From film editing to script consulting : my unique approach

Most script doctors are screenwriters. I’m not. My background is in film editing, and it has profoundly shaped my approach to script doctoring.

I do not see a screenplay merely as a narrative. I see it as a living map of the film, connecting the raw material to its final, accomplished form. Because I know from experience that a screenplay evolves throughout the entire filmmaking process. And for it to evolve in the right direction, it must be understood in the same way by everyone involved in bringing it to life.

My experience has given me a deep understanding of what makes a screenplay work, and what weakens it.

And film editing is not simply about assembling shots; it is about building a coherent and powerful narrative out of raw material, while respecting the director’s vision and listening to the truth of the rushes.

The screenplay holds a crucial place in the editing room, just as it does at every stage of a film’s creation. The very first thing we do when beginning the first cut of a sequence is reread that part of the script in order to understand where we are coming from and where we are going, and to answer the essential question: What story are we telling? Because the answer determines everything that follows: what we strengthen, what we question, what we propose that has emerged from the material itself, sometimes without the writer ever anticipating it. One must grasp the intention before even watching the rushes, in order to know what to look for - and find it.

The screenplay guides every decision, whether selecting, cutting, rearranging, moving or refining sequences. A film is like a haute couture dress: every detail matters, and every detail contributes to the whole. Detail and structure are constantly in dialogue with one another. And that begins at the writing stage.

And just as editing must master rhythm, the breathing of a film, and the language of subtext, screenwriting must do the same. Because a screenplay does not rely solely - or even primarily - on dialogue. A story is built not only on what is seen, but also on what is heard and felt beyond the spoken words. An off-screen sound, a prop, a piece of music, a pause, an intonation, a gesture - all carry meaning. They are part of the dramatic construction, and they must already exist within the screenplay.

Editing has also taught me that the problems encountered within a scene often take root long before they become visible. Symptoms almost always originate earlier, in a previous scene. Identifying the source of a problem rather than merely treating its manifestations: that is an editor’s habit.

A fully realised screenplay - not for the reader, nor for the market, but for the film itself - is both the story and its instruction manual. The world created, and its cartography. In other words, it contains within itself the conditions of coherence that will allow every decision made during shooting and editing to remain in service of the film’s intention. When the world of the screenplay is sufficiently developed and precise, it guides without becoming rigid. It allows the film to grow at every stage of its making, even when reality drifts away from the original project. Which it always does - and rightly so, because that is how a film finds its breath.

That coherence is precisely what I seek to strengthen, whatever stage of the process I am brought into.

Working on a screenplay means accompanying it towards what it wants to become, through its living material, exactly as an editor listens to the rushes and then works with them.

And last but not least, the editor’s place alongside a director is not so different from that of a script doctor alongside a writer.

The approach is the same. I have simply moved from the third writing to the first.

Déborah Braun / 90pages

Script doctor

SERVICES