Re-Watch Movies

R

Reggie Brown

Member
Just curious to know, about how many times will a director and/or DP re-watch their feature length movie before they say it's ready to be released? Do they generally watch the movie in parts, or re-watch the whole movie from start to finish? Do they watch one pass and focus on edits, then watch another pass and focus on dialog, then watch another pass and focus on music and sound fx?

I generally shoot short film and music videos and I'll watch them about 5-8 times after I finish with all the editing; so I'm just curious to know how directors do it when they have projects that 1 1/2+ hrs.

Thanks for any feedback!
 
A film/movie director is usually involved in the editing process (sometimes, they can be removed, if the dailies aren't deemed acceptable by the people paying the bills) and the editing can easily take several months, by which time the number of times a director has seen every take of every scene is essentially infinite.
 
How long is a piece of string? There are no fixed rules. Most directors do "all of the above" - they watch in parts, especially when they look at dailies (although there are directors who don't watch dailies, leaving it to the DP and others!), when they edit (not all do, some don't edit at all turning everything over to the editor), and watch the movie in its entirety, multiple times (although there are those directors who feel "done" with a movie after shooting, and have no interest in watching the film). So no 100% rules, but I'd reckon most directors watch multiple times in parts and in whole. Mind you, most directors don't have final cut, so what a director deems "ready to be released" is not the same thing as what you might see in a theater; they may not even be at a particular stage of "ready to be submitted to the studio", as the studio might have its people involved in the editing all along, and in the production, and in pre-production through notes, actor suggestions, budgetary input and so on. Many directors never reach a stage where they say "now it's ready" - it's a process with many decision makers along the line. The ultimate decision about a release is rarely up to the director, instead it's the studio, marketing etc.
 
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