In the Blink of an Eye - Walter Murch

Walter Murch

Walter Murch, born in 1943 has worked in the film industry for over 4 decades working mainly alongside Francis Ford Coppola on Apocalypse Now, Ghost and The Godfather trilogy. In 2001, Murch wrote “In the Blink of an Eye” the book explores the depths of editing and its importance in the film industry. {Citation} Murch (2001) explains within the book how people in the film industry often forget about the editing using the metaphor that humans, when asked which is more important the brain or the skull. Humans will say the brain, but the skull is more important because “there is only so much brain you can get in there before you can’t fit it in anymore. At any rate, it seems more important for a chimp to be born with a hard head than a big brain.” This analogy suggests that the edit, how the film is structured and built is more important than the content.

His work has been inspirational, Apocalypse Now reportedly made £81,250,488 by NIC (1997). One particular scene in which Murch's sound design is astounding is within the opening sequence where the audience see on screen a mix of both Colonel Kurtz's room and scenery from the war in Vietnam. This was also discussed on a Paramount Documentary where famous sound designers explain how Apocalypse Now, it was also one of the first times that a multi channel mix was used. They used surround sound system which became the first feature film to be released in the cinema with three channels in the front and two in the rear of the cinema. This allowed for a more realistic experience and for this to sound believable by an audience it required a high level of preparation by Walter Murch.

This has shown the importance of sound in film and how both the final edit and the sound need to be given due time through the production process. When working on productions it is advised that the team should give more time to the post production element as this can have a huge impact on how the final film is perceived.


(“In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing - Google Books,” n.d., p. 12)

The Staffs Factor

The students filmed and performed on "The Staffs Factor" stealing the format from X Factor the students were asked to film an audition and then edit their film into a succinct clip. Below is an example of one of the students.

This was the first edit the student made on AVID to create a sequence which makes sense. In this edit there is very basic editing skills such as inputting and outputting footage, titles and sound editing.