All language subtitles for [English (United States)] The Book Every Editor Has to Read — Walter Murch and In the Blink of an Eye [DownSub.com]

That's what the cut is.

The cut is a blink in between
two focuses of attention.

Walter Murch is one of the most
respected film editors of all time.

And his book, 'In the Blink of an Eye',
is a seminal text for anyone who wants

to better understand
the art of editing.

In this video, we'll look at Walter
Murch's editing philosophy and examine

why it continues
to be so influential.

This is 'In the Blink
of an Eye: Explained'.

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Time to fire up the flatbed.

To understand why, 'In the Blink
of an Eye', is so important, one

must know its
author's background.

Walter Murch is a groundbreaking
editor and sound designer.

He came to prominence in the
late 60s and 70s and was an integral

part of the New
Hollywood movement.

Murch has worked with filmmakers like
Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas,

and his filmography
is legendary.

He has won three Academy Awards
and been nominated nine times.

Nine times.

For his pioneering work on 'Apocalypse
Now', Murch became the first person

to be credited as
a sound designer.

In 1995, he published 'In the Blink
of an Eye', based on a lecture he gave

about editing in
Sydney, Australia.

The book has since become one of
the most popular books on editing ever.

And in 2001, Murch released a
second edition, which added a

discussion of digital editing.

In it, he touches on various topics
that can be grouped into why cuts work,

the rule of six,
and an editor's job.

Let's look at the core of
Murch's editing philosophy.

Why cuts work?

Cuts are jumps in space or
time, and sometimes both.

So, how do they avoid confusing
or distracting an audience?

In his book, Murch interrogates
this central question in film editing.

He notes that cutting as we know it today
did not exist for much of early cinema.

- Editing was not invented
along with motion pictures.

It was a number of years before
somebody had the idea of putting these

images together to
tell a coherent story.

- Eventually, filmmakers learned that two
distinct images could be placed together.

And audiences could not only
follow it, but they could make

meaning out of
the juxtaposition.

When this discovery was made, Murch
writes, 'Films were no longer earthbound'.

In other words, film's full narrative
and aesthetic potential was

realized with the
advent of the cut.

But why exactly are audiences
not perturbed by a cut?

The answer, Murch
argues, lies in the blink.

He explains that although it
seems like we experience the world

continuously, we actually experience
cuts every time we close our eyes.

When we're in conversation,
for example, we blink at moments

that feel natural to us.

Murch argues that a blink
occurs when a thought

is fully formed, writing,
'We entertain an idea.

And we blink to separate and
punctuate that idea from what follows.

Similarly, in film, a shot presents
us with an idea or a sequence of

ideas and the cut is a blink that
separates and punctuates those ideas'.

Merch takes this theory even
further, claiming that he uses an actor's

blinks to inform how he edits.

In 'The Conversation', for example,
he found that he was cutting close

to where Gene Hackman was
blinking since it subconsciously signaled

that he had
completed his thought.

- You have to feel the moment
where you're going to cut and at the

appropriate moment, over and
over again, much more than chance.

Within a few frames of that
mark, Gene Hackman would blink.

There's something
going on there.

- By editing with these blink points
in mind, Murch argues that you

also control how the audience is
meant to process the information.

In this way, you are
blinking for the audience to

underscore the ideas and
emotions of the characters.

And so in Murch's theory, if the
editor can find the right rhythm of

a scene, they could make the
entire audience blink at the same time.

The opposite of this editing approach
is what Murch calls the dragnet system.

Named after the 50s detective show
where cuts were made after each line.

- Just gonna get the phone for you.
- I'll take care of the phone.

- This style creates a
punchy rhythm of its own.

But for Murch, it ignores the
nuances of our everyday conversations.

- Could I ask you please to um,
paste your paintings into my book?

I should like to have
them. I should be honored.

Murch likens editing to another
universal human experience.

Dreaming.

- Movies are dreams,
darling, that you never forget.

- According to Murch, editing often
imitates dreams, where we typically make

sense out of
combinations of images.

As Merch writes,
'We accept the cut

because it resembles the way
images are juxtaposed in our dreams.

In fact, the abruptness of the cut
may be one of the key determinants

in actually producing the
similarity between films and dreams.

In the darkness of the theater,
we say to ourselves, in effect,

this looks like reality.

But it cannot be reality because
it is so visually discontinuous.

Therefore, it must be a dream'.

This idea can be particularly
applied to editing techniques like the

Kuleshov effect, where two different
images are placed together and

create a third,
separate meaning.

Mertzsch also uses natural phenomena
to influence how he edits in space.

He gives us an analogy
about bees and their hive.

Bees are not confused if their hive is
moved miles from its original location.

But Murch writes, 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 reorient themselves.

The same goes for editing.

Cutting to a shot that is
too similar to the shot before

can be jarring to an audience.

A good rule of thumb, therefore, is
to cut to a shot where and the camera

is at an angle that is at least 30
degrees away from the previous shot.

