#RWRBMovie: Deleted Scenes

#RWRBMovie: deleted scenes

Matthew López:

The Cornetto scene. The breakfast scene at Kensington Palace. Everybody’s wondering what happened to the scene [at] the campfire. You know, in the course of making a movie and in the course of telling a story — runtime is less important in the streaming age than it is in theatrical distribution, but what was important to me is that the film be the right length. You cut things for pacing. You never want the audience to get ahead of you, you never want the audience to be bored. You know, there was originally a whole scene where Alex comes to the polo match. He meets Princess Bea. Henry and Alex have a little exchange after Henry gets off the horse. They go to the tack room together. What we found as we were watching the film was that Nick and Taylor were so good together in the scene prior, in Alex's bedroom. And actually when we did a version of that scene in Alex's bedroom, we got a note from the studio, from producers, asking if we could try and make that scene shorter. “It’s good, but it’s long.” So we did our first test screening and I did a shortened version of that scene in Alex's bedroom. I was really hesitant to cut it back. But I wanted to be a good collaborator and prove that I can take a note and I'm willing to try things. We actually got more than a few comments back literally saying, “We wish that scene were longer.” So that, of course, was great for me. That scene in Alex's bedroom is the entire scripted scene. There's not a single cut from the script to the final cut. As a consequence, though, of that being a rather lengthy scene, I needed to then regain momentum. We've spent it all on this scene and it's worth it because that scene between the two of them is so dynamic and wonderful. But now we gotta get things going again. So, I had a new editor come in halfway through because my first editor, Christina Heatherington, who's wonderful, had another project that she had committed to doing. And our post dates got extended a bit and she had to leave, so Nick, my new editor coming in, took a look and he says, “I wanna try something with that polo match.” He spent a weekend of his own time doing something, and then he was ready to show me. He sat me down and said, “I’ve done something crazy.” I’m like, “Great. We love crazy.” He showed me what was largely the version of the polo match that is in the film and with that music. I was laughing with glee the whole time I'm watching it. He was nervous, 'cause he is taking like six minutes of story and condensed it into two and a half minutes. But it has so much drive. It's sexy. It tells the story. It was a real lesson for me as a first time filmmaker: if you expand time, then you need to maybe also learn how to contract time. So that was a big lesson to me in pacing. With the Cornetto scene — that scene in Kensington Palace Gardens, it does everything I needed it to do. Weirdly, the Cornetto scene actually relieved some of the tension between them. I was like, look, if you take the Cornetto scene out, then the tension from that first scene remains when they go into the interview scene. I learned a lot of it is about taking the energy from one scene and using it to help you get into the next scene. One of the things I learned as a playwright, which I found was applicable to cutting a movie, is if a scene isn't working, it might not be the scene itself. It might be the scene before. “Why isn’t the interview scene playing as well as we think it should?” Look at what came before: the Cornetto scene … The Cornetto scene is charming. But we also understood, narratively speaking, it was unnecessary. And more to the point, it sapped the tension out.

(source)

#RWRBMovie: Deleted Scenes

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