SUDDENLY SOMETHING CLICKED |

An excerpt from Walter Murch’s upcoming book on “The Languages of Film Editing and Sound Design”

Award winning editor Walter Murch will be in conversation after a screening of “Her Name Was Moviola” on Friday, March 21 at the Smith Rafael Film Center @ 7pm. He will discuss the kind of editing equipment used for decades with celluloid and how his work has changed in the digital age. Moviolas and other equipment will be on display. For full information and to buy tickets go here.

Her Name is Moviola Official Website

Walter Murch is a well-rounded filmmaker whose work as a film editor, director, writer, innovator, and sound designer has earned him nine Academy Award nominations and three wins plus BAFTA and ACE Eddie Awards. His work on George Lucas’ first feature, “THX 1138” was followed by the director’s next film, “American Graffiti,” Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now,” “The Godfather I, II, and III,” and “The Conversation,” Phillip Kaufman’s “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” and “Hemingway & Gellhorn,” Jerry Zucker’s “Ghost,” and Anthony Minghella’s “The English Patient,” “Cold Mountain,” and “The Talented Mr. Ripley” While working on new narrative features he also edited the restoration of Orson Welles’s “Touch of Evil” and directed “Return to Oz.” Two passion projects that he was deeply involved with are the documentaries “Particle Fever” and “Coup 53.” His credits are extensive to say the least.

If you are going to read one book on filmmaking many will recommend that it be Murch’s “In the Blink of an Eye.”

He is the subject of Michael Ondaatje’s book “The Conversations” and Charles Koppelman’s “Behind the Seen.” He edited “The Bird that Swallowed Its Cage -The Selected Writings of Curzio Malaparte.”

Roger Ebert called Murch “the most respected film editor and sound designer in the modern cinema.” David Thomson wrote in his “The New Biographical Dictionary of Film” that Murch is “the scholar, gentleman and superb craftsman of modern film”, adding that in sound and editing, “he is now without a peer.”

His new book will be published July 15 but Walter Murch has offered us a sneak preview where he talks about the Moviola.

From the publisher: “Highly lauded film editor, director, writer and sound designer Walter Murch reflects on the six decades of cinematic history he has been a considerable contributor to – and on what makes great films great.

Together with Francis Coppola and George Lucas, Murch abandoned Hollywood in 1969 and moved to San Francisco to create the Zoetrope studio. Their vision was of a new kind of cinema for a new generation of film-goers. Murch’s subsequent contributions in film editing rooms and sound-mixing theatres were responsible for ground-breaking technical and creative innovations.

In this book, Murch invites readers on a voyage of discovery through film, with a mixture of personal stories, meditations on his own creative tactics and strategies, and reminiscences from working on The Godfather films, Apocalypse Now, Lucas’ American Grafitti, and Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient and The Talented Mr Ripley.

Suddenly Something Clicked is a book that will change the way you watch movies.”

Vintage 35mm Moviola are hard to find as most were junked when digital came in.

To read the Moviola chapter from “Suddenly Something Clicked”–click here. It will open in a new window.

Preorder from your favorite independent bookstore in person or via Bookshop where you can choose the store of your choice.

Steve Hullfish offers an extensive interview with Walter Murch on “The Art of the Cut.” You can listen to the interview and/or follow the transcript to see film clips and photos.

“This is an enormous book, a vast treasury of ideas, observations and innovation stretching from Physics to aesthetics. Only a mind like Walter Murch’s could be capable of such a discourse. There is so much in it, it cannot really be described, only admired or kept as an Encyclopedia of Cinema-Everything.” -Francis Ford Coppola

Walter discusses the new book.