Someone once said:

a project is never finished . It just stops when time or money has run out.

Each and every project. I've gone back and tweaked a music vid from two years ago because something bugged me bad enough. Like he said, it's never finished.

- Ray

www.undergroundplanet.com

Since time is not one of my requirements, I go over & over each section hundreds of times then over the total project many times. Some parts that end up being cut are like pulling teeth, cutting off arms and legs, etc. because those parts just don't flow right. An editor has no problem cutting these parts but a Cameraman/editor just lets these parts linger around hoping for a miracle and then in the end they get cut anyway. I will also burn version 1 and by version 5 it is usually right after viewing it from my chair by the living room tv. Of course those are my standards which probably are not even close to the quality of the people's standards on this forum.

JJK

Of course the flip side can be true - You can have the project looking pretty good, and then the client wants to get there licks in...

Unfortunately every project contains flaws. That's why the Internet Movie site has "goofs" as a subheading. The editor is in a nice position of being able to revisit decisions and make improvements (within the limitations of available material). But the editor views the material so often that you can cease to see what's actually there. You might, for example, reorder shots because the action flows a little better but commit a continuity mistake because you've stopped really looking at the detail. Happens all the time with simple things like misspelt titles -- you know what's meant to be there. Taking a break of a few days helps you to see the stuff more freshly and of course previewing to others.
I released a DVD of a small boat sailing regatta where in the closing sequence of skippers derigging I had one boat with sail down/sail up/sail down which stood out as a glaring continuity error. In cutting that I'd been concentrating on a smooth sequence of MCU/CU/wide etc and got caught by over-familiarity. Why didn't I see this in previews? Unanswerable question, but at that point the closing music was just coming in and the end titles approaching and I was checking the overall effect rather than any detail in the clips. Of course some months later, when seeing it again with some boating guys, suddenly that rotten cut leapt out at me. Yes, they said, that always amuses us. What did I do? Nothing -- it was out there. Be more careful in future!

Sami has it right, if you can put it away for a time, and then look at it in a week or two. Sometimes you can spend to much time on a
project and just not really see it any more. I just came back to a small project after a few weeks work on another one and it looked better than I rembered it looking. I just got burnedout working on it for so long.

Terry

"An artists work is never complete; it just reaches a point where the artist is more or less comfortable abandoning it."

Never, ever completely happy with a released bit of work, and never met anyone who was happy with their own finished works either.
Budget, deadlines, or a need to start the next project usually finish it out for us.

My movie came out on DVD in April and I'm STILL fixing little things that have bugged me in it. Maybe one day there will be a special edition. :-) (Don't count on it though unless someone involved with the film becomes really famous and my film becomes a curiosity.) I just wish I knew Vegas as well last year as I do now, that's for sure.

Fred

Yes Fred, I'm exactly the same as you.

I think if you're the actual artist as well as editor/producer then you're more likely to be over-precious about the work. But that's better than being sloppy.

My DVD is now on the 5th version of what you might call "release candidates" and even yesterday I found a couple of mistakes in the subtitles. I just know I won't be able to stop myself making a version 6, even though almost nobody else will ever notice the mistakes. I'm still not 100% happy with my voiceover too, but there comes a time when you just have to move on.

Nick

Nick, indeed I wouldn't find 5 pre-release versions at all excessive. There are a lot of subtle edits (like bringing in an audio effect/music a few frames earlier) that can keep you going for a long time. Very likely nobody in your general audience will be able to nominate these differences but subliminally they're important. They're fresher to me on the big screen, so I render out, cut a DVD and project it, and of course find little things that I want to modify. I never find them all at once. I'm now projecting from the HD, but that only saves cutting and throwing away the DVD.

"I think if you're the actual artist . . . to be over-precious about the work." . . Well, I think this is nearly there . . .

"I just know I won't be able to stop myself making a version 6, . . ." Yup, this is survival and evolution kickin' in! Yah just can't beat it.

