About the book
Film editor Walter Murch starts from a basic question, why cuts work at all, and builds an essay on the craft of editing. Based on a transcript of a 1988 lecture, the book argues that editors should put emotion ahead of pure technique. Murch discusses continuity and discontinuity in film, dreams and waking life, the criteria for a good cut, and the blink of an eye as both a parallel to the cut and an emotional cue for it. He draws on his work on Apocalypse Now, The Godfather and The English Patient. First published in 1992, it was revised in 2001 with a long reflection on digital editing.
Austin Kleon called it a short book on film editing that holds plenty of lessons for writers too.
We hope you love the books people recommend! Just so you know, The CEO Library may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page.
This book has 1 recommendation
Austin Kleon (Writer, artist)
A short, brilliant book about film editing that has quite a few lessons for writers, too. (It would make an excellent companion to Sidney Lumet’s Making Movies.) I first read about Murch in Lawrence Weschler’s book about his adventures in astrophysics, Waves Passing In The Night, which I picked randomly off my local library’s New Arrivals shelf.
Get this book on Amazon | Barnes & Noble