Weighing the Value of Director's Cuts | Scanline

Citizen Kane as a film many scholars will tell you is the greatest of all time and some of them have even seen it so they must mean business it was genuinely quite revolutionary it's credited with inventing or at least popularizing many cinematic techniques that are still used today including the jump scare everybody remembers that one scene we suddenly cut to a cockatoo screeching just before it was to wake up the audience it's a sense the entire significance of the cockatoo and a lot of it really holds up what's weird is you expect it to be a stuffy old thing vintage and prestigious and made for the amusement of old timey people who don't think like we do today but it can get properly funny and energetic at times hot take just put this out there Citizen Kane pretty good movie it was the feature film debut of writer director and wine salesman Orson Welles even while it was being made Kane was something of a rarity despite being made by a first-time director the production company he was under contract with RKO Pictures the studio famously behind King Kong and Citizen Kane had given Welles Final Cut privilege this is a movie term referring to who gets final say over the film that actually gets sent to theaters this is a level of artistic control not normally given to first-time directors if a director doesn't have this privilege the executives and producers at the company often make their own changes for commercial personal or other reasons and can override the creator's wishes for their work wells used final cut to make a film seen by many nerd betas as the greatest ever when Welles next film with the same studio the Magnificent Ambersons had mixed test screenings Welles made small changes but remained confident the work was good and would be received better on a full release however RKO felt otherwise and due to various contract negotiations Welles had given up final cut privileges while Welles was working on another film in Brazil RKO made extensive edits to the film including re shooting the ending to be completely different and cut 40 minutes out in Welles own words what's left is only the first six reels my whole third act is lost because of all of the hysterical tinkering that went on and it was genuinely lost - to save space in the Film Archives the removed segments the film were destroyed the creators ideal version of the Magnificent Ambersons is gone forever the released version of Ambersons is regarded by all for people who've seen it as one of the best films ever and perhaps even better than Citizen Kane but that only makes the whole thing more horrible we can only imagine what it could have been this was the beginning of Welles long fight for creative control over his projects a fight he seemed to lose most of the time Welles went on to make lots of other films during his career and some of them are still really good but in many ways a lot of them were never truly his Welles was open about things he wished he'd done differently or more ideal versions of his films he even considered doing a new ending of Magnificent Ambersons 30 years later with the surviving actors but these truer versions of his films never surfaced Welles I argue was ahead of his time here what he was yearning to do was make directors cuts in the modern era the idea that a film will get a director's cut is almost taken for granted in fact it's so widely accepted that the director's cut is the most authentic version of a film that some fans of the DC superhero movies are asking specifically for a Schneider cut of Justice League under the impression that this would inherently be the better version of the film than the version that some other later director would have made tens of thousands of dollars have been raised for charities in the process of fans demonstrating their desire to Warner Brothers now I quite like a lot of Zack Snyder's films myself the first step is admitting have a problem and I'd love to see his version of Justice League and also unsee the version that Joss Whedon witty dialogue to himself all over but I can't help but notice that we seem to now be living in an age where you can't just dislike a film and move on with your life it's an opportunity to become even more engaged to give even more of your time to something you didn't even like in the hopes of getting a newer better version so how did we get here and our directors cuts all that different that much of the time or isn't it somewhat bizarre to expect a director to relive a finished work in order to make a slightly better version of something that was already completed and released and as a director really the main authority on the most ideal version of a work let's look at let's look at some examples of Directors cuts and how they're different from the originals and if they're actually that much better and just generally go on an adventure of discovery for what all this means for how we think about art in the modern era that's pretty good doesn't it welcome back to scanline put succinctly a director's cut is a version of a motion picture that is edited according to the directors wishes and that usually includes scenes cut from the version created for general distribution wikipedia says Blade Runner was the first film to ever use the phrasing director's cut in marketing but but the page doesn't actually cite a source to confirm this so thanks Wikipedia excellent excellent work there as the questions of creative control grow increasingly culturally pertinent and profitable it's become more and more common for films to have a second release as a new alternative version one more in line with the director's original wishes a sort of Final Cut privilege in retrospect a shocking amount of films have directors cuts now which gives the impression they serve a creative need that goes unsatisfied in the original process but creative control is more of a vague conceptual idea than a thing whose effects are truly measurable let's look at some tangible examples of differences between cuts and why they