Like I just know how to watch a movie

Fascinating. The record of four conversations between the author, Michael Ondaatje and the subject, Walter Murch, film editor, sound mixer, director, renaissance man, on an endless stream of topics related directly and tangentially to the art of editing film. From Orson Welles ("For my style, for my vision of the cinema, editing is not simply one aspect: it's the aspect. The notion of 'directing' a film is the invention of critics like you..") to Rilke ("The point of life is to fail at greater and greater things"), this thing is chock full of aphorisms & insights.

Took my time learning about the editing techniques of one of Hollywood's unsung heros: Walter Murch. The conversations between Ondaatje and Murch are amazingly detailed and make you feel like you are sitting with them as you try to interrupt the conversation with your own brief and unspectacular (at least in my case) quips. I had to see these films again or for the first time after reading this book, including The English Patient, The Conversation, Rain People, Apocalypse Now, The Godfather, Touch of Evil (the remastered original by Welles).
If you enjoy reading about the artistry of film, you will enjoy it. Not to be read quickly, The Conversations should be taken in small bites. Because of the pandemic, I've held on to this library copy since March and it has been a pleasant friend all these months.

I made my living on the outskirts of the "real" film industry where I lived in NYC for forty years. By any stretch Mr. Murch's experiences far outstrip my editing challenges. However, anyone who professes to have an interest in filmmaking would benefit from reading his book. I wish it had been available at the beginning of my career (1966)... HA!
https://www.charlesoslavens.com/class...

I loved this book - even if you can't follow all of the movie references, it is still one of the best books I have ever read about movie making, the power of sound, editing, story telling and the amazing art that goes into great film=making.

Fundamentally changed how I watch films, and gave me a more nuanced understanding of the power of both an editor and the elements that come together (intentionally and by accident) when it comes to filmmaking.

I read this a while ago and I'm returning to it since I just read The English Patient and finally watched the movie. It was excellent without having the prerequisites. I can only imagine what it will be like now.

Four conversations between novelist Michael Ondaatje and the great film editor Walter Murch---who had worked on the filmic adaptation of Ondaatje's The English Patient . Murch was also responsible for editing Coppola's Godfather trilogy, plus Apocalypse Now, and The Conversation among dozens of other stellar, stellar films, coming out of a sound mixing and editing background. If anybody remembers the thrilling opener of Apocalypse Now, the helicopter blades becoming the fan in Willard's room, back and forth, and the bleed of the sound... that was Murch's handiwork.

What was most interesting to me about the book was not only the insider's view of the making of these and other films--some of my favorites ever, the ones that lured me into film school for a brief moment--but also the lessons that film editing has for fiction-writing, something that struck Ondaatje as well. In that way, it was a great book about writing when it wasn't about writing at all, but about rhythm, framing, narrative juxtaposition, choice.

I have underlined so much of this book, it's an embarrassment of riches what to quote here.

"Don't get too smart too early. When you've finally gotten it all assembled, you can see how far the film has strayed from its intended trajectory."

"If you're too much on the nose, or you present too many ideas too quickly, either they are so obvious that they're uninteresting or there's so much confusion that you can't take it all in.
The editor works at both the macroscopic and the microscopic levels: ranging from deciding how long precisely each shot is held, to restructuring and repositioning scenes, and sometimes to eliminating entire subplots."

Cutting a linear story with a single pov like The Talented Mr. Ripley or The Conversation, as opposed to multi-pov stories like The English Patient or the Godfathers:
"Linearity does sometimes present its own problems... particularly regarding a film's length... Films with a single point of view are on borrowed time if they are more than two hours long. Since there's only one point of view, there's no relief if the audience is not one hundred percent with the film and it can subsequently seem too long even if it isn't objectively so.'

Ondaatje asks about Martin Sheen's intimate, inner voice as narrator of Apocalypse Now, where did that come from?
"There's a direct line from the narration in John Huston's Moby Dick through Zinnemann's Julia [which Murch also worked on] into Apocalypse Now.... a sonically intimate quality... Houston was dissatisfied with how it was sounding because he thought it had a defamatory quality... [during the recording, Basehart] leaned forward close to the microphone and asked 'John, what should I do next?" The microphone was right against his mouth. And Huston said, "That's it!... I want all the narration to sound just like that." "But I'm much too close." "No, you're not!"... If you position the microphone perfectly, you can get the intimacy without too many unwanted side effects... I asked Marty [Sheen} to imagine that the microphone was somebody's head on the pillow next to him, and that he was just talking to her with that kind of intimacy."


On editing actors:
he doesn't watch the shooting, he doesn't want to see any of that Sturm und Drang.

"The editor, who also has an influence on the way the film is construction, can (and should in my view) remain ignorant of all that stuff in order to find value where others might not see value, and on the other hand, to diminish the value of certain things that other people see as far too important. It's one of the crucial functions of the editor. To take, as far as it is possible to take, the view of the audience, who is seeing the film without any knowledge of all the things that went into its contrsuciton. You are studying them the way a sculptor studies a piece of marble tbefore decking to chisel it--here. So have to know al the hidden veins and strnetht and weaknesses of the rock that I'm working with, in order to know where best to put the chisel."

