“{...} As a young editor, I used to get very upset about changing cuts. And it was really hard to let go, and to allow a director's input. And then I had a really epiphany moment – I saw a film about Picasso. And he did these two strokes of his paintbrush, and he made the perfect chicken... And then he starts meddling with it. And you're kinda going “No! Stop! I could sell that for half a million! It's a perfect chicken...” But he just does another thing, and before you know it, it's a centurion... It's even better... So, from that, I learned the lesson that, actually, it's sort of keeping the clay wet and moving things around to try and serve the whole structure. Not just being vertical about the edits, but about being horizontal about getting the whole story (and the pace of that story) right, and making sure that the beats land. That's really important. And if you have to sacrifice your “perfect cut”, then that's what you must do. You just to be clever enough to know whether it's a chicken or a centurion that you need.”