can be important we might as well start with Blade Runner since it apparently started all this cite your sources god damn it Ridley Scott's 1982 sci-fi dystopian speculative fiction science fiction film Blade Runner everyone knows or Blade Runner is why am i explaining Blade Runner is a very good movie I think I've heard it's good I've got a copy here in my editing program and I'm skipping through it looking for footage to use and wow it seems great it's got flying cars and a cool gun explores complex questions about personhood and what it even means to be human it's got music it's good there's some eyes in it and some eyes here and here let's get lips talking about seeing things with his eyes and then later he tells this guy but all the stuff he's seen Wow if I didn't know any better I'd say there's some kind of theme going on here foolish Ridley don't you know themes are for book reports get all these images and ideas out of here before you poke someone's eye oh no I'm doing it the movie had mixed reception upon its release to quote Brian Jay Rob's guide to Ridley Scott critical reaction was decidedly mixed the New York Times called it muddled yet mesmerizing Time magazine said the film like it's setting is a beautiful deadly organism that devours life and the Los Angeles Times complained blade crawler might be more like it got him ah [ __ ] him up she led the film while good had some confusing choices and strange problems there's a lot of beautifully subtle storytelling in world building where the viewer is given the chance to think for themselves and pick up on what's happening by paying attention you're not and yet there's this terrible voice over and I'd rather be a killer than a victim and that's exactly what Bryant's threat about little people man the voice-over explains away everything even remotely subtle and it sounds like Harrison Ford is bored out of his mind there's a lot of really beautiful storytelling like when Deckard retires a female replicant and looking at her body feels genuinely awful about what he's done the audience can see plainly what hunting down creatures who were effectively human and have done nothing wrong except one to live longer has done to him but then the voice-over comes in just to make sure you know that's happening just in case you don't like being trusted to think the report would be routine retirement of a replicant which didn't make me feel any better about shooting a woman in the back Oh Deckard feels sympathy I wouldn't have known it's not like there's an actor in the frame showing me or anything by far the worst one is legendary we get this incredible moment of humanity from Roy batty theoretically the antagonist of the movie as his lifespan runs out and he talks about the beauty of all the things he's seen it's one of the greatest moments in film history but hey guess what decides to ruin it I don't know why he saved my life maybe in those last moments he loved life more than he ever had before oh I think that guy liked being alive decade and raychel prepare to escape together and in a very tense moment Deckard finds proof gaff has been in his apartment a calling card of his is left in there then they leave and it's incredibly tense and suspenseful as the doors close and then suddenly after all this to our attention and dystopian storytelling and eternal night and rain and neon BAM upbeat music bright skies clean air Deckard and Rachel are taking a nice drive in the woods and that crappy voiceover tells us actually rachel was a special replicant who doesn't have a built-in death date Tyrell had told me Rachel was no termination date oh sure yeah this ending doesn't feel weird at all in last 30 seconds of the film it all turned out to be okay just a complete whiplash and why is that unicorn there so it was fine really good even but clearly flawed soon after its release there was speculation that the studio had meddled with production I mean that ending is literally just b-roll borrowed from The Shining a so-called work print of the film of not entirely finished version made during the editing process had been shown to test audiences and was speculated to have been significantly different and then edited down and in the early 90s it started being shown in a limited theatrical run branded as a director's cut though Scott had no actual say in this versions release either and publicly disowned this version the work print wasn't a finished version of the film for example it was missing the horrendous voiceover which is obviously a positive thing to miss there are no closing credits and it just ends on the words the end but more importantly it doesn't the end with a horrible story ruining tacked-on happy ending it ends in the elevator with Deckard and Rachel with all the horrible feelings of uncertainty and doom that come with not knowing what happens next and that Rachel probably doesn't have long to live even if gaff spared her the unicorn thing is still weird though I guess gaff is just a quirky guy who likes to spare people and do origami to be fair I'm a pretty big fan of sparing people I even showed Curt mercy even though he showed me no gratitude for it the work print was surprisingly popular and the differences were lauded as positive ones this caused Warner Brothers to begin work on a proper director's cut well not actually a director's cut someone else was put in charge of doing it and Scott just got to provide notes and consult on it Warner Brothers seemed to be banking on the idea of releasing a director's cut and all the ideas of creative freedom that implied to fans and film buffs but not in actually giving the actual director that actual freedom the director's cut is so much better than the original when trying to explain what the differences actually are there on exactly that many major changes if you just list them out largely it's about what's not there anymore there's no voiceovers whatsoever and the happy ending has been removed it's amazing what bigger difference the lack of voiceover has though unless all the actors and performance