Einstein once said, “Creativity is contagious. Pass it on.”Having your words immortalized is an honour only a few can boast of. Most of them posthumously. With the dawn of the internet, we’ve noticed more anonymous quotes floating around. The silver screen has doled out its fair share of infamous quotes as well.
Quotes delivered in written form and spoken by the famous have etched themselves into our minds and hearts. Though there’s a huge part that occurs before these words even reach the silver screen. This integral part is Video Editing.
There have been great minds in this essential living workforce that have had a fair share to say. Here are some of the coolest video editing quotes we’ve come across!
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30 Best Video Editing Quotes
While there’s no dearth of video editing quotes out there here are some of the most relatable and humorous video editing quotes we could find.
- “I love editing. I think I like it more than any other phase of filmmaking. If I wanted to be frivolous, I might say that everything that precedes editing is merely a way of producing film to edit.” – Stanley Kubrick
- “To receive footage that has been shot with editing in mind, is a blessing.” – Thelma Schoonmaker
- “The process of editing is what I enjoy most – putting the pieces together and making sense out of them.” – Christian Marclay
- “Editing is everything. Cut until you can cut no more.” – Esther Freud
- “I learned directing by editing because I saw all the mistakes I had made.” – Julie Delpy
- “The essence of cinema is editing. It’s the combination of what can be extraordinary images of people during emotional moments, or images in a general sense, put together in a kind of alchemy.”– Francis Ford Coppola
- “The bottom line is that your performance is made in the editing room.”– Brent Sexton
- “I love editing. It’s one of my favourite parts about filmmaking.” – Steven Spielberg
- “The less the camera is able to capture what you’re seeing in a scene, the more editing it needs.”– Tom Anderson
- “I don’t do any research. It’s all about gut. Editing – it’s always about gut.”– Graydon Carter
- “The main thing that I learned from editing is that most people, when they’re making a film, they start too early into the story. They will try to set up the characters, they will try to establish things before the plot actually starts.” – Steven Zaillian
- “Film editing is now something almost everyone can do at a simple level and enjoy it, but to take it to a higher level requires the same dedication and persistence that any art form does.” – Walter Murch
- “Editing is where movies are made or broken. Many a film has been saved and many a film has been ruined in the editing room.” – Joe Dante
- “In editing, it’s amazing how you choose the in and out points. What you cut on is everything for creating tension. It’s amazing how expanding a shot by five seconds can just ruin the tension.” – Sean Durkin
- “The notion of directing a film is the invention of critics – the whole eloquence of cinema is achieved in the editing room.”– Walter Murch
- “I definitely in filmmaking more and more find writing and directing a means to harvest material for editing. It’s all about editing.”– Alexander Payne
- “It’s good to get away from the editing suite. It’s very unhealthy to be sitting in front of the screen for too long.”–Christian Marclay
- “I don’t shoot movies quickly because I get a lot of coverage and a lot of angles, so we have all the pieces in the editing. I do a lot of takes, but it’s because I’m looking for something.”– Nancy Meyers
- “That’s the thing about making a movie: You never finish editing. They just take it away from you.”– Abel Ferrara
- “In the editing room, 20 percent of the time you’re using stuff from before the actor knew the camera was rolling or you’re taking a line from somewhere else and putting it in his mouth.”– Campbell Scott
- “The problems I have with a flawed script are always revealed in the editing room.” – Xavier Dolan
- “I edit as I write and shoot. Any extra line, any pause that I know will get chopped on the editing table is done away with then and there.” – Rajkumar Hirani
- “I always feel like the editing room is like coming into the kitchen. What kind of a meal do you make from there? It can be anything.”–Brit Marling
- “All you’re trying to do in an improvisation is get as much material as possible for the editing room.” – Martin Short
- “Editing is the only process. The shooting is pleasant work. The editing makes the movie, so I spend all my life in editing”– Garry Marshall
- “Reality TV finds talented people. There are no scripts. The editing is what it’s all about. Great editing makes those shows.” – Pete Waterman
- “Particularly in the final stages I always find that I’m rushed. It’s dangerous when you’re rushed in the editing stage, most of my early films are flawed in the cutting.”– Satyajit Ray
- “I’m a big fan of editing and keeping only the interesting bits in.”– Sarah Vowell
- “But I suppose film is distinctive because of its nature, of its being able to cut through time with editing.”– Oliver Stone
- “A lot of the issues of rhythm in film are found in the editing because it’s very rare that any sequence is the sequence that is shot.” – Frederick Wiseman
Conclusion
While we’ve quoted so many noteworthy editors and filmmakers. A quote by famous comedian Mort Sahl will always be my favourite “My life needs editing”. As editors and those not in the profession as well. Wouldn’t it be lovely if we could just edit parts of our lives? Cut out the bad parts, and add music over the good. Maybe even give ourselves a theme song! Fix the bad parts and sharpen the blurry nights. Even without the ability to edit our lives though, sometimes, if we’re lucky we have moments that resemble the lives we see on screen.
