Day 7 of 20 Cutting a Scene or sequence

   Only 13 days away from the final draft of Slow Fade and yet we still are cutting away entire scenes and sequences. As the writer and director it is very hard to make the choice to remove scenes that you have spent months on perfecting. But it is necessary to remove anything that does not push the story forward or reveal an important truth about your characters. If there is a special edition of the dvd I'll have to break down all of the deleted scenes and why we cut them.
   Today I cut one full scene and a sequence. And although it is hard to cut something that you've spent so much time on it is a sacrifice that will make the movie a better more engaging show.
   The scene that I cut today was removed for two reasons. The first is that some of the elements were not explained enough beforehand so without context they were confusing to the audience. Another reason is that the scene did not push the movie enough forward. The dramatic content was not dynamic enough to justify leaving the scene in. Even though there were many pros for leaving the scene in, including the fact that it was completely edited and the composer already wrote a score for the scene, the cons outweighed leaving it in the final cut.
   The sequence that I removed today was for a different set of reasons. The first was that I was not pleased with the quality of the shots. We shot them in low light and the camera did not have a large enough processor to capture a crisp clean image. Besides being inferior in quality, the scene was redundant in explaining a point. In previous scenes we established everything that would have been said in this particular sequence. So in order to keep the flow moving effectively we removed the sequence.
 
At this point I'm hoping that those will be the last cuts. But each scene must be analyzed carefully to make sure that they drive the story forward and make the most compelling movie that they can. By the end of this week the final cut should be finished excluding the week and a half of audio work that needs to be done.