How did the use of Cinemascope affect the editorial process?
Well, when we went into A Bug’s Life we knew that we were going to shoot anamorphic and I knew that would affect my editorial decisions. So, I have a long narrow office, and I put as large a projection screen as possible in the far end. And that’s the only screen I ever looked at. I tried to work as big as possible. The main thing in Cinemascope that I think an editor needs to think about is “eye fix,” being aware of where the audience is looking in the frame at any given moment, and using that as one of your tools for making an editorial choice, in terms of matching action across cuts or determining general timings. On an anamorphic screen, with an image of that size, the audience has a much wider range of possible places they can be looking. It was important for me to be aware of that and to account for it. This movie has obviously been a great deal of work. Was it worth it? When we started having our preview screenings, we started to get a feel for how big the film was going to be.
