We’re back with Dan Lebental, editor of Cowboys & Aliens, Iron Man 1 & 2 and the newly released Thor: The Dark World. In this episode, Dan talks about the one note studio’s always give.
Every movie from the studio’s perspective is ten minutes too long. They’ll always give you that note.
What you don’t often realize is how many scenes end up on “death row” as Dan calls it:
Iron Man was really hard. The first cut was three and a half hours long. There was hard core structural issues to solve. A cave scene that in its first cut was 55 minutes long (turned out to be 25 min in the movie). But a lot of things happen, so how do you squeeze that down into a usable piece.
And possibly the most interesting thing to come out of this interview is how many – or almost all situations – the process of discovery happens during the film making process, even on these huge blockbuster movies. The editor helps to “find” the movie.
People have been telling me the Marvel aesthetic these days – and it usually means super hero mixed with humor – and I can assure you that that did not exist going in. That that was a mixture we all settled on. There were very serious discussions in post production to take out all the humor.
You can also check out Dan in our Tech Bites episode with him as he talks about his non-linear editing system, the Tech Bites, called the Touch Edit.
Selected Filmography
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