All language subtitles for [English (auto-generated)] Masterclass with Walter Murch - Meet the Oscar®-Winning film and sound editor [DownSub.com]

thank you

thank you it's great to be here this is

my first time in

gothenburg but it's been a very warm

welcome

and i love to talk to editors and sound

designers about

what we do which is endlessly

fascinating

um it's very new

however in human experience the the

first

films or are maybe 120 years old

and that's just around the maximum human

lifetime

when i was at film school a gentleman

came to talk to us

who was in his early 70s younger than i

am now

the director king vidor and he had made

a documentary at the age of 18 in 1913

and was talking to us who were in our

early twenties and um

now i'm talking to you most of you are

older than your early twenties but

younger than me

uh but nonetheless that you know

in two human lifetimes this is

where we have arrived at in in film do

we understand what we're doing

maybe maybe we understand it at the

level that

the architects and builders of gothic

cathedrals knew what they were doing

there were no instruction manuals for

how you build a cathedral

and yet build it they did and most of

them

stayed up a few fell down

but they're still with us a thousand

years later even though

the knowledge for how to do that was

trent was transmitted orally

by and largely by experience

there was a troop of architects and

builders who moved

around europe from place to place

building these magnificent structures

i'm not comparing film to cathedrals but

in a certain sense i am

in this in this in that

largely the the understanding of what we

do

comes through oral transmission like

we're

we're doing now there are books of

course but

it's largely through people talking to

each other

and relaying experience of

this happened then maybe we can use that

here now maybe and maybe the film will

work

um our our rate of success with films is

much

less good than uh than cathedrals

five percent of films are successful

whatever that means

financially uh critically that's another

thing

but it's a miracle really that any films

get made when you underst when you know

what goes into making a film

it's it's if you don't know what goes

into making a film

you think how complicated could it be

the film lasts

two hours maybe it should take a week to

make a film

uh on the other hand once you know how

complicated films are it's amazing that

they don't take 10 or 15 or 20 years to

make

but the average is around two or three

years from conception to

in in the theater

so how to explain all of this uh

i'd like to fantasize sometimes that 500

years in the future

the people if we're still around if

civilization is still here which is an

open question

they'll look at what we did today and

they'll have a special

filter and they they project

the images but through this filter and

they see some kind of amazing moire

pattern

they don't see the images that we see

they see a moire pattern

of all of the people who came together

and all of the decisions that were made

and they finalized endlessly fascinating

because

some some place between now and 500

years from now they discover

a new force in the universe that makes

all of our troubles

disappear and they say how did they

manage to do that back then

when they didn't have force x or

whatever it is this sixth

force in the universe anyway that's just

a fantasy but we all

filmmakers know what i'm talking about

in the sense of

this sort of communal understanding of

what it is that we're doing and somehow

if we're lucky this information

gets transmitted from person to person

within each film and then from film

to film so with that as

prologue i'd like to

talk about the the value of film editing

in itself uh not just as a tech

not just as a necessary technique but

for what it

contributes to the film itself

particularly in light of films like 1917

which just came out this year

which is has no cuts in it

there are cuts a couple of dozen i'm

told

but they're invisible or victoria the

german film that was made a couple of

years ago that really has no cuts in it

but just as prologue let's look at a

clip from a film made in the early 1940s

this is sullivan's travels

you may be familiar with it but it's

just good to look at it

[Music]

