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Deleting scenes to get theatrical run time down


Guest El Chalupacabra
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Guest El Chalupacabra

This is more of a question for anyone who can answer (and a serious one at that), but also open to general discussion, but when a movie has vital scenes or important information deleted to get the theatrical run time down, doesn't that indicate an issue with writing in the first place? It's possibly even indication of just making a flawed movie altogether? Now, I am not talking about insignificant scenes, or scenes that are later determined to not add anything to the story, or even are cut to help the pacing move better. I am talking about scenes with vital information. course, some Star Wars movies come to mind (I don't want to dwell on star wars specifically), but one could cite Batman V Superman or Suicide Squad as examples of this. Alien 3 comes to mind, as well, and I am sure I could spend all day citing one movie after another. But seriously, why aren't issues like this taken care of in pre-production, when the script is written and goes through an approval process? Why go to the trouble of writing a film, getting it approved, then filming it, then editing it, then finally cutting said scene just to save 2 minutes or less, especially when it contains dialogue or actions that better explain, why events or characters have motives? Isn't it easier to simply leave the scene in, and NOT have to explain what happened in a press release later?

 

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Sadly, writing a script and having it come out exactly as written rarely happens, for a wide variety of reasons.

 

I'll use my personal experience. For Leatherface I wrote 3 drafts. The first was all me. The second had the directors notes, which tweaked some things, mostly a new 3rd act and ending. The second draft was the one that went into pre-production. At this stage the budget is determined, sets are designed, actors are cast, and every other little thing comes together. Usually in here there will be a production draft as things shore up-- something that can't be afforded or secured for example.

 

In my case, I had originally set the 3rd act back at the hospital from the beginning. Turns out, they could only shoot there for a few days. At the same time, they were trying to justify rebuilding the farm from the first movie even though it was only in a handful of scenes. So I moved the 3rd act to the farm. It worked, but a lot of scenes got cut to make it work. This happened before shooting, so it was no big deal-- but sometimes these things happen during production. When you have to pivot, you change things-- and again, since movies scenes are not shot in order, you might have several scenes setting up one set-piece that have to get cut when that set-piece turns into something else.

 

I had several scenes written that didn't get shot because they started to run out of time and money. They were small scenes that added character and flavor, but were not essential to the plot, so they were dropped.

 

The deleted scenes on the Leatherface BlueRay in my opinion SHOULD be in the movie. The distributor cut them out because they didn't like the movie that was delivered. The sad truth is, at the end of the day, some studio VP will deice he knows best. We delivered a movie that was an arthouse spatter film with a decent character story. Lion's Gate didn't like that-- they wanted a jump-scare filled flashy movie with more gore because "that's what horror fans like" and they did reshoots to accommodate that. When that bumped up the run-time (another sin to these people) they cut the slower character beats. Did it make things more confusing and obfuscate character motivations-- yup. But they did not care. "Horror fans don't care about that stuff."

 

There's a few other reasons you could lose things... I've directed a couple shorts that I had written myself. At the script phase, I would look at the page and think "This is it, there's no other way I can do this." Then you get on set, and you realize an actor can get to the point of an entire page of dialog by emoting the right way. Movies are a visual medium that start as written-- there's always things that you don't see until you're on set. A lot of times a plot point or beat is nailed in a scene so well that you realize the next scene isn't needed. Since you don't shoot in order, that scene could have already been shot-- but would end up cut from the final cut.

 

The general rule of thumb is one page of a script equals one minute of screentime. That doesn't always work out. One example I can think of-- in Phantom Menace there's a bit when Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon and Jar Jar first arrive at Theed. There's a deleted scene of them getting out of the sub, shooting a grapple line, and climbing to shore. I just typed the action in one line. But that was 3 days to shoot and the end cut was a couple minutes and Lucas realized he didn't need it. (I could get into Lucas being an inefficient writer, but I won't).

 

Most every deleted scene you see as an extra feature will usua;l;ly be the result of cutting for run time or because there was a pivot that made a scene unneeded. If needed information was in a cut scene, the distributor simply does not care. It is such a problem that this is why we get director's cuts-- because the final cuts are generally made by people not involved with the creative.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

Thank you for answering in such great detail, Tank. Very much appreciated. I have a follow up question...what exactly is the "magic number" of minutes that movies need to get down to for theatrical release, and why does that seem to vary? Like why does Star Wars TLJ have to be cut down to 2.5 hours, but movies like Schindler's List or others are okayed by studios to remain 3+ hours? Does it depend on the genre of movie, like action/adventure/fantasy/sci fi are limited to by one run time, and dramas can be longer?

 

More of a comment, I so wish that when movies are released on disk or digitally, that more movies would be more interactive, which allow you to reinsert deleted scenes during playback a la cart, or even choose which movie cut to watch (I know that has been done by some for years, just wish it was done more). Star Wars would benefit from that especially since it can vary down to the fan which scene is accepted or not. When viewing at home, there is no need to worry about run time.

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Like why does Star Wars TLJ have to be cut down to 2.5 hours, but movies like Schindler's List or others are okayed by studios to remain 3+ hours?

 

Just answering specifically. If I recall, they let Spielberg do Schindler's List because he agreed to do Jurassic Park first. No one was really expecting Schindler's List to become a success and Spielberg said that it was a movie worth losing money over. On top of that, Jurassic Park was becoming the biggest cinema phenomenon since E.T. during the editing process, so they basically let him do what he wanted with it and hoped it would rack up awards.

 

Star Wars, on the other hand, has a primary goal of putting butts in seats, propagating the franchise, and selling stuff. To do that, you want the audience engaged, happy, and out the door with a smile on their face while you set up for the next showing. It's probably safer to quickly get to the end than it is to bore people.