breathe instead of being told what to think about something they're simply being shown it and expected to think for themselves and that's really powerful hey Shannon yeah okay when you're editing this bit I want it to slowly digitally zoom on my face while I get emotional about how good Blade Runner is and you know we can play like some knockoff tears in rain music we can get Zoey played to do it'll be great it'll be really funny reference Paris I don't I don't think that works in a video essay yeah but I want it and I'm the director yeah well I'm doing a lot of the editing and I might not edit it like that maybe in the final cut of this video 20 years later you can finally achieve your dumb vision oh I get it that's very meta and I mean honestly he's like speaking as your co-writer the parts of the video that you wrote are full of holes in your research like the cockatoo scene in Citizen Kane isn't the first jump scare it was most likely popularized by cat people in 1942 with the Luton bus there's a scene with a bus it's the first-ever like well-known jump scare yeah but it's a funny joke in it and we get to explain the cockatoo and that's pretty good I'd say it's a very light-hearted opening it doesn't have to be completely true now I'm explaining my joke that's been ages convincing myself that bit was funny now it's ruined by the way what happened to the footage of me driving to McDonald's for 15 minutes and talking about how much I loved tapes for the last video did you just take it out am I going to start a petition to release the Harris cutter of the VHS episode of scanline is that really gonna have to happen now you know what forget it I'm cutting this whole part out it interrupts your explanation of the director's cut and honestly it's a little bit indulgent what no you can't do that my own for the indulgent directors intent is being violated you can't just but most importantly and I can't stress enough how cool a change this is midway through the movie while Deckard plays idly on his piano he begins to have a dream and he dreams about a unicorn holy [ __ ] I mean holy [ __ ] what a small simple change and yet the difference is amazing I mean first thing finally someone in the mood based on the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep has someone having a dream in it but more importantly now the origami unicorn gaff leaves behind means something because how could gaff know Deckard's dreams this implies that maybe Deckard is also a replicant who believes he's human with implanted dreams and memories it's still ambiguous obviously I mean maybe gaff also dreams about unicorns humans do don't they this ambiguity to me at least is the point of the film ultimately it doesn't matter whether Deckard is a replicant because he would still be equally a person human in orbit name and it's only in this cut many years after its release that this point really gets to be made and all this stuff is brought up by the simple inclusion of a daydream about a unicorn it's kind of amazing how much a simple change just a couple of seconds of new footage can impact the overall meaning and value of an entire film I think this better than anything else in any other film can demonstrate the sheer power editing can have on a movie quoting here from Rob's book again 10 years later in 1992 with the release of the director's cut the film received the welcome it deserves according to the Washington Post the film is great on every level the poignant screenplay about a man's futile quest for immortality Scott's tremendous direction the incredible futuristic cess designed by Lawrence G Paul Syd Mead and the others the phenomenal special effects and the touching performances especially from how er replicate fighting against the ebbing of his life his swan song is one of the most touching in modern movie history quick aside maybe people would have been more willing to recognize his performance if there hadn't been a [ __ ] voiceover right after it what's interesting about this director's cut though is that it wasn't actually the director's cut it's ironic that one of the most famous examples of a director's cut is not actually a director's cut and studios were already capitalizing on the idea of a director's cut to sell a movie but we'll get back to that later 15 years later there was a final cut of Blade Runner which it was made with Scott finally in complete control it's essentially a version of the director's cut with slightly different editing better effects some changes in collaborating Harrison Ford's son came into shoot a few minor things to make mouth movements that fit the ADR oh and most importantly the shot of the bird flying away at the end finally matches the rest of the [ __ ] scene it took 25 years but we did it everyone it's not really a necessary version of the film but it's nice that Scott finally got to make a version he properly had control over after the success of the director's cut of Blade Runner directors cuts became increasingly common the most famous other example of this is also by Ridley Scott kingdom of heavens original release was very divisive and pretty poorly received overall critics and audiences generally found it unsatisfying often boring and lacking in depth it was so bad that Roger Ebert our film critic from opposite land who says the wrong thing almost all the time because he's a hack gave it three and a half stars out of four and said it was better than gladiator three and a half stars I'm not saying Roger Ebert's taste is questionable but just putting it out there that's the rating you gave to the Phantom Menace okay actually I take it back Roger Ebert's great people are really uncharitable to the Phantom Menace it's actually pretty good kingdom of heaven then got the director's cut released on DVD with 45 minutes of new material which massively expands the story alters the roles of the main characters and turns the film into a genuine masterpiece of historical epicness and flushes out Orlando Bloom's role so much that it transforms into his best ever performance and