you see you see the symbolism of it

capital labor destroy each other it

teaches a lesson

more or less and it has social

significance who wants to see that kind

of stuff

it gives me the creeps tell them how

long it played in the music hall it was

held over a fifth week

who goes to the music hall communist

communists

this picture's an answer to communists

it shows we're awake and not dunking our

heads in the sand like a bunch of

ostriches

i want this picture to be a commentary

on modern conditions stark realism

the problems that confront the average

man but with a little six a little but i

don't want to stress it i want this

picture to be a document i want to hold

a mirror up to life i want this to be a

picture of dignity

a true canvas of the suffering of

humanity but with a little section

with a little sex in it how about a nice

musical how can you talk about musicals

at a time like this with a world

committing suicide with corpses piling

up in the street

with grim death gargling at you from

every corner with people slaughtered

like sheep maybe they'd like to forget

that then why do they hold this one over

for a fifth week at the music hall for

the ushers it died in pittsburgh

like a dog while they know in pittsburgh

what they like if they know what they're

like they wouldn't live in pittsburgh

that's no argument if you pan of the

public you'd still be in the horsey you

think we're not let's hop along

you'll look at them we'd still be making

keystone chases

bathing beauties custard pie fortune

fortune

of course i'm just a minor employee here

mr lebron is starting that one again

i wanted to make you something

outstanding something you could be proud

of something that would realize the

potentialities of film is the

sociological and artistic medium that it

is

with a little sex in it something like

something like capra

i know what's the matter with capra look

you want to make her brother out there

yes

i'll wait a minute then go ahead and

make it what you're getting i can't

afford to argue with you that's a fine

way to start a man out on a million

dollar production you want it you got it

i can take it the chin i've taken it

before not from me you have it not from

you sully that's true

not with pictures like so long sauron

hey in the halo answered your plants

from 1939 but they weren't about tramps

lockouts sweatshops people eating

garbage and alleys and

living in piano boxes and ash cans and

foil they're about nice

clean young people filling up with

livestream music and legs now take that

scene and hey hey

but you all realize conditions have

changed there isn't any work there isn't

any food these are troubleless times

what do you know about trouble

what do i know about trouble yes what do

you know about trouble what do you mean

what do i know about trouble that's what

i'm saying you want to make a picture

about garbage cans what do you know

about garbage cans why'd you eat your

last meal out of one

what's that got to do with it he's

asking you you want to make an epic

about misery you want to show hungry

people sleeping in doorways

newspapers around them you want to grind

ten thousand feet of hard luck and all

i'm asking you is what do you know about

heart yes

what do you mean what do i know about

hard luck don't you think i've what yeah

i'm not i saw a newspaper until i was 20

then i worked in a shoe store and put

myself through law school at night

where were you at 20. well i was in

college when i was 13 i supported three

sisters and two brothers and a widowed

mother where were you at 13. i was in

boarding school i'm sorry

well you don't have to be ashamed of it

sully that's reading your picks have

been so light so cheap and so inspiring

they don't stick with messages that's

why i paid you 500 week when you were 24

750 when you were 25 000 when you were

26 when i was 26 i was getting 18.

2 000 when you were 27 i was getting 25

then i just opened my shooting game

3000 after thanks for yesterday 4 000

after asking i suppose you're trying to

tell me i don't know what trouble is yes

in a nice way solid you're absolutely

right i haven't any idea what it is

people always like what they don't know

anything about

certainly had a lot of nerve wanting to

make a picture about human suffering

you're a gentleman to admit it silly but

then you are anyway

how about making ants in your plants in

1941 you can have bob hope mary martin

maybe been crosstalk the avid dancers

maybe jack benny watches our big name

band what oh no i want to make our

brother

i'll tell you what i'm going to do first

i'm going down to the wardrobe and get

some old clothes some old shoes

and i'm going to start out with 10 cents

in my pocket huh i don't know where i'm

going but i'm not coming back

till i know what trouble is what don't

worry you can take me off salary who's

talking about taking your salary so long

and thanks for that wait a minute wait a

minute don't be so impulsive how soon

you'll be back i don't know maybe a week

maybe a month maybe a year don't worry

about me and thanks dracula you gave me

a great idea i gave you

now look what you've done yeah what i've

done with your lies about something

newspaper i sold as many newspapers that

you supported a family of 13. i opened a

shooting gallery didn't i with money you

borrowed from your uncle we better

insure him for a million he's worth more

the phone head

ask for what a genius get me a copy that

old brother where art out

i guess i'll have to read it now make

that two copy why should i suffer alone

a wonderful scene beautifully

written and acted and the

camera work is exactly what is necessary

but there's not a single edit

in that shot there's no coverage for

that

two and a half minute scene which is a

funny

and touching and if you're in the film

business you know exactly what they're

talking about

um so you know what is

the value of the edit if you can do that

why do we need to edit so that's the

that's the mystery in the question that

we're we'll talk about

um this i discovered this

a number of years ago this is a article

by maxim gorky the

the russian and it's his experience

of looking at films for the first time

he was a

young reporter in nizhny novgorod

100 miles or so east of moscow

and the lumiere brothers came to town

and set up their show

in the local brothel they put up a

screen

and they brought in the projector and

they showed the classic lumiere brothers

films

of the train arriving at the station

and the people leaving the factory and

he he calls it the kingdom of shadows

um if you only knew how strange it is to

be there it's a world without sound and

without color

interestingly he's seeing motion

pictures for the first time

and he's impatient it makes him think

where's the

where's the color where's the sound well

eventually we brought color in and sound

in it took

a couple of decades at least uh to do

that but it's just

interesting that the miracle of motion

pictures

uh he he completely accepts it and it

makes him want more

he says it's terrifying actually to see

the movement of shadows he's looking at

the workers leaving the factory

and then he says suddenly something

clicks

everything vanishes and a train appears

on the screen

it speeds right at you look out

it might plunge into the darkness of the

theater

and make the audience a ripped sack of

lacerated flash he's very dramatic in

what he does

but what he's describing is the first

cut

and in those days of analog

physical film we physically cut the film

as you all know

and we glued it together there wasn't

any

tape even in those days we we glued it

together

and when it when the cut went through

the projector it made a click

and so there's just you know in 1896

this is maxim forkey talking about the

sudden transition

from one shot to another

um would it work

to make a film with cuts in it we didn't

know because we didn't

experiment with that for another 10

years or so

from the invention of film let's say in

1889 to 1900

this gentleman film was largely

like youtube videos in the early days

cat videos

single shots that made you laugh and

then they were over and you went on to

the next one

and it it took

about a decade or so

uh for this young medium to enter

adolescence and discover the almost

sexual thrill of cutting things together

and like sex the idea that you can

combine the dna

of two different points of view is

intensely fertilizing of the medium we

didn't understand that at first

it was simply a mechanical way and

people were kind of embarrassed about it

the very earliest

cuts weren't cuts at all but little

four-frame dissolves

because they thought could can can we do

this

and it might have been that they would

have an experiment of cutting from one

shot to another hoping

that there would be a visual continuity

and instead

the whole audience threw up because

wait a minute i was looking at something

and it went away instantly and was

replaced by something else

i mean imagine if that happened to you

in real life you're walking down the

street and suddenly the street

disappears

and now you're on top of a mountain and

then five seconds later you're at the

bottom of the ocean

well we do that all the time in cinema

turns out

of course we do that all the time in

dreams so

i think what saved us uh for or saved

cinema

was the fact that there was already a

part of the human brain that was

conditioned to

think in these kind of leaps

which is the time we spend six or eight

hours a night

in a dream state and

our experiment with cutting for

continuity at first and then

cutting for collision the kind of

marxist hegelian

[Music]

