Thelma Schoonmaker
Editing is a lot about patience and discipline and just banging away at something, turning off the machine and going home at night because you're frustrated and depressed, and then coming back in the morning to try again.Collection: Patience
I'm not a person who believes in the great difference between women and men as editors. But I do think that quality is key. We're very good at organizing and discipline and patience, and patience is 50 per cent of editing. You have to keep banging away at something until you get it to work. I think women are maybe better at that.Collection: Patience
To receive footage that has been shot with editing in mind, it is a blessing.
It's hard for people to understand editing, I think. It's absolutely like sculpture. You get a big lump of clay, and you have to form it - this raw, unedited, very long footage.
Editing is really like plumbing a good deal of the time. You put two things together, and a current runs through it.
If forced to choose my favourite film, I would have to say 'Raging Bull' because it was the first feature film I worked on, and it was like having pure gold in my hands. But my husband's film 'The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp' is equally a favourite because of its enormous emotional power.
With digital editing, I now can make many, many versions of a scene.
That's the great thing about filmmaking: Things happen you don't know are going to happen at the end.
I don't think enough directors know enough about editing.
In the very beginning, women were editors because they were the people in the lab rolling the film before there was editing. Then when people like D. W. Griffith began editing, they needed the women from the lab to come and splice the film together. Cecil B. DeMille's editor was a woman. Then, when it became a more lucrative job, men moved into it.
Throwing things out is one of the most difficult and important things you ever have to do.
All great directors or anyone who has a strong vision like Scorsese needs to have a lot of support around them. I think from the very beginning - when we met each other - he realised he could trust me to do what was right for his movies.
I love improvisation. I mean, it's hard to edit, because things don't necessarily fall together - you have to find ways to give it a dramatic scope, shape. But it's so much fun.
In 'Casino,' there was this scene where Bob De Niro tape-records Sharon Stone's phone call. Then he asks her about where she's going, and he catches her in a lie. It was a great scene, especially for Bob's work, but we found that, in light of the whole film, it wasn't needed.
When you're in a movie with an audience, you can feel where a film is dragging. People start to move. They fidget. You need that perspective. To give it a cold eye.
As you can imagine, between Michael Powell and Martin Scorsese, I've had quite a rich life!
We do documentaries on the history of cinema in between our feature films.
The studio was very nervous about 'Raging Bull.'
My family goes way back in New York. So I am a New Yorker; I feel like a New Yorker. It's in my bones.
I just happened to see an ad saying 'Willing to train an assistant editor,' and I learned enough from that to go to NYU for just one summer course. That's all that I could afford.
It's part of your job always as an editor: you always have to drop stuff.
In certain fight scenes in 'Raging Bull' - for example, the shorter ones - I literally just took the head and tail of the shot and put it together, and it all worked beautifully.
I can access footage much quicker, yes. But in terms of living with a film and knowing what's right, digital doesn't do that for you.
Boxing is insane and, in my opinion, should be banned.
Scorsese has very defined ideas about how to shoot a scene, and he's an editor himself - we cut together. It means he's constantly thinking about my problems while he's filming.
It's wonderful to work on footage by someone who understands how to get it to cut right, which a lot of directors don't.
I know a lot of editors who are very bitter about the directors they work with. They feel they could have done a better job, and I say to them, 'Oh really? Why don't you go try - it's not easy.'
I love being around great artists, and I've been around a few of them.
The studios are nervous on every movie. It never ends, because Marty's movies are so unusual. He doesn't repeat himself, so they don't know what to expect. We have to fight hard to keep them from being ruined. Film students can't believe that when I tell them, because they think, 'Well, it's Martin Scorsese.'
Cutting improvisation is really hard, because things don't match, and you end up with some bad cuts sometimes. But we'd rather have the bad cuts and the great improv.
My job is so wonderful.
I always thought that's the wonderful thing about filmmaking: people see things differently.
I don't think you can be a great director without knowing a lot about editing.
Ballet dancers really know how to enter a room.
Some young filmmakers, unfortunately, don't have the ability to resist attempts to maybe cut their films down unfairly.
I'm very lucky. Most of my friends wait long times for jobs and also don't get the chance to work on 20 films, like I have, with someone like Scorsese. I love working for him. I just would never - I can't imagine working for anybody else.
There are more women editors than people realise. I think we're more able to keep our eye on what the film needs. Between men, sometimes it's a real ego battle, and that's very bad for the film.
Everybody would like us to make 'Goodfellas' over and over and over again.
'Raging Bull' was staggering to work on. I was well aware of how lucky I was to be in this extraordinary situation. That film is very unique. It stands on its own. It's just burned into the screen.
People expect artists to be too normal, I think. I've been around enough of them now to see that they're very extraordinary human beings who behave differently than ordinary human beings. If they weren't as sensitive as they are, they wouldn't be great artists. They are not the same as us. People should just learn to accept that.
Having been raised overseas, I wanted to become a diplomat. But the State Department thought I was too 'liberal' to be happy with that job.
If I hadn't met Scorsese, I would never have become a filmmaker. He has taught me everything I know about editing and has given me the best job in the world.
I hope films will be somehow preserved and seen by as many people as possible in the future. There are endless treasures for audiences to discover, if only we can keep them from disappearing.
Doing 3D on 'Hugo' was a big learning curve for me, but fun!
Film, if properly cared for, will last almost 100 years, but digital will not.
One of our big tools is screening. We screen usually 12 times, which is much more than most filmmakers do, and we recut in between each one, because we really need to feel how the audience is reacting to the movie.
When we were cutting 'Raging Bull,' Martin Scorsese was watching 'The Films of Hoffmann' on a 16-mm print over and over and over again.
Even though my parents are American, I spent my whole childhood and adolescence abroad.
One day, I read an extremely vague ad looking for someone interested in working in film. Seeing as I loved watching films, I replied, and I found myself working for this guy who did his own personal editing of scenes from Antonioni and Fellini films.
I have a great relationship and the highest respect for Daniel Day-Lewis and Leonardo DiCaprio. But working with De Niro has been simply incredible. While I was editing 'Raging Bull,' I was literally unable to take my eyes off him.