Everything you've ever heard about Walter Murch - that he's innately creative, that the breadth of his knowledge is not confined to any particular area, that he has the keen insight of a Zen master - is all true. Murch is an incredibly original and creative thinker, but never claims some special ability; for him, the creative process in general and editing in particular are crafts that can be taught and learned. This openness and curiosity gives him incredible insight into his art; all but one of his predictions in this book have come to pass, and even then that unrealized prediction came true in a strange, backwards way. I'd recommend reading this book whether you have any interest in editing or not. It's a lively and insightful text that anyone can find rewarding.

Kitabın hedef kitlesi sinema öğrencileri ve sinemaya teknik anlamda ilgi duyan kişiler. Bu kitle için eşsiz bir eser. Yazarın kurguya felsefik yaklaşımları gerçekten ufuk açıcı. Kurguyla ilk kez temas edecek kişileri belli yanlış ezberleri henüz oluşmadan çok doğru şekilde yönlendirebilir. Bu nedenle sinema öğrencilerinin henüz birinci sınıfta okumasını öneririm. Sayısal kurgu bölümünü ise bir tarih kitabı okur gibi okudum. 20 yıl önceki ön görüler şu an gerçek oldu ve aynen yazarın aklındaki soru işaretleri günümüzde de oluştu. Bu açıdan bile ne kadar kıymetli olduğunu çıkarabilirsiniz.

This book is really helpful in understanding the history and culture around video editing. I don't have a film background and after college got a job in video production--for companies, startups, etcs. My boss recommended that I read this and I finally did. While this book covers video editing from a high-level, theoretical perspective, a lot of the advice and thinking informs "lower" forms of video production. But in a way, the title of the book kind of says it all. There is tremendous power in cutting on blinks--and Murch points that we blink when we change the direction of where we are looking, which is similar to a cut in video editing. And that's one of the reason why cuts work. I think I was looking for some more practical tips and tricks for editing, but I'm glad I read this and learned about the history of linear editing. Also Murch suggests that editing be done while standing up. I'm not sure I've met any editors who follow this advice, but then again I'm not working on feature films. If this book did anything for me, it helped me fall in love more with the art of editing, but I'm not sure if it gave me a lot of insight on how to be a better editor.

Bók Walter Murch um klipp á kvikmyndum dregur upp ýmsar vangaveltur um vinnuaðferðir klipparans í gegnum tíðina þar sem Murch notast aðalleg við frásagnir úr eigin starfsæfi. Sem kvikmyndanemi og klippari fannst mér hann ná að draga upp marga góða punkta og opnaði augun mín fyrir allskonar nytsamlegum hugmyndum og pælingum til að hafa í huga þegar maður er kominn við klippiborðið.

Ég held að það sé mikilvægt fyrir mig sem klippara að rekja sögu klipps frá byrjun og fá innsýn inní vinnubrögð fyrri tíma. Margt af því sem Murch bendir á varðandi möguleg vandamál við klipp í stafræna heiminum vs analog er eitthvað sem ég get tengt við og lært af.

Svo er líka gaman að sjá hversu vel hann nær að spá fyrir náframtíðinni en allt sem hann segir hefur orðið að veruleika í dag. Vangaveltur hans svo um framtíð miðilsins og líkingu hans við málaralist fannst mér líka heillandi.

Í heildina vel skrifuð og auðlesin bók, þó seinni helmingurinn átti til með að dragast smá á langinn.

Lesin þreyttur í rúminu mínu, í pakkfullumstrætó úr Hamraborg og árla morguns á bensínstöðinni við Laugarveg, en kláruð í Stúdíó Sýrlandi við tökur á fyrstu breiðskífu Woolly Kind.

Oh, gosh. I have had this book since 2011 and I just got around to reading it. And I feel so stupid for waiting so long!

In The Blink Of An Eye: A Perspective On Film Editing was required for my going to film school, along with 15 other books (NONE OF WHICH WE READ BUT PAID FOR). This was supposed to be for our editing classes, of course, but we never opened a doggone page into this in any of those classes, and it's a shame. Because it's really good!

I still regret, haphazardly, not majoring in Editing during film school. I wanted to be a director but I loved editing as well. I edited videos as a kid, as a teen, and while I was at the school. It was super fun and rewarding and it woulda been the route to find gigs and jobs - unlike directing because it's intangible skill that future employers can't grasp onto. I went with Directing anyway because I'm an idiot and my school was made up of idiots too because when I asked to double major, focusing in Directing and minoring in Editing, they said I would have NO time for that. Turns out I had all the time in the world. They screwed me over.

Anyway, back to the book here...

It's great! Walter Murch, a long time editor, made a book from a couple lectures he's lectured about the art of editing - his personal editing philosophies, technical tips and tricks, and comparing the philosophical and technical differences between film editing and digital/electric editing. The first stuff was right up my alley; Murch's personal editing philosophies and his technical tips and tricks were super helpful and he talks about them in my stupid language. It's amazing how well-read he is on nearly everything and has the ability to relate everything to editing. There's a bit he he has about how people watching films are like bees, there's a bit about how the relationship between a director and a editor should be like a dreamer and a dream reader, and bunch of different examples.