collision of images is very dreamlike

and we eventually got

the hang of it and here we are 100

or so years later this gentleman we

think is the first person to

make a film that has continuity in it so

1901

he loved exclamation points stop thief

fire and it's clear that

the great train robbery porter

must have seen these films because the

two first films that porter made were

life of an american fireman and the

great train robbery

and they had what we understand now is

continuity

editing this is a

great quote uh that i like uh

mostly from victor fleming who directed

gone with the wind

and uh wizard of oz they both came out

in 1939

two very big films good editing

with the emphasis on good makes the film

look

well directed which is okay

uh i understand that that's pretty so

obvious

but then he says great editing and i

would add

whatever that is makes the film look

like it wasn't directed

at all and on the when you first read

that you think well it's a strange thing

for a director to say knowing how much

work goes into it but what he's getting

at

is that when the collision of images

has a certain magic to it and that's a

magic that we all

aspire to and rarely

get there but it's a north star that

sort of guides us

you you get the audience to a place

where they're simply

experiencing an event a series of events

and sympathizing or not with the

characters on

screen and they're not aware of the

frankenstein-like subterfuge that has

gone into

taking these chopped up pieces of life

and sewing them together and then

energizing them with electricity and

sending them on screen with

sound and

he's talking about a kind of

invisibility of the editing

and that's good up to a point i think

there you know we can be too invisible

and there are times in every film when

we want the sound and the editing to

sort of come out of the the wings of the

theater and do a dance

for the audience and make them aware

briefly of what's happening and then

pull back of course

we're doing things all the time but the

audience is not consciously aware of it

but in certain films at certain times

this

sudden prominence of the subterfuge of

what we're doing

is i think it has a value

this is another nice quote vladimir

nabalkov

a writer but i would say a filmmaker and

certainly a film editor

must combine the precision of a poet

with the passion of a scientist

and he's getting at the contradictory

there which because

the common wisdom is that poets are full

of passion

and scientists are full of precision but

he was a lepidopterist he was a kind of

scientist but also a great writer

and he knows that in a sense the the

scientist

is full of passion but it's bridled

passion

it's bridled by the discipline of

science

and poets have passion uh

but also for their work to work and we

know this absolutely in editing there

has to be an underlying precision to it

you have to respect

the decimal points of what it is that

that we do

and so we discovered

uh montage i'd like to call it what

what's the word

in swedish for editing

in swedish clip so it's cutting

you know same in english editing or the

cutting

i prefer the romance languages polish

also

talks about montage which is building

and we all know from what we do that

yes of course there is a time for

editing

for cutting down but you have to build

it first before you can cut it

down and

[Music]

in in the romance languages montage

is applied way outside of film

a plumber comes into your house to

montage the pipes

meaning to connect up the pipes uh to

make sure that

the size of the pipe is appropriate for

the job and that the joins are clean and

nothing leaks

and it goes where it's supposed to go

and

you can kind of think of editing as a

sort of plumbing

that each shot is a pipe that has a

certain width and a certain

speed of delivery and then you have to

join it to the next

pipe and make sure that there are no

leaks make sure that that

whatever whatever the value is that that

join

is correct and goes off at the right

angle

and delivers the fluid which is emotion

to you the audience at the right time

and the right place so cinema

was not invented with motion pictures

motion pictures are

the technical invention

of showing that films at 24 or 25 frames

a second

will create the illusion of continuous

motion but

cinema depends on montage of course this

is a direct

challenge now by films that have

apparently no cuts in them

what is what is the value of of that

there's this word that is overused now

which is immersive

the idea that somehow a film that

doesn't have any cuts in it is more

immersive

personally and we can talk about this in

dialogue i don't

feel that i i think it's kind of the

opposite

that cutting in the fleming sense of the

word

when the cutting is good or great um

it's it's more immersive in the sense

that it's more like dreams which are

this private theater that we all

go into every evening and experience for

six or eight hours a night

but it's it's here with us i i don't

think

[Music]