also frankly his only performance there are hundreds of directors cuts now many of which arguably improved the movie most of them have much less drastic changes than these but it's clear that even small changes can make a big difference and as with the final cut even if there's next to no difference the point is the Creator getting to achieve their vision unsullied by previous meddling that is the point right isn't it well not all alternative cuts of films exist for this reason artistic intent and creative ambition aren't set in stone okay time to get personal as a creator who's got a lot of stuff out there that he can't meaningfully go back and change without releasing it as a whole new thing there are tons of things that I would do differently now in retrospect or mistakes that I genuinely would love to go back and fix when I make youtube videos from my own personal channel I inherently have Final Cut privilege no one can tell me what to do there is no executive producer with any oversight or control and when I work with a sponsor I tell them I'm not gonna make any changes even if they ask and they just are gonna have to live with what I make so basically I am at all times free to unleash my unmitigated creative vision upon the world but what if my unmitigated creative vision isn't perfect the first time around what if I make genuine mistakes or change my mind or couldn't afford to do something or just didn't have the talent to creative the things I visioned that's got to be pretty mitigating right there most of the time directors cuts for me would be things like re-recording voiceover to sound a bit less echoey or a bit less mouths clicky that's sad I hate when I hear myself making that sound it's awful all remove jokes that I realized weren't actually very funny in retrospect or worse are actually casually ablest and I just hadn't noticed all fix that time I accidentally left an arrow at 2% opacity at the top of the screen by accidents that are fully fading it out and it's there for half the [ __ ] video so getting another run at a project isn't always fully about control it's about making improvements that you feel you could do now and a lot of directors cuts are more in line with this way of thinking one director is famous for changing his mind about something after releasing a film that he thought was fine at the time and that direct his name is Paul Thomas Anderson but Magnolia came out it was well received but considered by some to be a little on the long side Anderson defended the decisions he made for his film and seemed pretty happy with it and I was really upfront you know saying it's gonna be three hours and you know they were wonderful and saying okay we're not gonna tell you what to do we'd love it if this was shorter you know but but so just make it as short as you can but the interesting thing about time is it makes you rethink your work a little sometimes this movie at this moment the one that is in the theaters today yeah it's the movie you wanted to make exactly is it the movie you set out to me exactly but if you were given the opportunity to do another cut of it oh I'd slice that thing down it's way too [ __ ] long good oh no it's it's it's unmerciful how long it's no director's cut of Magnolia has been released but it's useful knowing directors might have made their own films differently with the benefit of hindsight even when they defended them at the time Sam Raimi had complete control over evil dared his first film to the point he places the failure of his next film crime wave on there being too much oversight compared to Evil Dead they replaced my actors they threw Bruce Campbell out of the lead they threw out members musician Jolla dukkha they recut the picture they had their own say with the sound effects and mix they did everything they could to make it what it is today dizzy crime wave yeah I saw that movie on an airplane and people still walked out Edie was independently financed largely by whoever Raimi and his friends could get to give them money so they could do whatever they wanted we didn't have nearly the freedom as their first film because investors aren't gonna come on the set Dennis isn't gonna say are you sure that camera angles right but this freedom doesn't mean Raimi was necessarily going to be happy forever with all aspects of the film he made there's a controversial segment in the film where a woman is sexually assaulted by demonic trees the scene is far more gruesome than anything else in the film and it's definitely a contributing factor to it being regarded as one of the video nasties in the UK and getting an nc-17 in the US plus it was banned in other countries with different releases subject to various different cuts over the years in retrospect Raimi isn't happy with that scene and talks about this openly well I think it was unnecessarily gratuitous and a little too brutal and I finally because people were offended in a way that I did my goal is not to offend people it is to entertain thrills scare make them laugh but not to offend them we dread putting in I do I do Pia's Haggard felt precisely the same way about his folk horror film the blood on Satan's claw the rape scene now I think it's probably too strong and it's interesting that I wasn't bothered at the time I think you will find most directors if they get their teeth into our sequence which he's got to be really powerful they become completely seduced and I was seduced by the sheer dramatic power directors have these kinds of regrets or change their minds about stuff all the time although of course no studio has helped them rerelease these films with the sexual-assault cut I guess adding in more unicorns is more important than ameliorating excessive sexual violence on film some directors actually do get to make their ideal changes though the Coen brothers who did some work on the editing of Evil Dead and later worked closely with Raimi on other projects got to do a director's cut of blood simple despite also being in charge of the original cut Blood Simple is awesome it's very