5 Movies Where The Editing Made All The Difference
With the Academy Awards announcing that they were going to cancel the technical awards (for little things like makeup, music, production design, editing, etc.—i.e. only the stuff that makes characters look good or bad, scores the film, designs the props, and sets, and paces the entire thing into something watchable and so on—minor things, in the Academy’s eyes, it's time to look back on how important something like editing really is.
Patton Oswalt always made the joke that people really love female directors considering how many editors who put together what the men behind the camera shot into something watchable, choosing the best angles and pacing from what they’re given, are women. Beyond that specification, editors in general make or break movies all the time. Without editing, there’d be reels of unconnected tissue, stories without form, characters standing around and lacking context, but nips and tucks can turn a turkey into a classic.
Related: Fans Can Select Films To Be Nominated At This Year’s Academy Awards
The 1975 Spielberg spectacular that cemented his career and launched the blockbuster craze in Hollywood is a film that needs no introduction. Everybody knows the story of three intrepid heroes—the cop, the scholar, and the veteran—that set out to hunt down the giant great white shark terrorizing Amity Island and noshing on its residents during the July 4th holiday. Some film nerds even know of “Bruce” (Spielberg’s working name for the shark puppet, inspired by a lawyer he knew) and how often it broke down.
These breakdowns led to Spielberg using the puppet less than he would have, but he was further encouraged by the film’s editor, Verna Fields, who won an Oscar for her work on the film, by the way, to cut it
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