people will make lots of cutlass films

it's just

uh it's very time consuming

and um i i think

it it other than the the technical

interest and oh how did they do that

it has a limited shelf life in my

feeling but that's something we can

discuss

so plumbing

you can think of what we do both in

sound and editing

as a braided chord

of three strands

one of them is plumbing which is simply

how do we get here from there

and in when i started out in film 50

plus years ago

the plumbing was very straightforward we

were shooting film

everyone had been doing it the same way

and there was just

this is how we do it um you have

you shoot the film you send it to the

lab the work group comes back you

code it you sync it up with the sound

you cut it

you get it to where you want it you send

it to the negative cutter who conforms

the negative

you time the negative you mix the sound

and then you marry the two things

together and you're done

and now at the beginning of every film

and i'm sure you know this all

personally there's a week

at least of discussions of okay on this

film what's the workflow going to be

because the technology is changing so

fast

um the cameras are developing faster and

faster

you know i i think we're at the limit 8k

you know

maybe 12k uh it's it's like that

that begins to create its own problems

um

certainly in terms of the delivery of

the image we're at the limit of

of the human eyeball to discern detail

when we're talking about 4k uh i think

uh also something for discussion anyway

plumbing

and writing

we all know that as editors

uh that much of what we do is the final

draft of the screenplay that's been said

over and over again does the screenplay

and then there's the interpretation of

that screenplay

in the directing and then there is the

interpretation of that interpretation in

the

editing and then a kind of secondary

interpretation with the soundtrack which

is sort of like a greek

chorus that is commenting in the best

sense

on what's happening visually sometimes

at odds with it

other times reinforcing it that's a

whole other thing that we can talk about

when do we want to reinforce and when do

we want to be

interestingly at odds with what we're

looking at

because that's the quickest way to

engage

an audience is to give them subtly and

effectively a paradox that they can

solve

if we simply give them what it is that

we're talking about

in a sense an orchestra where all the

instruments are playing the same note

that's effective for about five seconds

and then it becomes very boring because

we're you know what else

so just like in a symphony you want the

various orchestral groupings

to be commenting on each other and

reinforcing each other

and diverging from each other in very

interesting ways so the various

disciplines within film the camera the

sound the editing

the costume the production design can

all be

commenting in their different ways on

the core

which is the characters and the story

and

interpreting them in different ways

and then there is in editing what you

would call the performance

and this is the equivalent uh in music

since we're talking about music

in terms of the bowing of the violin

and we esteem certain violinists

why because of that technique there's

something about the way they

dig in to the note

and the way they finesse the vibrato

and the way they lift all of all of

these subtle things that you

feel intuitively and that you learn to

channel when you go to music school

there are editorial equivalents of that

in terms of where

where we cut and how we cut and what we

go to

after we make a cut these are all

very interesting personal things

that characterize the work of each

editor does an editor have a personal

style

that's also up for up for question

certainly the editor the the unique

thing about an editor is

that among all the heads of departments

of camera

production design costume and whatever

the editor

frequently is on the film for the

longest

throughout the production of the film

and also

is has to and is obliged to

uh shift in the hierarchy

of the film organization at the

appropriate moment

in a diplomatic way if

at a certain point the film editor is

like the pianist interpreting the

emperor concerto

they're playing every note and they're

doing it again with this performance

how the notes are struck how you linger

how you

trill our characteristic of each pianist

in an interpretive way and we value

certain pianists

and we uh we don't uh

value so much certain other pianists

because of this mysterious

touch um but

uh an editor is is that but also will be

required and really obligated at certain

points to stop

playing and say you know i think we

should

change these movements put them in a

different order

it's like they're having a dialogue with

the composer

uh and say you know i'm going to instead

of trilling here

i'm going to hit all the notes at the

same time

uh well okay so that editor

is now just not an interpreter but an

orchestrator

and then especially if the film

is not working something in the concept

it's up there on the screen but

something's not right

the editor can jump up another level and

say

enter into the role of a composer

somebody who is writing the story along

with the director

and this is obviously the delicatest

part of our craft how do you navigate

those

shifts the other

members the other heads of departments

can

and should do this but but they don't

do it quite as much as editors are

called upon

to do it there's a whole other thing to

talk about in terms of

sound mixing and we can get into that

later but there's another

sensitivity in terms of the re-recording

mixers

have to be sensitive to the fact that

this is the last

time the director can solve any of the

problems in the film

the film is locked almost always

and here we are in the mix but the

director in the back of the director's

mind is this

niggling problem and i never really got

that moment with the actor

is there anything we can do in the mix

now with the music and the sound effects

to solve that problem and

[Music]

