You can't really understand how the film will come together until the edit. Scenes you thought would work turn out not to. Long scenes might be cut shorter because they hang. You can't help having extra footage. Sometimes you even need to reshoot scenes while editing is going on.

This is literally how movies have always been made. You film a bunch of stuff, then edit it down to a real movie.

You need some overhead so that you have some leeway when editing. Or else you're probably fucked.

It's more cost effective to shoot the extra footage that might be needed and leave a bunch of it on the cutting room floor. Sometimes it's just bloat in the script, or maybe alternative endings.

Imagine having to gather the actors and crew back onto a location to shoot additional scenes. Which is funny to say because they already do that sometimes at great cost of budget.

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All of the footage is cut down to 4 hours

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I've never made a movie and I'm going out on a limb and guessing you haven't either. So I'm not sure either of us is in any position to judge how much extra footage is too much.

I do know it's better to have too much footage than too little and it's probably better and less expensive to film extra footage while everything is still set up than to call everyone back in after the shooting is supposed done and they've likely started disassembling sets and actors have flown back home or off to other projects.

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You think the same is true with porn? Some day a director will release an eight hour directors cut with extended scenes and bloopers?