This is commonly known
as the 30-degree rule.

But Murch argues that spatial
considerations should not be the

primary concern of an editor.

This brings us to
Murch's Rule of Six.

Perhaps the most famous passage
in 'In the Blink of an Eye' is Murch's

list of priorities
when making a cut.

He ranks each consideration
by importance and labels the

resulting list the rule of six.

Murch writes that the foremost job of
an editor is to establish an interesting

coherent rhythm of
emotion and thought.

As such, he prioritizes emotion,
claiming it is the thing that you

should try to
preserve at all costs.

- Emotion is whatever this shot
is and the cut to the next shot.

How does it make you feel?

And is that feeling what you want for
the film at this point in its storytelling?

- The second consideration
is story advancement.

A cut should be necessary
to push a narrative forward.

- Do you understand what's going on with
the characters, with their motivations,

with what's
happening in the plot?

- Next is rhythm.

Is the cut happening at the right
point in a musical sense, or is it like a

drummer who comes
in too late or too soon?

- Count again.
- One, two, three, four.

- One, two, three, four.
One, two, three, four.

- Rushing or dragging?
- Rushing.

- So you do know the difference!

- Murch notes that the top three
things on the list emotion, story, rhythm,

are extremely tightly connected.

The forces that bind them together are
like the bonds between the protons and

neutrons in the
nucleus of the atom.

In other words, finding the emotion
of a cut will likely lead to progressing

the story and creating
the right rhythm.

The fourth consideration
is eye trace.

This refers to where the
audience's eye is focused in a frame.

If they are likely looking at the
upper right section of a shot then a

cut where the subject is also in
the upper right will feel more natural.

- You construct the film to direct
their attention by where you place

the cut and where the focus of
interest is on the incoming shot.

- Next, an editor should think
about what Murch calls planarity

which is often labeled
an 180-degree rule.

The shots being cut together
should generally not cross the

line of action established by
the opening shot of a sequence.

The final consideration is
three-dimensional continuity, which Murch

describes as where people are in
the room and in relation to one another.

To sum up, Murch argues, if the emotion
is right and the story is advanced in

a unique, interesting way in the right
rhythm, then the audience will tend

to be unaware of editorial problems
with lower order items like eye trace,

stage line, and
spatial continuity.

In other words, he holds that typically
satisfying items higher on the list

will obscure problems with items
lower on the list, but not vice versa.

In the end, Murch describes a
successful edit as when the shots

themselves seem
to create each other.

Finally, Murch spends a good
portion of his book describing

the logistics of
an editor's job.

While Murch's high-level philosophizing
is vital, his discussion of the

on-ground reality of an editor's
day-to-day is also crucial.

The first step is
to have a plan.

An editor must make thousands
of decisions in every scene.

When receiving dailies, Murch
recommends finding a still from

each shot that
best represents it.

He argues that this will help
down the line when an editor

has to pick which takes to use.

When actually editing, Murch
famously insists on standing.

He explains, 'Editing
is a kind of dance.

The finished film is a
kind of crystallized dance.

And when have you ever seen
a dancer sitting down to dance'?

- Somehow this is important for me because
it allows me to internalize the rhythms,

the visual rhythms
of what's happening.

- Murch also notes that collaborating
with directors is an integral

part of an editor's job.

He argues that while it is important
to help a director realize their vision,

directors typically
have their own limits.

Especially when it comes
to the smaller details.

And that is where an editor
must step up with their own ideas.

Murch also emphasizes that directors
often come in with preconceptions

based on their
experiences on set.

And it is an editor's role to
try to see only what's on the

screen, as the audience will.

- I make it a principle
not to go on the set.

Not to see the
actors out of costume.

Not to see anything other than the
images that come to me from location.

And that's how it's going
to look to the audience.

- But an editor can only anticipate
an audience's reaction so much.

This is where feedback
from test audiences comes in.

Audiences, he claims, are good at
noticing when something isn't working.

But they aren't good
at pointing out why.

When you ask the direct question,
what was your least favorite scene, and 80

percent of the people are in agreement
about one scene they do not like, the

impulse is to fix the
scene or cut it out.

But the chances are
that that scene is fine.

Instead, the problem may be that
the audience simply didn't understand

something that they needed
to know for the scene to work.

Whether editing, analog or digital,
Murch's philosophy holds as true

today as it did in the 1970s.

No matter what happens on set,
no matter how many visual effects

are required, almost all movies
are still built on simple cuts.

An editor's job doesn't have
to start in post-production.

The collaboration can start with a
script, the storyboard, or the shot list.

This is the kind of collaboration
StudioBinder was built for.

Get started on your next
project with the sign up link below.

For more on the art of
editing, watch our in-depth

interview with "Top Gun:
Maverick" editor, Eddie Hamilton,

and step-by-step tutorials on the
StudioBinder Academy channel.

Until next time, remember, with a great
editor, sometimes you can fix it in post.