mixers re-recording mixers have to be

sensitive to

the sensitivity of the director about

that

and rise to the occasion to help to

solve that problem

to be aware that there is a problem and

not

simply to think of this obviously as

simply a technical or even just as an

artistic

thing but uh creative in the highest

sense of what we're doing and

of course we're all bound by schedules

and time

but these things do enter into it i just

wanted to say

a few things my the book

in the blink of an eye is notorious

for the something that's called the rule

of six and i just wanted to go over that

to

dispel some misconceptions about it

sometimes that have

emerged the the primary

goal is to

to create and to maintain

and to direct the emotion of the

audience

in the biggest sense of that emotion of

course we can always go for easy emotion

but we may not want to do that at

any particular moment we have to think

of the

total emotional curve of the whole film

and not to go for the jugular every time

and that's this is very hard to define

and if you could define it you would

have the

aladdin's lamp of how to make a

successful film every time we we simply

don't know

how to do this this is one of those uh

acupuncture things that i talked about

at the beginning we're just

we're we have intuitions about some of

this but we don't

have a engineering handbook for this

kind of stuff

next most important is story making it

intelligible

if you're you know you don't want to

confuse the audience

you want to uh keep them interested

uh you don't want to be too obvious uh

but you also have to make

sense uh and in an interesting way i

i like to think of the ideal film on

this level being a kind of sustained

deja vu

experience that your their people are

watching the film they can't

what's going to happen next but when it

does happen just like a deja vu

experience you think oh yes of course

that happened and so in a sense the

audience begins to feel that they are

creating the film that they are looking

at

and then this mysterious sense of rhythm

which is like dance

do you have rhythm can you dance uh

i think these three things

are if you say or do you want to be a

film editor

do you have a sense of rhythm do you

have a sense of how to tell a story

and do you can you empathize with

characters and with the audience to

allow this emotion to be

channeled these are the core things and

the

the not well the sad fact is that not

everybody has these talents

and we can teach this we can say it's

important

but just like in dancing if you want to

be a ballet dancer you have to have

that something that allows your

your mind and your brain to work with

the nerves of your body and the muscles

of your body to create

an interesting dance and not everybody

could do that it's just

that's how it goes then this

secondary thing which is

what you might call eye trace which is

where is the audience looking at any one

moment

on the screen and you have to or should

have a good intuition

about where 90 of the audience is

looking at the moment of the cut to

either

in the incoming shot to put something

there that is interesting

you can think of that ball of attention

as

kind of a an animated thing that moves

around the screen and it's the

editor's obligation to carry that

ball of attention from across every cut

in an interesting way

or not in a fight scene you don't want

to do that

you want to have these jagged um and

sometimes in a love scene

you you want to have these jagged things

where the audience doesn't quite know

where to look

um so that's just it's it's an element

to take into consideration

then there is the the

trends the problems of translating three

dimensions

into the two dimensions of the screen

and this is most visible in

the 180 degree rule talking about

dialogue

uh dialogue scene um there are times

when

most of the time we want to obey this

but many times we don't

and you have to choose where not to do

this and know what you're doing

and the film has to support that

different films

will allow you to do that other films

will say no you can't do that

and you have to learn the language of

the film in order to know that

and then uh the just the 3d continuity

of space where is the characters

in the three-dimensional room

uh not literal room but the the space of

the

the scene and this is the last and

least important of these things

so there is a hierarchy here and

uh in no sense is

a cut supposed to do all of these things

uh

it's just these are what are in a

simplified form these are the things

that

are in play and that you should be

thinking about consciously or sometimes

subconsciously when you're doing it

if if you're presented with a cut that

doesn't work

then my suggestion is work your way

up this list by removing each of these

things if the cut doesn't work because

you're trying to maintain

3d continuity get rid of it you know

just

going so the person will jump

from opening the car door to

cut opening the door to the apartment

and we don't

watch the person move we understand what

happened we

we were using the geography of the

screen

to move the character we're not using

we're not relying on the actual space

through which that character has to move

and in the early days of cinema we were

tentative about this

and so those early films did spend time

moving people around

and now we don't largely don't do that

anymore so

and then 180 degree rule if if you

really

can't do it get rid of it i trace get

rid of it

and now we get into more sensitive

territory uh

if you have to break rhythm to get

emotion and story across

do that and and in the extreme

sense if you to get to maintain the

emotion

if you have to confuse the audience

slightly do that

don't stay there very long it's like

those uh training flights for astronauts

where

they they fly them in these

big planes and they do an arc of

like that and suddenly the people in the

plane are free-floating

because the plane is actually falling

through space

um and it lasts about 30 or 40 seconds

and it it trains astronauts of how to

live in a space without any gravity

so a story is a kind of gravity that is

pulling at

you and you have to acknowledge it and

take advantage of it and

use it to transport you from one place

to another

like we do with gravity but if you have

to get rid of it for a while go ahead

and then you're in the land of this sort

of pure

state but you can't stay there very long

in a in a two-hour film a short film

maybe maybe that's the whole point is

just

this but a long film is something

that has to have the gravity of story

uh behind it

the again this is another way of

thinking this kind of acupuncture of

cinema

the the classic hollywood cut uh which

is

a cut on matching action and this was

an attempt to in the early days to

create a grammar of how could we make

how could we create

a continuous reality

when it's broken up by cuts

and one of the solutions was to use an

action

as the impetus to make a cut

the person gestures like this we cut in

the middle of the gesture

and in the next shot that gesture

completes itself the gesture might be

what i just did

or it might be somebody getting up from

a chair

or somebody picking up a gun to shoot or

something but its

origin was a fear that the audience

would be upset if we made too violent a

cut

and it it just simply got accepted as

this is what we do

i had an interesting experience uh on

the

film i was working on a few years ago uh

brad bird's tomorrowland

and brad bird is an animator who

made the jump to live action

and he did his first live-action film

was the

mission impossible film that he did

and then he decided to make this film

tomorrowland

uh which there were lots of problems

with the film

uh we can talk about that later but

it was interesting because i

tend not to cut on matching action

that's part of my bowling technique i

will do it

but i don't do it as a default mode

and we can talk about the reasons for

that later

but brad because he's an animator and he

thinks on a shot by shot basis

that's in his dna is that

the animated shot moves to a certain

point and then there's an

action and because each shot is very

expensive to

draw and render that's where the cut

point is

and so designing the next shot in the

storyboard because everything is

storyboarded of course

that action is what picks it up

and so we didn't fight about this but

this was an irritant i think in his

uh opinion of me uh

in that he kept saying well no no make

let let

the move happen and he's the first

director i ever worked with

who would talk to me in frames um

none of the other uh directors

least of all somebody like francis or

anthony mangella would never never

talk in frames to me and never even

anything specific they would just talk

about a feeling

and then allow me to interpret that

feeling by

what i would do um but brad would

you know because he's an animator he

would talk about

just extend that two frames uh i

i um i'm aware

of when i'm uh and in a situation where

i am not

mixing uh a film but i'm sitting in the

back and somebody else is mixing the

film

i will never talk about decibels uh by

that token

and i always say you make that louder by

two teaspoons

and i'm leave it up to the mixers to

decide what is a teaspoon

basically what i'm saying is what i

heard that line of dialogue was not loud

enough

make it louder by two teaspoons

you decide you know i'm leaving it up to

the mixers what that

means so then

the classic soviet cut is a dialectic

opposition

just the opposite of the hollywood cut

this was you know the classic koola shop

experiment of the

empty bowl of soup and the face

conclusion hunger that the

the truth is that we we get

a a value added from the juxtaposition

of two shots

and the more frontal the juxtaposition

is the better

because that allows the thing and i am

in general

sympathetic with this as a way of

editing

but i think it has to be modulated you

can obviously go too far

with this and it becomes a dialectic

sledgehammer

that is forcing the point so

what i'd like to propose is a third way

and this is just something i call nodal

editing

and a diagram of this would be

let's say time is moving in this

direction

and a shot has a certain vector to it

certain things are happening in the shot

where do you interrupt that vector and

cut to the next shot you could do it

there whatever there is

and in that case you the next shot would

also have

an unfolding and that word is kind of a

key to the way i think about this

is that each shot is a kind of flower

that at the cut point blossoms from the

cut point

um there could be a different

place to cut there or there

so how do we decide what it is that

we're doing so let me just run a clip

here

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

me

so he's walking across this derelict

section

of san francisco which is where he has

his office

and obviously the eye trace is looking

at him

he's the only real moving thing in the

shot so we're not

and he's the star the movie's gene

hackman so we're looking at him

[Music]