different from the rest of their films but not tangibly worse just different it's a very stripped down thriller the director's cut is even more streamlined it's about three minutes shorter no scenes have been outright cut but a lot of shots have been trimmed down in length so the feel is much tighter these changes are very small the director's cut is arguably tighter and better edited but also not different enough that I don't think anyone who didn't like it would like it that much more and I don't think anyone who really likes the movie thinks that much better of it because of this version either I'm reminded here of Orson Welles complaining about hysterical tinkering what exactly was the purpose of all this the film is theoretically better but I find it strange that people would go back to create a slightly better version of something that already existed him was fine now I love the Coen brothers as much as the next pretentious white nerd boy but frankly if there's any evidence that directors cuts are actually a bad idea this is Exhibit A aren't mistakes something we ought to accept rather than hope to eventually see slightly touched up later in one of the many documentaries of our Blade Runner one called all our variant futures a lot of attention is paid to all the mistakes being fixed in the final cut but a lot is also made of the charm of some of the mistakes gaps I color changing things like that and it's clear a lot of thought went into when one mistake is something to be corrected to improve the quality of the work and when other mistakes bring their own character to the film and/or to be left alone aren't all these mistakes part of the film though should an artist be allowed to prepare surely alter their work once it's been handed over to the public in a 1993 article in the journal film comment film scholar and critic Gregg Salman wrote uncertain glory director's cut editions the redemption of an art or the first step on a slippery slope he said viewing film art as perpetually subject to update and correction political or other says something about the director's relationship to their work in a way they redress artistic grievances by treating movies as mere product in this country and an alienable right to change as an artist doesn't extend to changing art and therefore art history rather than artistic deliverance the DC trend represents a significant disturbance of film history and equally important the popular cultural memory of the original audiences even Kitsch merits protection the director's cut means the practical elimination of a film record and that the market valorizes the new to the point that it supplants the old version and despite what the misnomer director's cut implies this movement augers poorly for the rise of the Hollywood auteur there's certainly no amelioration of the compromise between strict studio and enterprising director essential to evaluating their personal commitment to circumvention of studio Philistines in the end the same old commerce here masquerades as the aesthetics of creative freedom the ending to his piece is appropriately dramatic our film culture faces a future in which old movies will not just seem different from how we remembered them they will be the theatrical release is fast becoming a work in progress original version soon will exist only in the fragments of our collective memory then to quote the authority all those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain in a much more recent piece Alex Rosa's autos gone wild why the director's cut often turns into an axe murder in the American scholar from 2010 Rose says directors couldn't leave well enough alone they redressed their early classics in ever gaudy our clothing and attempts to reclaim their youthful imminence since corrupted by years of compromise Rose Cole's direct his cuts and audience saying even the subtleties while peripheral and seemingly innocuous have their effects an extra cut away here a quick reaction shot there and suddenly the gags aren't quite as funny the sex scenes aren't as breathless the fights lose their Drive the dialogue drags just a little more padding and primping and the intangible Gestalt of the original is lost indulgence is a death sentence a reliable antidote however is the adoption of constraints and what other medium would colossal vanity be permitted much less encouraged Solman says typically the commercially successful rather than the artistically worthy enjoy studio benevolence same as it ever was in a reader's response section in a film comment from later in the year Gordon Hale from Philadelphia has a prescient comment on Salman's piece he describes Tom Richardson re-editing Tom Jones then says as films grow older and their copyrights expire both the artists and the money men will have the same incentive to prepare new additions qualifying for new copyrights original versions will then be withdrawn completely new improved editions will abound just like toothpaste and detergent and the example solvent sights will seem like a drop in the bucket so even though I like Blood Simple I really quite like that there is a director's cut of Blood Simple I love the Coen brothers and I'm glad that they have the power to go back and do that if they want it still manages to pose a lot of difficult questions about how much power a director should have over their art and whether or not directors cuts are actually is anti-commercial as they seem to be maybe there's a certain confidence or honesty in not going back in making changes Anderson and Raimi have criticisms of their old films as anyone who gets years to look back on their work or to do but they aren't going back in making changes to things that are already a part of history in order to satisfy those criticisms it's ok to learn and move on for things to not be perfect it may well be that the ability to go back and change something if you want to pose is just as much of a threat to the integrity of art as any meddling studio sometimes the directors changes don't just not make the film any better but they