Found this video that explains really nicely how visualizing an edited scene helps you figure out what to shoot on set, planned or unplanned.
It's interesting, how I guess knowing how to edit helps you shoot something and here's a whiled thought I just had what if editing and visualizing a scene can also help you write it.
I've always said that if I could just download the shots from my head I'd be able to move a lot faster.
But there are also problems, because if you shoot only what you need you're then locked into the edit, which sometimes isn't a bad thing, but when a problem happens you don't have a lot of options to fix it.
I did this a lot on my last feature film Pure Vortex and it worked great to save time, especially if we were running behind. At the same time I also backed myself up into a corner with one phone conversation for which I only got coverage of the other person for one line and the rest was just audio. I should have shot the entire conversation and I would have been much easier to edit it.
Anyway found this interesting and thought it might come handy to someone.
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Interesting and fun fact from watching, A History of Violence with audio commentary on. David Cronenberg directs with no storyboards done beforehand.
He has the scene set in his head, goes in and just puts it down.
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This is a great insight — especially the idea that editing shapes how we shoot.
I’ve been thinking about something similar from a writing perspective: what if we approached writing the same way we approach editing? Not just imagining scenes, but “cutting” them mentally — deciding what to show, what to hide, and where tension lives.
In a way, writing, shooting, and editing are not separate stages, but different expressions of the same decision-making process.
And I completely relate to your point about shooting only what’s necessary — it’s efficient, but it can also limit flexibility when something doesn’t work in the edit.
Really valuable reflection. Thanks for sharing.
Yeah Tomás Daniel, that's pretty much how I've always done it. The only thing that I've had to force myself to think about is the same thing that they mention in the video, to always shoot a little more than you need. And even then it's sometimes not enough and you wish that you've shot just a little more.
Also one interesting thing that happened with my last feature that I shot, before production started I took my screenplay and made it production ready and that meant adding additional back stories to characters and motivation for locations that we had, etc. Then we shot the thing and in post, it's all again gets scaled back to almost the same as the version of the screenplay before the production version. I find this really interesting.
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This is why we use storyboards.
Shadow Dragu-Mihai true, but at the same time you have to come up with the idea for the shot in the first place. I usually do that when I'm planning the shot list and at the same time doing rudimentary storyboards or discussing the shots with my partner Leya, while she's doing the storyboards.
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Vital Butinar That’s really interesting — especially that cycle of expansion during production and then reduction again in post.
It almost feels like you need to over-understand the story in order to arrive back at its simplest, most essential form. Like the added backstories and motivations aren’t necessarily meant to be seen directly, but they shape the way everything is performed and captured.
And that point about shooting more than you need really resonates. It’s almost like editing is where the film is truly discovered, but only if you’ve given yourself enough material to explore.
Do you feel like that “scaling back” process made the final film closer to your original vision, or did it become something different altogether?
Exactly Tomás Daniel. You put it well and I like it over-understanding the story and that it needed to get bigger before it became it became simpler again.
I mean I've always understood that at the beginning there's an idea and it gets developed to a screenplay, then it gets adapted to what you can shoot in pre-production, then it gets shot and finally edited together in post. I've always thought that it's a bad idea to try to get the exact same thing that was written, because even the written screenplay is not always similar to the original idea.
So I always try forget the original idea when I'm doing pre-production, then when I'm on set I try to not think about what I was imagining when I was writing but following the plan from pre-production and what is available as far as locations, actors, etc. goes. Then when I get to post I try to forget what I imagined initially and just work off the material that was shot.
Most of the time the end result looks very similar to the original idea put together in context with what was available for production.
It's actually quite fascinating and I love the entire process.
Vital Butinar That’s a great way of putting it — almost like each stage demands a kind of “creative detachment.”
What you said about letting go at every phase really stands out to me. It takes discipline to not cling to the original idea and instead respond to what the process is giving you in real time.
And it’s fascinating how, despite all that letting go, the final result still somehow echoes the original vision — just shaped by reality, constraints, and discovery.
It makes the whole process feel less like execution and more like a conversation between intention and circumstance.
That’s honestly one of the things I’m starting to appreciate more — not trying to control the film too tightly, but allowing it to become what it needs to be.