so he's off now on the right hand side

of the

screen at the cut

point uh the

cut point is uh where

the this bar of black is obscuring

harry's face so the point

the cut point is basically a cut to

darkness

we don't know what we're looking at

because we have been looking over here

on the right hand side

and then there's a cut and now the

the moving elevator reveals harry's face

which allows our eyes to move over

to the other side of the screen i'll go

backwards here for a second

if i can

uh

so there's technically a jump cut

the shot continued all the way uh

francis allowed gene to go all the way

into the

cage in the back and then they had

dialogue in this

long wide shot would we

stand for that i thought no

we have to compress this film we can't

there's at a certain point the shot is

not interesting anymore

it's your decision and here's where we

get into kind of boeing techniques

your decision where does that interest

flag or

just before the moment of flagging so

you want the audience to think oh

where are we this is a big room and the

character is moving away from us he's

going somewhere

and cut and your decision about

exactly where that cut point is is part

of this

boeing technique it ideally

has to be just before the audience

would get tired of looking at it and uh

audience is a complex

entity it uh is going to be

uh there are people who will think

that's too long there are

other people who say i'm confused so

you're you're trying to

gauge the the 90 factor

uh in this so let me go back here for a

sec

i mean these are all basically very

simple things but this these were where

i discovered these things so i'm

playing them for you

so the point of focus the eye trace

he was where we

see him now in other words as a figure

he's moving deep into the shot and then

at the cut

point the eye trace is looking right

at him and he's in one of these

unfolding gestures he's

is taking off the coat he hasn't taken

off the coat already he's not

about to take off the coat the shot

unfolds

with this gesture of taking off the coat

tomorrow night did you know that yeah i

told myself

listen among those preeminent in the

field expected to attend

are hal lipset and harry call from san

francisco

uh kenneth sperry will speak on

surveillance in the law

wait a minute let's say this

also attending will be william t moran

of detroit michigan

since when william beam around detroit

michigan become preeminent in the field

oh he's very big there you want some

coffee

i was in this will relate to that in a

second i was

in lyon france during the shooting of

unbearable lightness of being

phil kaufman's film on milan kundera's

book

with lena olin who you all know and

juliet binoche

and daniel day lewis this was one of

juliet this was juliet's first english

language

film

and it turned out i was there longer

than i thought i would be

because of various things i was helping

shoot some second unit

and i ran out of things to read and i

came across this book in lyon i read

french so i picked it up i'm interested

in cosmology this is what the book was

about

and it he in the course of

talking about uh the origin of the

universe he quoted a story from this

author

kurtzio malaparte about some uh

during the siege of leningrad some

horses some soviet

military horses who were running from a

forest fire

they ran into lake uh ladoga next to

saint petersburg and uh or leningrad as

then was and they were flash frozen

suddenly the lake uh turned to what's

known as

frazzle ice uh kind of slushy ice

they were caught in a kind of mud of ice

and

they couldn't get out they froze and the

next morning

malaparte who was with the finnish army

uh looked out and said what's that over

there oh look the lake is frozen

overnight

what's that over there and he went and

saw hundreds

of frozen horses who had been

immobilized it was like a

classic greek sculpture garden of broken

limbs and heads and various agony and

they went out and lit up cigarettes and

wandered around this

sculpture garden so i thought what an

amazing story

and i heard about malaparte because i

studied italian literature

but i hadn't studied this story

and so i got interested in him

he built this

house you may have seen it it's a the

house in contempt goddard's film

he built this with a local builder

with their own hands in the late 1930s

and i

i began translating malaparte's uh

poetry um i had given an interview

after english patient and in the course

of the interview

which was with a poetry magazine i made

an analogy between

editing and translation

in the sense that when you translate

from one language to another

you're translating from a language that

has

a set of efficiencies built into the

language

and those efficiencies are different in

the next language

some languages have a word for this idea

other languages don't so you can't

you have to translate it with a phrase

rather than a word

and so you're as a translator you're

constantly navigating

these efficiencies uh and interpreting

them in different ways and if you do

this

there then you have to do that here and

if you do that then you have to do this

and oh now i'm in trouble because and

for editing you should be familiar with

this because we are

translating from the language of text

which is the script

into the language of moving images

and sound in time and each of those

things have different efficiencies

language is very efficient at certain

things very inefficient at other things

in film we find sometimes the exact

opposite

a picture is worth a thousand words but

maybe a word is worth a thousand

pictures

so we're i was saying oh well an editor

is like a translator

and when i got home that evening i

thought do i know what i'm talking about

maybe not and so i thought well

malapartie i'll

translate some malaparties so i started

doing it

and i found that the state of mind

aside from the fact that i'm doing very

different things with my hands

the meant the mental stuff that's going

on

was exactly like what happens to me in

editing

and this this actually became a

uh a kind of interesting

way to come down at the end of a film

because as

all of you know at the end of the film

the ending is sometimes very brutal

you've been so deeply involved in this

world and then suddenly it's over