actively make it worse and what director's name springs to mind better than Francis Ford Coppola Apocalypse Now is a really good film and it better be because it took forever to make him would have destroyed Coppola's Coppola 's Coppola's Korea if it hadn't but it was good so it meant Coppola kept his career and was free to go on to make Apocalypse Now is a really good film but in a very interesting way at nearly two-and-a-half hours it's pretty long but the pacing of the movie is so good all the scenes flow so perfectly and the dreamlike descent into madness is so well defined that it's pleasant to sit through you kind of slip into it it doesn't feel it's length at all if you showed me the movie and told me it was 90 minutes I would probably believe you in 2001 Coppola released Apocalypse Now Redax redux Reddick's Redax an extended cut with reworked editing and more scenes at it in this new version is three hours and 22 minutes more content squeezed out of the content to bond to the conveyor belt of cinema yes please Apocalypse Now good film great film arguably a masterpiece Apocalypse Now heretics garbage all say it's [ __ ] terrible when you shoot over a million feet of footage to make your masterpiece which I guess is an achievement it turns out that most of that footage is piss and you probably shouldn't put all of it in the film the additional scenes utterly destroy the pacing of the original so while it's technically only almost an hour longer it feels five hours longer I've seen the red X version twice and both times I had to pause and do something else for a while like take her nap or watch a different better film the long-ass plantation scene adds so little to the film it effectively takes away from it by distracting from what the film had successfully focused on more by being shorter just because some of the stuff in the film is good doesn't mean you can put an entire kitchen off [ __ ] all the tiny scenes of humor or light-hearted escapes from the darkness are washed away by the sheer scope of the thing it just keeps on going and it's boring and drags to the point of being actively painful I slapped my meat too hard against the walls of noice they're all they're all hurting now luckily since it turns out that directors intent is a super malleable concept it appears that Coppola has changed his mind yet again about what his film is supposed to be this year for the 40th anniversary he's releasing the Apocalypse Now Final Cut director's cut number three at this point which is actually 20 minutes shorter than the red X version I'm curious if this version of the film manages to maintain the amazing feel of the original but honestly I doubt it Coppola already made a really good version of his film 40 years ago he had his final cut take it away from him now he's done it was fine I haven't seen this version of the film because I don't care but it is coming to a theater right next to me in September so I basically have no choice to eventually see it and in the director's cut of this video I will put my impressions of the film here and let you know what I thought of it and that video will come out in 20 years or when I hit a million subscribers whichever comes first incidentally years ago when I was talking to one of my many pretentious film friends who I secretly hate I studied documentary production at uni you run into these people as an occupational hazard and I was explaining to her how much I hated Apocalypse Now heretics but then she asked me have you heard about the work print she then went on to explain that there is a leak to work print of the movie which is 5 hours long the 10 minute long song the end by the doors plays in its entirety in the opening in this version of the film what were they thinking was the intent to make a film that long at some point do they think people would watch it were they developing an experimental new torture device don't watch it even if you can find it leaked online somewhere just don't watch it it's not worth stealing this draft of Apocalypse Now much like the actual draft is something that you're morally obliged to dodge so here's an even more evolved version of the Blood Simple problem directors are going back and re re editing their films to try to undo some of the damage they did in the first re-edit the slippery slope was real and one of the best directors ever is actively tumbling down it right now hysterically tinkering with his film again but there's actually an even more egregious example of a director making a silly edit to their film and everyone wanting the original back that's right you all knew it was coming I'm talking about Steven Spielberg et the extra-terrestrial is a pretty good movie but 20 years later Spielberg decided some changes were necessary the kids in this scene are in way too much danger look some of those cops have guns well now in this version they have walkie-talkies phew now the kids are never in any danger as they fly hundreds of feet in the air on [ __ ] bicycle it appears that even steven has gone on to regret this decision or at the very least makes sure the original is still available so this is an example of a director deciding they want something changed going to great technological lengths to get it changed and then having second thoughts this whole directorial freedom to go back and change your films as important thing is starting to look a little bit flimsy in the face of directors making changes that they then decide were bad that's probably an example of a director even worse than this but well whoops oh we're out of time for this episode of scan fine we all want to talk about him it's time to talk about Federico Fellini fine George Lucas George Lucas is amazing and revolutionary science fiction film thx 1138 is an ass-kicking Lee depressing and bizarre prediction of the future that makes some really incisive comments about modern consumerism characters literally by weird plastic shapes just for the joy of having purchased something then throw them in the trash in 1977 George Lucas predicted funkopop the