 

Not that it's much of a problem. Honestly, I wouldn't mind it if films were 15-20 minutes shorter on average.

 

 

 

Star Wars would benefit from that especially since it can vary down to the fan which scene is accepted or not. When viewing at home, there is no need to worry about run time.

 

Years ago, I had an idea that they could sell the Special Edition by creating your own personal supercut. Instead of choosing between SE and original, you could choose if you wanted to keep Ian McDiarmid in ESB or dump Jabba in ANH. It'd probably be impossible though with the changes in the score and such.

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I have a follow up question...what exactly is the "magic number" of minutes that movies need to get down to for theatrical release, and why does that seem to vary? Like why does Star Wars TLJ have to be cut down to 2.5 hours, but movies like Schindler's List or others are okayed by studios to remain 3+ hours? Does it depend on the genre of movie, like action/adventure/fantasy/sci fi are limited to by one run time, and dramas can be longer?

To be honest, at this stage a movie's run time is an end result of a lot of out-dated ideas and rules, but ultimately comes down to a fight between the director, the studio, and the distributor.

 

And like everything else, it's ultimately about money.

 

One big factor in the equation goes back to how movies were presented up until this decade. For most of cinema history, a movie came on film reels. When you go to the theater to see a movie it seems like a continuous experience, but in reality, a movie would be divided onto 4-6 reels of film. At the right time (watch for those "cigarette burns" in the corner!) the projectionist would stop one projector and fire up another simultaneously. The movie would bounce between the two projectors as sequential reels were swapped out.

 

One reel holds about 22 minutes of film. This alone defined why most movies are between 88 and 132 minutes. That's been the standard for pretty much ever, and it's what our viewing habits are based on. When TV came along and began to form its programming blocks into half hour segments it was following the same idea, using between one and two reels per program.

 

Screenwriting 101 says a script should never be less than 88 pages, and 120 at the absolute most. Most people won't read a script that's longer than 120 pages unless its coming from somebody who's won an Oscar.

 

So let's say we have a movie, it's on film, it's in the can, it's pre 2005, and we need to distribute it. To do that, we need to make copies of the movie and ship it out to theaters. Pretend numbers-- say to dupe, print, and ship one reel of film costs ten dollars. An 88 minute film will take four reels, so that's $40. Say the movie is 120 minutes, that will need six reels, so it will cost $60.

 

Now say you have to send it to 1000 theaters nation-wide. That $20 difference in reels adds up to $20k in cost. So it's obviously cheaper to distribute a shorter film.

 

Consider also that if a theater is open for 12 hours in a day, they could show an 90 minute movie eight times in a day. A two hour movie would only screen six times. Use some math with its total time at the theater and ticket prices, in theory, a shorter movie potentially makes more money (not figuring in if the movie is any good of course).

 

Knowing all this from the start, a studio often won't even greenlight a movie unless they know it will be under a certain time. It goes without saying that every day a production runs it's costing a ton of money. a shorter movie takes less time to make, so is CHEAPER to make.

 

This logic carries through most of cinema history. It's while you'll see any genre, b-level, or lower budget film generally be under and hour and a half, the major releases around two hours, and only the big award-bait epic grand sweeping movies timing out longer than two hours.

 

This is basically how the standard times were established. A director will always fight to get the story right and doesn't give a damn about run time, a distributor wants a very exact time for programming it's viewing so they can forecast the money situation, a studio always has to play the middle and negotiate between the two.

 

So depending on the genre, the studio, the talent involved, and who is distributing it, run time becomes a constant negotiation that weighs all these factors. The end result being, despite all this precision, run times still wildly vary. A Speilberg movie starring Tom Hanks will likely be Oscar bait and make bank, so no one is going to slap a time limit on Uncle Steven. A first time director with unknown talent-- that's going to be a penny-pinched and the studio will lay down exact what it wants delivered.

 

The ironic part is that technically, run times and reels are no longer really an issue technically. Everything is distributed digitally these days-- even if it's from Spielberg, Nolan, or Tarrantino, the only 3 guys still using film, it still gets to theaters on a hard drive.

 

This time-calculating has become so engrained that despite TVs shift from film, to video, to digital, and cinema's shift from film to digital, that those basic timeparts are still the gold standard because it is what TV outlets and movie theaters have programmed us to live by.

 

Viewing habits have been gamed and programmed into us for our entire lives.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

I don't know if I want Star Wars to become one of those "Choose Your Adventure" books.

What I am saying is for people who've already seen the movie, it would be a nice feature. For people who haven't seen the movie, they could still choose from the OG or SE version.

 

But you know, a choose your own adventure Star Wars interactive movie would be pretty awesome. After all, that is what Star Wars video games basically are. I could see that totally working in movie form: at key points, the viewer can select the next action that takes the movie in various directions.

 

...too bad a home release movie like that wouldn't be feasible, unless done through Netflix or something like that. Even still, that would be pretty expensive. It would likely need twice the film footage or more.

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The most mind boggling deletion I've ever seen was the movie Joy Ride. They cut THE ENTIRE THIRD ACT after it was shot, edited, scored, and CGIed. Can you imagine what that cost? It's on the DVD. It just said alternate ending so I clicked on it and it was going and it JUST KEPT GOING for like 25 minutes. LMFAO The punchline? I thought the cut ending was better.

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Oh yeah-- I totally forgot that situation. If a test score is low enough and the studio feels like they can still get a hit out of it, they will reshoot half the damn movie. Then you're basically writing a jigsaw puzzle, trying to interconnect scenes they can't/won't reshoot with new ones on a limited budget.

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