and now you're at where am i what's

what's happening and by doing some

translating for a couple of weeks

it it's an easy way to get you back into

the world

very inexpensive also so here's

uh here's the original pros that

malaparte

wrote what i was surprised at is when i

did the translation i started writing it

in

what's called free verse it turns into

a kind of poetry and there are various

reasons for that and i'm not a poetic

person i don't read a lot of poetry so i

was curious and i just let it happen

so when i translated it it became

this and in english

so this is my native country the land

where i was born a foreigner

his dad was a german and but he was born

in italy

the home where i came to know the

loneliness of the outsider he was

laughed at at school because his last

name was german

this is back in 1895 1900

the solitude of hope the struggles of

becoming a man

anyway what i

suddenly realized is that the word that

you

use to end each line with is significant

and it's not grammatical that

where you break doesn't have anything to

do with where the commas are or the

periods

but it has to do with the internal

rhythm of the line

itself and where that rhythm is

building to and then the concept that it

ends with

propels you onto the next line so each

ending word has a significance to it in

a sense

you're exposing those words to the

ozone uh of the blank page

which is a way of underlining each of

those words

without underlining them

so if you just read the end words of

each line

country foreigner loneliness solitude

struggles man

died descended country dead rivers

trees forests head you wouldn't know

exactly what the poem was about but you

really got a good sense of

what you were in for if you read the

whole poem

if we restored this to prose in english

you'll see kind of what i'm talking

about because now

all those significant words are still

there but they're buried

within the fabric of the paragraph

and it was here where the light bulb

went off and i realized oh this is just

like

editing in the sense that we each shot

is like a line of poetry

that has its own internal rhythms and

development

and we choose usually and here's where i

divest myself of the hollywood cut the

cut on action we choose the frame to end

on which

is should be as iconic

as possible and indicative of the

overall message of the film

so if you just looked at the last frame

of every cut it should say something

about what the film is about

and then we shift

to the next shot but from neurological

studies that people have done

that moment of transition is shocking

despite what

we said earlier what i said earlier

about oh it works continuity editing

works

there is a shock that it doesn't make us

throw up

but the neurologically the brain says

what the hell just happened

oh and this all happens in microseconds

oh it's different i must remember

still what that last image was before i

decide where we're going

and so there's like a little flash bulb

that goes off

at the end of every shot

and which those ending images are

imprinted

in the audience's mind which again goes

exactly against

the idea of of cutting on action

the cutting on action is trying to

defeat

that flash bulb moment and say don't pay

any attention

to this moment of transition and i so i

think it it achieves exactly the

opposite of what it's trying to achieve

but

again this is early in the development

of cinema we've only been doing it for a

hundred years

all of the other arts are lost in

antiquity

dance theater story

painting whatever you know thirty

thousand fifty thousand years ago

but this is brand new and we're still

trying to figure it out

so each line is a certain length

and you could look at that and then you

could

make a transition to

a scene in a film and this is the length

of the shots

in the the tape assembly scene in the

conversation so i'll just play that

here this now matter of fact it's out of

the country he asked me to

get the takes from you and give you the

money

mistakes are dangerous

someone may get hurt

so here's now that i'm thinking about

this is a good example of the

hierarchical

thing in the original script and as shot

harry call the scene with harry call

and these tapes was done as a one

continuous scene

uh he threaded the tapes up he

we showed how he what he did the

technology of it

and then we discovered that there was

a an obscure line of dialogue

and he uncovered that line of dialogue

which was

he'd kill us if he had the chance and

then he finished the tapes and went and

visited a girlfriend

and then the next day went to hand in

the tapes which is this

scene and it

was one of those things that on paper

looked fine

but in the film was

not something wasn't working there

and uh the film as a whole was having

problems with the few audiences that we

showed it to

uh who couldn't what is this film about

and that was partly francis's decision

in making the film

was to hybridize a murder mystery

with a character study to combine as he

said

herman hesse and alfred hitchcock and

even the name of harry kall in in

hermann hesset was harry holler this is

harry original

harry caller that became harry kahl

c-a-l-l that eventually became harry

kahl

c-a-u-l which then became

emblazoned as the transparent raincoat

because

when a fetus is born sometimes with a

call

around it which is a semi-transparent

membrane

so harry is as you saw there were always

wearing this semi-transparent membrane

anyway

francis was shooting godfather two at

this time while i was editing

and we were having this problem and

francis said at a certain point he said

you know i can't deal with two films at

the same time

let's put conversation on hold

and i'll deal with it after godfather ii

let's just

you know and this was a big

big decision uh and i went for a run

uh to decide what what's

happening here and

what should i do and this was a crisis

of

the hierarchy should i be

the interpreter and say okay good

whatever you decide

or should i say no uh and in the middle

of the run i stopped and i looked at the

landscape

and i said you know i'm not gonna go

along with this decision

so i phoned up francis in lake tahoe

where he was shooting

i said i have a couple of ideas let's

not shell the film let me do these ideas

and see

what happens so one of the ideas