On ambiguity:
Ondaatje: "I've heard you talk before about the importance of ambiguity in film, and the need to save that ambiguous quality which exists in a book or painting and which you think a film does not often have. And at the same time in a mix you are trying to 'perfect' that ambiguity."

Murch: "It's a paradox. And one of the most fruitful paradoxes... even when the film is finished, there should be unsolved problems. Because there's another stage, beyond the finished film: when the audience views it. You want the audience to be co-conspirators in the creation of the work..." If you removed the ambiguity, you would "be doing the film a disservice. But the paradox is that uoui have to approach every problem as if it's desperately important to solve it. You can't say I don't want to slave this because it's got to be anbiguous if you do that, then there's a sort of haemorrhaging of the organism.
... As hard as you work, you must have this secret, unspoken hope that one very significant problem will remain unsolved. But you never know what it is until the film is one."

This kind of thinking goes so far beyond the average movie book--Murch is able to handle large ideas, his work comes out of those ideas. Just a few examples of where this book goes, plus real insider stuff on the making of some of the great films of our time.

Tiny example: I didn't know that Harry Caul--protagonist of The Conversation--was named for Harry Hall, protagonist of Hesse's Steppenwolf. Murch talking about Caul's transparent raincoat (his 'caul'): "It led from he costume to a way of acting, a way of being: Harry Caul is a man who has a membrane between himself and reality The film is about the shedding of that membrane, and how painful it is for this character."

"

Fascinating discussions focussing on film and sound editing between author/poet Michael Ondaatje and film editor/sound editor/director/writer/translator Walter Murch who worked on Godfather Parts 1-3, The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now with Francis Ford Coppola;The English Patient with Anthony Minghella; restoration of Orson Wells' A Touch of Evil based on Wells'notes; Return to Oz which Murch co-wrote and directed, etc. The conversations provide insight into the considerations, craft and subtleties that go into putting a movie together, and what I've learned will add depth to how I watch/listen to movies from now on.

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M: "I discovered that if I used what you might call a precipitant sound, something we associate with a specific environment but that is itself distinct, then the other sounds come along automatically. What I did was record somebody dropping a wrench fifty feet away...That little sound was able to bring along with it, imaginatively, all the traffic. But the traffic sound exists in your mind. I spent a lot of time trying to discover those key sounds that bring universes along with them. I tend not to visualize but auralize, to think about sound in terms of space. Rather than listen to the sound itself, I listen to the space in which the sound is contained."

O: "As in the way we hear that bell in the distance, subliminally, while the English Patient eats a plum--so we become conscious of the landscape between his bedroom and the bell, which seems half a mile away."

M: "And by implication, yes, all the birds and the insects that live in that world. And, by contrast, it is very different from the racket you've heard in the film up to that point, of the convoys going through the mountains and planes being shot down out of the sky and trains jiggling back and forth. You're now in an environment quiet enough to allow you to hear a distant bell. The bell brings a whole raft of associations along with it..."

درسته که تو عنوان کتاب از تدوین اسم برده شده اما تدوین تنها موضوع مصاحبه با والتر مرچ نیست. بیشتر حجم بحث‌های فنی و زیبایی‌شناسانه‌ی کتاب اتفاقن به موضوع صدا در فیلم برمی‌گرده که البته چیزی جدا از تدوین نیست. درک والتر مرچ از جهان اطراف و شناختی که به واسطه تمرکز و مداقه روی انسان‌ها و بطور کلی جهان بیرون موقع تدوین و صداگذاری به دست آورده خیلی راهگشا و خوندنی بود. مثلن ایده‌ای که در مورد پلک زدن آدم‌ها و کارکرد ضمنی‌ش داره یا ایده‌ی رادیکالی که در مورد ابداع یه روش شبه نت‌نویسی برای سینما مطرح می‌کنه. گذشته از اون نکات و توصیه‌های عملی که به درد کار ��وزانه‌ی تدوین می‌خوره و نمی‌خوام به "ترفند" تقلیلش بدم هم می‌تونن به عنوان یه هندبوک تدوین خیلی به کار بیان. تنها نکته منفی بعضی اشکالات جزیی تو ترجمه عناوین فیلم‌ها و اسم افراد و البته اسم مصاحبه کننده کتاب یعنی مایکل اونداتیه بود که به اشتباه مایکل اونداج نوشته شده بود

“When you’re putting a scene together, the three key things you are deciding over and over again are: What shot shall I use? Where shall I begin it? Where shall I end it? An average film may have a thousand edits in it, so: three thousand decisions. But if you can answer those questions in the most interesting, complex, musical, dramatic way, then the film will be as alive as it can be.” (p. 267).

Title: The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film
Author: Michael Ondaatje
Year: 2002
Genre: Nonfiction - Filmmaking
Page count: 368 pages
Date(s) read: 3/28/23 - 4/4/23
Reading journal entry # 83 in 2023

Ondaatje, M., & Murch, W. (2002). The conversations: Walter Murch and the art of editing film. Alfred A. Knopf.

Great book ! A must for Editors and Filmmakers. Some good practical techniques for editing.