" . . but there comes a time when you just have to move on." . . This is the thing. Trying NOT to be too morbid, this has to be a reflection of my own life and ultimate demise. Serious stuff this.

Each day I stumble on some new "reality" within my work; each time I see the options for more possibilities from my experiential struggles; each time I perform a "trick" that makes a difference to the piece I get a rush of reality. Y'know what? It is all, all transient - and I know it.

For me a project is only, and can ONLY be, a snapshot as to where my creativity is AT that fixed moment in time. Trouble is, time aint fixed, it just don't stand still. The next project will provide me with further challenges and opportunities - and off I go again - and obsessive-like I stumble into working on the next piece.

We are all artists - and like artists we need to sketch and scribble ideas and keep on doing this every day. Just because we have a/THE project in front of us - the one that pays the bills, yeah? - we should allow ourselves the permission to keep on editing. Trouble is that this means it could never be finished! And the bills wont get paid. .. My solution is to always, ALWAYS have many projects - this is MY sketch book - open and ready for scribbling on and sketching over. Those who know me, and haven't lost patience with me, yet, I send them mini 10, 20 second or 2/4/6 mins shorties . . all this for me keeps my interest alive. Oh yeah, coming here and listening and responding too . . . .


Best regards, friends . . .

Grazie

professional jobs end with the cheque. they get the best i can give at/during the time we're working on the production.

my own - i usually do what i think is the best, put it on the shelf for AT LEAST three weeks, and try not to think about it during that time. then look at it again, with the thought that any 'adjustments' will be WITHOUT reshooting, and managable within a couple of working days.

in general, it's not in my nature to pick at scabs (well, not since i passed 50), i give projects my best shot at the time, learn during the production, and carry on 'new' ideas into the next.

leslie

All of this is good advice and much if not all of it I do all the time but I wonder if this is perhaps such a good idea.
I mean is the aim to make something better or is the aim to get better at doing it. Do painters go back over works they painted 20 years ago to make it better or do they just treat it as something from back then.
Of the way too few bits of actual editing I've done by far the best was when I've had the client there with me and I had to make on the spot decisions with no chance of revision, he was leaving with the finished product that day. Those few efforts I still consider to be my best work, they were all done on gut instinct and somehow when I stopped thinking and just 'did' the results were way better than when I've tried to think it through, plan it all out and revise the thing over and over.
Maybe the better approach is to think of what we do like we're concert pianists, no point crying over a bum note, just hope to grow better and hit a few less clangers next time.
Bob.

I agree that it helps to put the finished project aside for a week or so and then come back to it. Invariably I will say to myself "What was I thinking?" at some point and do a slight remix of the audio levels, or something.

I also notice that it never fails that, no matter how many times I proofread the closing credits, I will either misspell someone's name or forget a name entirely.

"Movies are never finished, they're abandoned."

Steven Spielberg

What you describe is an essential part of the creative soul. If you are managing a project with many people involved, it can wreck havoc. In particular, engineers are never satisfied with their code, and after the project is released, they want to go back to the beginning and start all over again so they can "do it right." Once in awhile a spineless engineering manager will actually convince management to do this. What inevitably happens is that they cure every one of the original mistakes, but make twice as many new ones, causing even greater headaches.

Moral of the story: Learn from your mistakes; build on what you've done; but don't ever go back. Always move forward.

Well in all these responses you get a global view of approaches to movie production. Editing is an intuitive business and different editors will cut the same material differently. Obviously a lot depends on the nature of the production. There are simple jobs that need to be cut and finished quickly and there are complex ones involving a lot more than just cutting. Large productions go through just the sort of iterations that have been mentioned, whereas the nightly news items are briefly in edit. Although Royce (of Rolls Royce) once sacked an engineer for saying "that's close enough", mostly jobs have to finish because it is good enough for the time & money & material available.
John, as for rewriting computer code, I think we're currently on version 6c of Vegas, and I believe it's getting better.
A book that some people might find interesting is: Vincent LoBrutto; "Selected Takes -- Film Editors on Editing" (Praeger, 1991).