Course Reading: In the Blink of an Eye

In the Blink of an Eye by Walter Murch

This useful little book gave me a detailed description  of the film editor’s role in the mainstream movie industry. I read a lot about the process, philosophy and practice of editing. Easy to read and conversational in style, it was full of insightful explanations, e.g “Why do cuts work?” and “Cutting out the bad bits”.

I was impressed by the sheer size and complexity of the task of editing a feature film. I now have some sense of why film credits show such a wide array of people.

Also interesting was Murch’s thought and ideas about the psychology of blinking  and how it indicates to some extent our thought patterns and how these patterns can help when making cuts.