scenes you're actually right about, that, yes, maybe they do call attention to themselves, but they should."
- Quentin Tarantino, Pulp Fiction - Criterion Special Edition
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Published 3/9/2024
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