was taking the tape assembly and

splitting it in half

um and just at the beginning just

showing technically what he does

um and that's it we just get a glimpse

of it

and then he goes visit his girlfriend

and then goes to hand in the tape

and there's something wrong

the director isn't there and

the harrison ford character says those

tapes are dangerous you know what i mean

well we don't know what he means harry

doesn't know what he means

because he didn't fully decode the tape

he didn't do a good enough job is the

implication

so now this tape which represents

fifteen thousand dollars

uh in 1972 which is two hundred thousand

dollars today

was now oh dangerous money

and so he takes the tape back

uh and grows

back to the back to his lab to find out

what is the danger here

and in the course of doing that

he sees in this office

the two young people

who were

in the conversation the girl

[Music]

[Music]

so he's in the elevator he's trapped

with this girl

he's been told these tapes are dangerous

what's going on this this sequence ended

uh as shot the elevator reached the

ground floor and they went their

separate ways

but i decided again with this idea of

the flash bulb

and don't let the elevator end

end the shot with him trapped and then

cut

from that image of a band trapped to the

image of the tape

reel itself so these two iconic images

you

again this is this kind of dialectical

crash these two images together

but what about me yes

i started this conversation anyhow

you didn't

remember

oh look that's terrible

it's not hurting anyone no matter are we

oh god every time i see one of those old

guys i always say the same thing

what do you think

i always think that he was once

hey harry what do you say we take a

break come on we'll go to alex transfer

i'll buy you a bill

how about that no i won't finish this

so that line of dialogue i thought you

turned those tapes in

is an added line of dialogue to

to help cement this idea that he didn't

already in the original screenplay he

had already turned them in

uh or or he was about to turn them in in

this after the scene

but now it acknowledges the fact that

these scenes are split

so that line was an added voice-over

line

and that respond uh gene hackman be

quiet will you all right all right or

also

uh added lines in fact john cazale is

not saying all right all right he's just

something we just forced those lines

into his

into his mouth

tired of drinking anyhow so the

i'm interrupting the rhythm here to talk

about it but uh

the the now we are listening like harry

call

these tapes are dangerous what do you

mean dangerous it's just

these inconsequential lines of dialogue

so

we like harry are trying to listen for

what where is the danger where is the

danger

what a stupid conversation stan please

i'm trying to work

also added lines of dialogue to mostly

everything

[Music]

but not today

stanley please i'm trying to get this

done

well i'm getting fed up

well what about your asking me questions

all day long

jesus don't say that

but for christ's sake stan don't say

that again

please don't use that word in vain it

bothers me

what's the matter

your work's getting sloppy

later in the week sunday maybe

sunday definitely

we had a much better track if you pay

more attention to the recording less

attention what they were talking about

i can't see why a couple of questions

about what the hell's going on can get

you so out of joint because i can't sit

here and explain the personal problems

of my clients

jagtar hotel

three o'clock room 773.

i heard if you filled me in a little bit

once in a while did you ever think of

that it has nothing to do with me and

even less to do with you

it's curiosity did you ever hear that

it's just goddamn human nature

listen if there's one surefire rule that

i have learned in this business

is that i don't know anything about

human nature i don't know anything about

curiosity

that's not part of what i do what i this

is my business

and when i'm

i'll see you later

telephone

i love you i'm spending too much time

[Music]

together

[Music]

my telephone

so

he'll kill us if he got the chance

woof

he'd kill us if he got the chance

so the that character

at that point is uh

knows that the tapes are dangerous he

knows that the

people he was handing the tapes into

know that they're dangerous

he understands he thinks why they're

dangerous

and he he's a catholic so he goes to

confession

and doesn't confess exactly what is

going on but almost goes all the way

there so it this and a couple of other

changes that i made in that week

i then showed them to francis and he

said okay good

let's we we will finish this film

this year and he gave the go-ahead to uh

to go to the final mix and do the final

negative cutting and everything and

luckily that allowed the film to come

out in the same year

as godfather 2. a conversation came out

in the spring of 74

and godfather 2 came out in december of

74. and both films got nominated for

best picture

imagine if if i had not gone

up in hierarchy and said francis i'm not

going to do what you said

i'm going to try these other things

then the conversation would have come

out

a couple of years later and watergate

and all of that stuff which were very

much in the zeitgeist

would have the film would have seemed

like an

afterthought rather than something

actually talking about

things that were happening uh live at

the moment

and uh so and you know francis

uh got these two

amazing best film nominations in the

same year

and that gave him the uh

the power to do whatever he wanted and

ironically he's he said you know i'm

tired of these films

making me uh pull my guts out

and hack away at them in full view of

the public i want to just do an easy

film with three bankable stars

and lots of action i'll do apocalypse

now

and so he did so i see that i've

wildly overstayed my welcome here

i've got lots more to say but i will cut

it short

the

comparison with ku53 the documentary is

also

that the events that are happening right

now in iran and the relationship between

iran and the west

we didn't imagine when we were making

the film that there would be this

congruence

of these things but that's in fact

what's

happening so there's lots more to

to talk about so thank you very much