He has worked in a number of departments for film but predominantly sound design and editing, and his latest film and first venture into feature documentaries, 'Particle Fever' (2013), was shown as part of Sheffield Doc/Fest last year.
He is also known for his strong opinions towards the direction that Apple has taken with their 'Final Cut Pro' editing software, which he championed as an alternative to AVID Media Composer until recently. Murch also wrote what is considered as one of the most important texts on film editing, 'In the Blink of An Eye', which I will be reading as part of this module.
For my research I watched a number of YouTube videos where Murch shares his thoughts on editing, his own personal style and techniques and theories surrounding a range of film and editing-related topics. Below I have summarized the main points he raises in each video.
Walter Murch: On Editing
- A good editor must have a sense of how to tell a story and a sense of rhythm. Like telling a good joke, it could be very funny but if you tell it wrong it falls flat.
- Editing is like a dance - you can explain it but to really learn how to dance you have to just dance. Its awkward in the beginning but gradually you learn how to do it.
- An assistant editor must be in touch with both the bigger picture and the context in which the film sits. They must try not to get caught up in the final details, and to balance it with the human aspects in the film.
- Digital technology essentially allows for the movie to be 'filmed a second time in the editing suite'.
- Huge pixel density allows for shots to be recomposed and for details or even characters to be omitted entirely - useful especially in documentary where you don't know how the image will integrate into the final film. Murch calls this 'Vertical editing', as you are editing within the frame.
- Advice for new editor is to just edit - the interned has free material to use or you can shoot it yourself. Software also allows for complex editing and sound design which he never had 50 years ago.
- Editing is the newest art - it is barely 100 years old and there is still much more to discover and learn.
Worldizing: A Sound Design Concept by Walter Murch
- Murch loves echo or reverberation in sound - anything that tells you about the atmosphere or the space where the person is.
- He recorded the sound then moved to a location with the ideal acoustics. Then he played the sound and recorded it on another tape recorder, playing both sounds together in sync in the edit.
- A discovery was made that if sounds were played and recorded at higher speeds and then slowed down in the edit, it made the space sound proportionately bigger.
The Rule of Six
- What makes the perfect cut? 6 rules are all satisfied.
- 1) Is it true to the emotion people want to feel or does it subtract or distract from it.
- 2) Does it tell the story - do we understand what is happening.
- 3) Does it happen at the right point - does it fit the rhythm we have established.
- 4) The attention of the audience is carried from shot to shot - unless this is intentionally disrupted.
- 5) Is the 3D world being represented well in 2D.
- 6) Are the people and/or objects moving through the space coherently.
Walter Murch and Jon Favreau: Movies in Your Brain
- Intrinsic tension takes place when there are no cuts - we don't notice this consciously. Examples are made of 'Children of Men' (Alfonso Cuaron, 2006), 'Gravity' (Alfonso Cuaron, 2012) and the upcoming 'Birdman' (Alejandro Inarritu, 2014).
- Its harder to create surround sound and atmosphere with fast cuts and dialogue (such as the opening of 'The Social Network' dir. David Fincher, 2010). The opening of 'Gravity' had sound that moved around but with no cut it wasn't disorienting for the audience.
- A cut is violent - it is a total displacement of our field of vision but our mind can take it.
- Cutting isn't something you have to do - filmmakers and audiences enjoy the sudden juxtaposition of two concepts.
Sheffield Doc/Fest 2014: Walter Murch: From The Godfather to The God Particle
- Murch would not have expected the resurgence of animation and documentary. Drama films are going through the doldrums and stomping out the middle ground it used to occupy. Crisis point in cinema - great opportunity and threat.
- 'Good editing makes the film look well-directed. Great editing makes the film look like it wasn't directed at all' - Victor Fleming.
- Murch creates a scene board of the whole film using coloured post-it notes. Size represents length, colour represents person, diamond is a pivotal scene and green triangles represents years.
- Analogy of the black box and the snowflake - the tension between control and spontaneity is at the heart of any art form. Digital film can be both an enabler of spontaneity and control - can always have a camera ready but with a Pixar film everything is controlled.
- Begin a project with 10,000 questions and one certainty. End it with 10,000 certainties and one question - a gift that will transpire and connect with the audience.
- Murch's theory of blinking and editing - we blink between looking at two images, like cutting between shots.
- He stands up whilst editing to feel the rhythm of the film, and lies down whilst writing to separate his editing mind from his creative mind.
- 'The director has a vision, but not all of his/her vision can be articulated... its too complex' 'One of the functions of the editor is to provoke this vision to come out of hiding.' Hearing an alternate version will provoke the original to surface.
- Documentary is like going into the Amazon to collect specimens and then figuring out a theory afterwards. Drama is like using the film as an experiment to prove the theory.
- Music and film love each other - 'fraternal twins separated at birth'. They are both highly modular, temporal art forms with great repetition.
- Music has great abstraction, film is highly specific. Each one saves the other from the excesses of itself.
- Music helps to digest emotions and ideas - the silence afterwards is just as important in drawing attention to it.
- It can also be a steroid that is injected into the film to bulk up its emotional muscles. That isn't good long term for the film or the art.
As someone with a keen interest in film soundtracks, I find Murch's description of the use of music to be particularly interesting, providing a deeper understanding as to why the two mediums work so well together. His criticism of music becoming an 'emotional steroid' is also important. Through personal experience I've noticed that US documentaries and TV shows on channels such as Discovery are saturated with music that adds nothing to it.
In the video below from Doc/Fest 2013, the panel discusses music in documentary and the effects it can have on audiences. One of the points raised in the video is that audiences can become 'dislocated' from a documentary that they perceive as 'real' if they sense that the music is telling them what to feel. He goes on to say that the absence of music is stronger in a lot of cases, which is similar to what Murch says about the importance of silence.
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