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What is it that separates art from craft? As we know from a recurring theme in "Shakespeare in Love", "it's a mystery." All art is based on a craft, be it painting, music, sculpture or film making. Film making is a craft-rich activity, every component of a film is created by the application of crafts and even a mediocre film can be lifted by skilled craftspeople. Look at all those Hollywood Studio productions from the late 30s through the 50s; the gloss was worth seeing even if many of the films weren't. Great acting is a complete and almost impenetrable mystery. Many years ago I saw Anthony Hopkins on the stage in "Pravda" and that performance remains lodged in the very fibre of my being as the greatest live performance I have ever seen. I got a glimpse of it again in "The Remains of the Day". If what happened on that stage and in that film could be taught then every actor would be as great as Sir Anthony, obviously they are not. So what is it that transforms a competent craftsperson into an artist? This is the mystery we would all like the answer to and as editing lies at the very heart of film making and many of us have learnt the craft what is it we need to make the giant leap from practitioner to artist at the edit bench?

Walter Murch comes with impeccable credentials, a graduate of the University of Southern California Film School and contemporary of Francis Coppola and George Lucas. Mr. Murch co-wrote THX 1138 with George Lucas and then developed a very successful career as a re-recording sound mixer/sound editor working on major features such as the Godfather and American Graffiti, two films where the sound track is an integral part of the story telling. Then, in 1974 a most unusual step, Mr. Murch edited both sound and picture of The Conversation, Francis Coppola's masterpiece about a sound man obsessed with the minutiae of his profession. Mr. Murch was nominated for an Academy Award for the sound track and won two British Academy Awards for sound and picture editing. In 1979 he won the Oscar for the sound track of Apocalypse Now, the sound of the opening sequence sets the scene to perfection, the room fan, the sound of helicopters the cut to napalm silently bursting against the jungle, the drunken haze, the heat, all brilliantly set up by the sound. We knew where we were and knew this was not going to be a happy experience. In 1996 Mr. Murch won two Oscars for picture and sound for the English Patient as well as the British Academy award for editing. It is unusual to find in this highly developed industry a man who does everything at the edit bench and does it with consummate artistry.

In 1995 he authored a slim volume, In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing, now in a revised and updated Second Edition. In 2002 a book was published, The Conversations - Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film by Michael Ondaatje - the author of the English Patient. Here are two volumes that must surely cast some light on the art of editing; they are not about technology but about decisions that impact the effect of sound and picture on the audience and how one man makes them.

The first thing to recognise about these books is that they are not textbooks but discourses. The first is based on a lecture given in Australia and the second is a verbatim transcript of the conversations. They have to be read carefully because the information is generally not neatly tabulated but rather revealed. Mr. Murch is interested in the cut, why it works and how the editor decides where to make it, not in terms of continuity but in terms of emotional impact. This is the very heart of editing because many of those fancy transitions and devices are a means of disguising that there is something wrong at the transition and it had to be disguised. When I think of all those short dissolves I have used I cringe in recognition of a demonstration of editorial incompetence, a failure to search for the perfect cut point. This is one of the reasons it takes so long to cut a feature film. Yes, there are miles of film to be catalogued and viewed but it is the meticulous search for the cut points that takes the time.

The discussions of editing grow from here and obviously a viewing of the films Mr. Murch has edited is a vital part of understanding something of his philosophy...

I also believe that Mr. Murch's experience as a sound editor and musician is a vital part of his artistic skill as a film cutter. He has a well developed sense of rhythm and as sound has become ever more important he clearly understand the relationship between sound and picture. He has made the transition from cutting film on a flat bed machine and now cuts on a NLE, rather strangely, standing up!

I strongly recommend these books, at the first reading they may seem rather superficial but dig in and re-read, make notes and you will understand more about the basics of editing and structure than many of the text books can show you.

How DO you know where the perfect cut point is? There is only one frame in the shot and where it is remains a mystery only solved by an artist.

- Ned Cordery   Jun 2003