original theatrical version had five minutes taken out against Lucas's wishes after the success of a couple of above-average fantasy films he made a bit later Lucas got to release a restored version with that footage added back in which is nice he got his movie back in line with his vision but then George started deciding that his films couldn't just be brought into accordance with his original vision no they could be retrospectively improved I'm sure you all know about this already but in 2004 George Lucas released the director's cut of thx 1138 I'm doing another fake-out this director's cut adds a bunch of CGI and some new shots and effects it's two minutes longer and it's just kind of needless it's nice that his film got to be properly mastered and restored I guess but the level of meddling were the thing that was really finished decades prior is unnecessary the film doesn't need some more CGI scenes out of in years later it was already great if an old thing has flaws or isn't perfect or you change your mind about it sometimes it's okay to let it go well that about wraps it up for this episode of George mr. Lucas I love your films I love you as a person I love you as a thinker I think you're an amazing man and Star Wars is an absolute blessing I love all of them even the prequels have some great stuff in there my contract with Shannon obliges me not to defend the prequels too hard in a video attached to her name but you know how I feel you've read my emails but come on what were you doing did we really need Han to be marginally less of a scoundrel by making him shoot second and then did we really need him to shoot second while also awkwardly CGI dodging a close-range laser blast did we really need r2 to be hidden slightly more behind the rocks making it a little more believable that he couldn't be seen but making us wonder how we even got in there did we really need to remove a cool scene from Return of the Jedi just to show off the amazing new CGI you could do now did we need this this part looks better on VHS by the way I wonder if someone has done a video about why that would be but come on bro even you think the hand stuff is silly now George I loved your work genuinely and completely but it's on you that it's such a hassle to see the original unedited versions people saw and loved in the theater and that's just not fair even if those versions don't line up with your vision Spielberg did the right thing making sure the versions people loved are still available because movies don't just belong to directors - they're supposed or ters they also belong to culture you can have your version of the movie but the people ought to have theirs I genuinely find you and your work hugely inspirational but the way access to the originals was deliberately obscured by you was really disappointing all these different kinds of director's cut with differing resulting effects well they really complicate all this don't they so yeah Studios mess with films often irrevocably it's nice that sometimes an unmatched vertices artists and audiences have been enamored with the concept of this director's run the risk of falling down a rabbit hole continuously re-editing their work once it's already out like it's in early access or something changing their minds about what their own visions even were and sometimes even helping to obscure the versions people know and love from history worse than this what makes a director an authority on what the film should be directors are a small part of a project the producers writers editors actors artists set designers all these people are so important and valuable on any project that it seems almost rude to pretend the director is the one who should decide what the film they all made is it takes a village to raise a child and the mayor of the village shouldn't get to say that child belongs to them this problem hits me on a personal level in fact the last scanline video did surprisingly well and made it into some lists of best video essays but often it was credited directly to me when scanline is a collaborative show between me and Shannon's true Qi whose name was above mine in the credits we share writing editing and other creative duties she's editing this part right now I'm just doing the voice-over it's really nice that we got recognized for our work but it's our work not mine I'm not trying to call anyone out here but being credited for work that wasn't simply mine makes me a little uncomfortable it's an easy mistake to make the video is posted on my channel where most of the videos are purely my work but I think this misunderstanding is also an extension of how we relate to art right now as products of central individuals and not the many other people who work on something or the surrounding situation that led to it on that note I think what people like is the idea constructed by the concept of directors cuts we like to imagine films as a struggle between true creators and the false moneymen as a battle to realize someone's vision it's a compelling narrative and maybe it's a little true the idea that there's an authentic version of a film is kind of beautiful and that makes the struggle to try and get that version seem almost romantic but this narrative has been repackaged and sold back to us in the form of special editions of Terminator 2 with a couple more scenes and box sets of every version of Blade Runner for us to compare and contrast think about that Warner Brothers are responsible for the theatrical cut and here they are selling us the fixed version of a film that was broken by them we like to think of works as made by one person products of their own vision when nothing is that simple the tears in rain monologue the best part of Blade Runner by far wasn't made by Ridley Scott it wasn't even written by the writer not completely Rutger Hauer modified the monologue the night before making it shorter and feel more human and added the most famous line and then you know I came up with a lion all those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain knowing this the