In the Blink of an Eye, 2nd Edition: A PerspectIve on Film Editing

Product Information

Murch won three Oscars. With almost 50 years of picture editing experience, he’s one of a few people who managed to thrive in his role for most of his career. Try to do the most with the least — with the emphasis on try. An attempt to produce the greatest effect in the viewer’s mind by the least number of things on the screen. Because you want to do only what is necessary to engage the imagination of the audience — the suggestion is always more effective than exposition. The audience should be participants, not just mere spectators.

But also, for most of the film, we travel with Joel through his memories as they are being erased. We go from his latest memories, to his first moments with Clementine. F ocusing on Key Themes: Economy in storytelling is also about ensuring that the central themes and messages of the story are clear and not diluted by too many diverging ideas or motifs. In any conversation, as your navigate different thoughts in your head, you blink naturally at the appropriate places in the discussion. Film editors should imagine each scene as a conversation where every cut mimics ‘the blink of an eye’, forming natural pauses in the interaction. A great film editor understands each movie’s unique conversational rhythm and uses it as a road map for their editing approach. 🤔 Who Should Read It?Chion, Michel (1994). Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen (Columbia University Press). ISBN 0-231078-99-4. Bob Dylan, 1961 - Radio Broadcasts (Including the first time Bob was broadcast on the radio)". YouTube. Due to this, their opinion is powerful and useful as for examples, the director, will often remember it differently. They ‘see’ what they saw on the day. The mountain vista. The sunset in the distance. But in reality this wasn’t all captured. This gives the editor freedom as they are don’t feel that certain shots must go into due to the difficulty or cost of the image, merely what is creatively useful and interesting. 🔮 Scenes Create Themselves

A pesar del enfoque técnico y profesional que tiene el libro, Walter Murch sabe entretener al lector en todas sus explicaciones. Aparte de su conocimiento del montaje y de un sentido artístico audiovisual que podíamos dar por hecho, Murch tiene una sensibilidad literaria y una prosa envidiables. En el contenido original del libro, escrito a comienzos de los 90, el lector descubre el oficio del montaje, su historia y su razón de ser ¿por qué el corte de un plano a otro funciona para el espectador, en vez de simplemente provocar confusión? Murch ofrece explicaciones sencillas a problemas complejos que le hacen a uno replantearse la forma de entender una película, además de apreciar el enorme trabajo artístico de los montadores. La edición de 2021 cuenta con capítulos adicionales sobre el sonido de una película y su edición y montaje, así como unas reflexiones sobre el cambio del celuloide al digital en la industria en los últimos años. Conciseness and Precision: Using the fewest words to convey an idea. This doesn't mean the story is rushed or details are omitted; rather, every element included serves a purpose and contributes to the overall narrative. Murch talks about six different "criteria" that make a good cut: emotion, story, rhythm, eye trace, 2D plane of screen, and 3D space. However, not all of these are equal in importance in his eyes. For example, emotion is ranked #1 on the list, because he considers it the most critical element to consider when editing. It's the thing he says you should "try to preserve at all costs." If you're interested though, I'd recommend The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film by Michael Ondaatje. It contains much the same (and more) content and is crafted by Ondaatje to emphasize not just Murch's genius, but also his humility and eager, genuine curiosity. And it's about storytelling. Though it’s hard to imagine now, when movies were first made at the beginning of the 20th century, cuts had not yet been ‘discovered’ as a part of the filmmaker’s toolkit. When people realised they could splice together two separate images discontinuously and the audience could still comprehend what was happening, ‘films were no longer earthbound’ as Murch puts it.

Develop

when Warner Bros. cancelled the financing for Zoetrope, the Apocalypse Now project was abandoned for a while. After the success of American Graffiti in 1973, George wanted to revive it, but it was still too hot a topic – the war was still on – and notobdy wanted to finance something like that. So George considered his options: What did he really want to say in Apocalypse Now? The message boiled down to the ability of a small group of people to defeat a gigantic power simply by the force of their convictions. And he decided, All right, if it's politically too hot as a contemporary subject, I'll put the essence of the story in outer space and make it happen in a galaxy long ago and far away. The rebel group were the North Vietnamese and the Empire was the United States. And if you have the force, no matter how small you are, you can defeat the overwhelmingly big power. Star Wars is George's transubstantiated version of Apocalypse Now.” A beehive can apparently be moved two inches each night without disorienting the bees the next morning. Surprisingly, if it is moved two miles, the bees also have no problem: They are forced by the total displacement of their environment to re-orient their sense of direction, which they can do easily enough. But if the hive is moved two yards, the bees will become fatally confused. The environment does not seem different to them, so they do not re-orient themselves, and as a result, they will not recognise their own hive when they return from foraging, hovering instead in the empty space where the hive used to be, while the hive itself sits just two yards away.”

Editing is not so much a putting together, but a discovery of a path. Enunciated by Murch himself “It is frequently at the edges that we learn most about the middle; ice and steam reveal more about the nature of water than water alone ever could.” Ondaatje, Michael (2004). The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Film Editing (New York: Random House). In The Blink of an Eye makes it clear you need to imagine yourself in that cinema seat, popcorn in hand. What would the audience be thinking in each moment? What should they be feeling here? These decisions made Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind one of the greatest films of our era, and it’s because the filmmakers weren’t afraid to “kill their darlings.” Originally published in 1992, a decent portion of the In the Blink of An Eye text is devoted to Murch’s opinion on film vs digital and his literal process for working on different film cutting machines.Not necessarily that you have to make them feel sad at one cut, or happy at another, this rule has more to do with what the film feels like. In essence, economy in storytelling is about making every word, scene, and character count. It's a skill that involves careful planning, editing, and a deep understanding of what is essential to the story's core message and emotional impact.

Murch talks about what films have in common with dreams. He discusses questions editors should ask themselves when shaping the narrative. Generally, he goes deep into his approach to film editing. One key lesson of In The Blink of An Eye is not to overdo it with your editing. As Murch writes: ’You would never say that a certain film was well-edited because it had more cuts in it. Frequently, it takes more work and discernment to decide where not to cut—don’t feel you have to cut just because you are being paid to. You are being paid to make decisions, and as far as whether to cut or not, the editor is actually making twenty-four decisions a second: “No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. Yes!” Murch is the 2012 recipient of the Nikola Tesla Award given by the International Press Academy Satellite Awards for "Visionary Achievement in Filmmaking Technology". [33] Previous recipients have included Douglas Trumbull, James Cameron, Roger Deakins, Dennis Muren and George Lucas. So not to extend this summary, I won’t get into the details of these chapters other than to list briefly, a few key thoughts of Walter on the matter.urn:oclc:474901106 Republisher_operator [email protected] Scandate 20120111010731 Scanner scribe1.shenzhen.archive.org Scanningcenter shenzhen Worldcat (source edition)