time to get schooled

topic of the day 050 & article of the day 001

Assembly Cut vs Final Cut

What, who, how, when, why? Then, so?

It's been quite a hot button issue regarding what cut is being used as the 'finished product', especially for superhero movies in the most recent pop culture tapestry. Not every fan know the inner working of the movie industry hence the unrealistic demand to see the unreleased versions that they deemed better in their critical eyes. To be better educated on the matter, let's list them down one by one, shall we?

#1. Assembly cut

When a movie is being produced, there would be a certain amount of scenes being shot for one particular day and that footage is being cut together by the editor. Since the director would be swamped in overseeing the day-to-day operation and running the film set, he/she may not be fully involved in putting these scenes together this early in the process. When the production finally wraps, the director would head into the editing room mostly for months on end to start piecing the movie together by first of all watching the assembly cut; the aforementioned rough version of the film being put together during the shooting by stringing together narratively every single scene that was shot.

This is NOT a releasable version but instead a rough draft per say of what the final product could be, overlong and shapeless but nevertheless a 'blank canvas' full of potential. By excruciatingly chipping away at the massive material and carving it into a finished version that would be ready to be shown to the audiences. This cut is a foundation and it is a laborious process to build upon it and since big budget films are always in the center of this controversy, their assembly cuts would not include finished visual effects but instead simply concept arts or placeholder cards.

“The first assembly cut was four and a half hours. Then our first cut where it all kind of tracked was about three hours. It played. It played like a real movie with a beginning, middle and end over three hours. I think we screened our first cut at two and a half hours. It was the best screening we’ve ever had at that fat length. Normally, when we throw it at two and a half, three hours, the audience gets exhausted and starts yawning.”

~ Adam McKay on Anchorman 2 ~

When they cut down from three hours fifteen minutes to two hours fourteen minutes for Joss Whedon's Avengers: Age of Ultron for example, this does not mean there's an entire hour's worth of deleted scenes that are usable, with most of them are made by the trimming inside the scenes—cutting the first one or two lines and/or dropping a line or two at the end of a scene. This might be caused by the director seeing the work-in-progress cut and noticing that the audience may not need as much verbal information as was originally thought in the screenplay.

#2. First cut

All of this works bring us to the first cut or a workable cut, which can range from half an hour longer from the final theatrical cut for Rian Johnson's the Last Jedi to even four hours in duration for Blade Runner 2049:

“The thing is, it’s true that the first cut was four hours and at one point we were like, ‘Okay, do we go to the producer and release it in two?’ But let’s say the idea of the movie being in two parts didn’t get out of the editing room. [Laughs] No, the best incarnation of the movie is what is in the theater. What was striking is that the four-hour cut was quite strong. But personally I prefer the one that is in the theater because it’s more elegant, I would say. But there are some scenes that were like [makes boosh sound]. Quite strong.”

~ Denis Villeneuve on Bladerunner 2049 ~

Rather than assembly cut fat, there are actual scenes being cut to have an acceptable runtime for the studios (among many other reasons, but I'm sure the ones financing the project would have the final say). Those particular deleted scenes might surface as bonus materials for the DVD release as a treat for the fans and cuts from different directors on one particular film is a different beast altogether, but at least you understand the difference now, right?

source: collider