Later in the book, after all that stuff, he talks about the differences between film editing and digital/electric editing. Even as someone who edits on a computer, I still had no idea what he was talking about. Because digital/electric editing back then is even so different from today. Needless to say I understood film editing even less. So when he got back to just talking about the philosophical differences of all these different systems, then I was able to hop back on his wave-length and start learning again. This will definitely be a book I'll be reading again and again when I need to.

Thanks, Walt!

enjoyable read with some practical takeaways, but not as applicable for me right now as it might be for someone on a 2 month long editing contract for a large studio / the second edition contains a lot of Murch’s processing of the transition of film / love his sentiments about the power of being in the theatre with others

me fue horrible en el control (update: mentí, tuve un 7)

Walter Murch takes you through his extensive experience editing films, and you find yourself learning things you'd never imagine you'd learn from a book like this. I went in thinking the title was purely a philosophical one, perhaps related to a story about editing a close up of a blinking eye, and while this does absolutely tie in to editing, you end up learning why a human blinks, and what that tells you about the human condition. You learn about sign language, about DNA and how all of these concepts have a profound equal in the world of film editing.

The only problem I had with this book is that towards the end Walter Murch goes into Digital editing, and explains some practical aspects of it. This book was written in 1999, and thus 21 years later, is mostly outdated or pretty much known. This only applies to the practical aspects of it. When he teaches me how to practically edit a film digitally, I feel as though my grandpa is explaining a smartphone to me. When he explains the thought process of a good emotional cut, I'm learning from a master, and would do well to heed his teachings.

Views of a celebrated film editor in a concise text. His thesis is that cuts are like eye blinks and eye blinks happen according to thought process. Hence a good cut should be seemless to the viewer.

There is one third of the book, added later, discussing digital age editing. You may skim/skip it, I suggest

A very light and illuminating read. I bought this book for my brother but soon after reading I found the content quite relatable when it comes to how budget and projects are managed. It gives a peek in how things work in post production. It’s interesting to get to know how, in past, the editors had to mechanically splice the films and had to review the films for years during editing phase. The writing of author demonstrates how thorough his note taking might be as well his grasp on the emotion for the stories he worked on. His technical predictions are spot on and left me quite impressed. A good read. The book has raised my curiosity for the movies - “Apocalypse Now” and “The English Patient”. And, I will surely watch them.

Editing is mysterious. On the one hand it is the most defining aspect of cinema, without which the medium wouldn’t be what it is, yet on the other hand, when it’s done right, it has to become invisible. When Walter Murch talks about the nature of editing and why we feel so comfortable with it he is right in pointing towards the subconscious brain processes, which already streamline incoming information as if they were a little editing machine. How many times have we heard the phrase “it just feels right” to describe a cut?

His talk on the relationship between blinks and thoughts is possibly the most crucial aspect of editing and should be one of the first things taught in any editing course. He really nails what it all boils down to: as an editor, one must feel and cut the story as if they were a character that is truthfully and emotionally involved in it. If your editing doesn't create this imaginary character it all falls flat; it’s a charade. Thus you can’t simply react to the material you’re given, you must also constantly analyse the human behaviour in it. This point is so overlooked by newer generations of editors.

Another important aspect of the book, especially for editors that have started after the digital revolution (like me) is to notice the increasing loss of physicality of the editor. Murch describes finding a cut point as being a gunslinger that has to nail the bullet. And he compares the precision and technicality of an editor’s job as that of a surgeon doing an operation. With the advancement of technology this physicality has been lost. There’s almost no spatial awareness when one sits at a desk in front of a screen. Everything outside the screen disappears and everything you need is within your hands’ reach. It is certainly more comfortable, and has its clear advantages, but in some ways it incurs the risk of no longer feeling the material. In this respect, Murch talks about the effects of the disappearance of the physical reels: no mountain of reels before you means no shudder, no stress, no anticipation, and no preparation.

His later reflections on what cinema is and where it seems to be heading are also a highlight. Most of the things he predicted have come true twenty years later — but how does cinema’s future look now that the development of AR and VR could potentially replace screens at some point this century? how will the medium be affected? will Hitchcock’s idea of a “hypnotic cinema” ever become true? It would be great to see a sequel of Murch’s perspective on this.

All in all, the book contains great little nuggets of knowledge — it is quite short, and feels more like a collection of lectures (which it is) than a fully-fledged book, but even so its content is so valuable that it has to be a must read for anybody interested in editing.

I bought this book for my RTF 318 film class at UT and never got around to reading it. I’ve since graduated and realized I’m not an editor, but this book has remained on my shelf as the professor said it was the best book on editing ever written. I decided to finally read it so I could at least have a greater understanding of the editing process as I collaborate with editors now and in the future of my career. I was very happy to find that this book barely focuses on the technical aspects of editing and takes a deep look at the theory of it all. Walter Mitch is a genius and he edited with the whole American Zoetrope generation at their peak. Reading his words was like reading Picasso describe his paintings. This is an excellent read that any film fan should take a look at it, whether you want to be an editor or not.