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Title: The Conversations : Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film by Michael Ondaatje ISBN: 0-375-41386-3 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 17 September, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (3 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Intelligent, articulate, surprisingly good
Comment: Like the reviewer below, I was skeptical of the Q&A format - an approach that often tends to elicit fairly superficial dialog in the realm of film (with some notable exceptions, including the classic Hitchcock/Truffaut book). This is fine for a magazine article, but potentially painful for 300+ pages. That said, this book really surprised me - and within only a few pages I was totally hooked. Ondaatje manages to spur on a delightful conversation filled with some very profound insights on editing, filmmaking, and the creative process itself (with many interesting detours along the way). I think this book can be enjoyed by both amateur film enthusiast and cynical cinephile alike. To be honest, I found the book to be a better articulation of Murch's ideas than his own "In the Blink of an Eye" -- though I would still recommend that as a secondary text to Conversations. I would also suggest that anyone reading this try to see Murch's major works first: The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, the Godfather I & II, and the English Patient - as they are all referred to in fairly significant detail throughout the book, and it will make for a more enjoyable read if you're familiar with them.
Rating: 5
Summary: Inside a unique mind (actually, two of them)
Comment: I don't usually like Q&A-style interviews, but this book is a notable exception because it's more like eavesdropping on a private conversation between two very savvy colleagues. Murch has some original and intriguing things to say about the ways he approaches his art (like theorizing that movie music reinforces an existing emotion--rather than inspiring one). Here's looking forward to his next book--the one in which he posits his notational scheme for cinema. It sounds like a crackpot idea, rather like that musical I wisely never wrote in which each instrument corresponded to a different bodily function. I suspect Murch can deliver on his dream, if anyone can.
Rating: 4
Summary: Editing is Paramount
Comment: ...
Someone once said, "Film editing is a wonderful arcane art, like
mosaics. I love to watch it being done, but editors hate to be
watched." Just as editors like to work away from the gaze of
would-be supervisors, we in the audience are often not aware of
the important the work of these people behind the scenes. How
many times have you seen a review comment on the editing, and
if it praise or belittles the way the film is cut, how often is the
responsible editor named? In his new book "The Conversations,"
author Michael Ondaatje has transcribed a series of talks with
Walter Murch, considered by many to be without peer in the
profession. The 59-year-old Renaissance man, as involved in
trying to prove the Titus-Bode theory on the spatial intervals
between planets and a translator of Italian poetry, has been
instrumental in creating the sounds and the cuts of films such as
"American Graffiti," "The Conversation," "The Godfather I,II, III,"
"Julia," "Apocalypse Now," and "The English Patient."
In introducing this seminal work on Walter Murch, Ondaatje
informs us that Murch, like other editors, is concerned with a
film's pace, of course, but even more with the moral tone of a work
which has to do with speed, background noise, even how the
antagonist may turn away from a conversation. Recall how many
films have the editor cut away from a character before he finishes
speaking. This could be because the editor encourages the
audience to think only about the face value of what the character
has said. If on the other hand the editor allows the audience to
see from the expression in the actor's eyes that he is probably not
telling the truth, he will linger on the character after he finishes
speaking.
Words and sounds are not all. Murch at times pulls all the
sound out of the scene so that there is complete silence. This
often means that something terrible is about to happen. And
when sounds take place outside the room (as in the street sounds
when Michael Corleone commits his first murder in "The
Godfather"), we get the feeling that we are inside a cave-like room.
Murch tosses in his personal theories about the nature of
viewing a movie, among the most inciteful being this paradox:
"One of the things about watching a video is that it never feels
private. I'm always conscious of others in the room, so I become
self-conscious during an erotic scene. But it never feels that way
in a cinema, even at a comedy with people laughing around me."
On a note more technical than philosophical he states, "....a
sustained action scene averages out to 14 new camera positions
a minute."
When I used to take a class of tech high school students on a
field trip to a Broadway show, I found that they were more
interesting in discussing the big sound-mixing machine in the
back of the orchestra than in chatting about the way Hamlet's
vacillations were dealt with on the stage. "The Conversations"
won't tell you how to work the editing machines, but Ondaatje
does give you solid insight into the world of the editing profession
in a reader-friendly, flowing style.
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Title: In the Blink of an Eye Revised 2nd Edition by Walter Murch, Francis Ford Coppola ISBN: 1879505622 Publisher: Silman-James Press Pub. Date: 01 August, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: First Cut: Conversations With Film Editors by Gabriella Oldham ISBN: 0520075889 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: November, 1995 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: The Visual Story: Seeing the Structure of Film, TV and New Media by Bruce Block ISBN: 0240804678 Publisher: Focal Press Pub. Date: 23 April, 2001 List Price(USD): $31.95 |
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Title: When the Shooting Stops, the Cutting Begins: A Film Editor's Story (Da Capo Paperback) by Ralph Rosenblum, Robert Karen Ph.D. ISBN: 0306802724 Publisher: DaCapo Press Pub. Date: May, 1988 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: Selected Takes by Vincent LoBrutto ISBN: 0275933954 Publisher: Praeger Publishers Pub. Date: 30 June, 1991 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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