idea that it's all up to some sole creator and their mystical intent only obscures the reality of filmmaking and trains us to desire a purity of vision that's completely unattainable makes us go out and buy more products for the joy of obtaining an even more perfected version of one person's idea even if that idea was bad and keeps changing even more versions and then unbroken versions so that you still have the original and it just goes on and on forever when does the consumption end and the art begin there are no easy answers to questions about art the best I can muster right now is directors cuts are certainly a valid idea and they can arguably improve the quality of a film but this idea is also easily co-opted into the exact same commercialism that necessitated them in the first place the idea that the director is the one person who should have final say on the most ideal version of a work is a highly ideological assumption which says more about how we think about film that it actually says about the medium itself but that's a whole can of worms that we'll have to get into at a later date I guess at some point we should maybe explore what authorship actually is and whether the author is alive or not and what the hell or term means join us on the next scanline when we discuss how meaning is constructed ah great I'm gonna have to read books but if anything what all this examination of cuts seems to relate is the power of editing we've seen just how much very small changes can affect the feel of a whole sequence or the meaning of a story an editor can make a bad film great and a really good film terrible and boring editing is such an important part of the process that some people spend years of their lives or an awful lot of money learning how to do it too much money frankly luckily we here at scanline have put together a functioning simulation of a film school hi Shannon here this cut here where the sound starts first is a great technique for drawing people into your film to do it you just you you you just have the audio start first see it's under the video on the timeline so it looks like a J it's called a J cut so J that's how you do a J cut ok thank you that's film school that'll be $15,000 please if only there was a cheaper way to get someone to share the skills required to learn editing oh well wait hang on Skillshare is an online learning platform for creators if you want to learn how to be an editor don't do what I did and try to teach yourself for 10 years fellow youtuber Jordi van der pute has a car on editing in Adobe Premiere that takes three hours and 22 minutes the exact length of Apocalypse Now Redax and a much better use of your time Jordi's cutting animating and color correcting tips are like the decade I spent teaching it to myself only in fast-forward and actually taught me a couple new things I hadn't realized you could do so easily I'm a little embarrassed about that and better yet it didn't cost an entire college tuition an annual subscription to the entire platform is less than $10 a month but if you click on the link in the description or go to skl SH /h bomber guy you can get two months of free access to these classes and over 25,000 more I talked about time management skills in a video a couple months ago and on that note Thomas Frank productivity master class genuinely improved my life in measurable ways although do you hear this that's my filing cabinet which I have now I used to keep all the invoices for music and art and stuff in a big pile in the corner and leave to-do lists everywhere and now I have a system that actually works and getting things done is much less daunting if stuff like that might be of interest to you once again that link is sk l dot s h / h so ya directors cuts can be good often they aren't francis but on the whole it's clear why this is an aspect of film worth focusing on because as we've seen films really can be greatly altered by even tiny removals or additions cinema is often as much in here as it is on the screen but what we see on the screen with our eyes facilitates our emotions and beliefs and imaginations our collective reverence for alternative cuts reveals our understanding of the power films hold over us by learning just how differently the same idea can be expressed we're learning more about how to express ourselves cinema is a powerful thing because it is an extension of the human soul I've seen things that you people would believe because you've seen them too I've seen the addition of a daydream change how I feel about personhood and my entire understanding of I've seen the addition of more things to something I like transform it into something I hate and I've seen thousands of people criticize a few scant frames of digital puppeteering because the original meant so much to them and I'm glad that none of these moments will ever truly be lost because we have the power to share them with each other thank you for watching and that's what I realize that this guy might like movies [Music] [Music] hi there this video is dedicated to the memory of Rutger Hauer who passed away this year incidentally 2019 is also the year in which Blade Runner was set I found myself wondering which 2019 I'd rather live in but frankly in both there are plenty of people who aren't being treated with the person are they deserve go do something nice for someone today

Channel: hbomberguy

Views: 918,719

Rating: 4.9208488 out of 5

Keywords: hbomb, hbomberguy, shannon strucci, struccimovies, scanline, director's cuts, blade runner, harris bomberguy

Id: D6OT77T7YlE

Length: 49min 7sec (2947 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 31 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Doctor_Myscheerios]

Kingdom of Heaven and Sucker Punch are examples of needing a director's cut because the studio butchered the story. Gladiator is an example of where the director's cut actually ruins the movie pacing.

[u/LowPiezoelectricity1]

great watch. also, insane to me that that awful theatrical cut of blade runner is the only one available on Netflix.