Fimmakingbooks Quotes

“When people are deeply “in” a film, you’ll notice that nobody coughs at certain moments, even though they may have a cold. If the coughing were purely autonomic response to smoke or congestion, it would be randomly constant, no matter what was happening on screen. But the audience holds back at certain moments, and I’m suggesting blinking is something like coughing in this sense. There is a famous live recording of pianist Sviatoslav Richter playing Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition during a flu epidemic in Bulgaria many years ago. It is just as plain as day what’s going on: While he was playing certain passages, no one coughed. At those moments, he was able to suppress, with his artistry, the coughing impulse of 1,500 sick people.”
― Walter Murch, In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing

“one of the central responsibilities of the editor, which is to establish an interesting, coherent rhythm of emotion and thought — on the tiniest and the largest scales — that allows the audience to trust, to give themselves to the film.”
― Walter Murch, In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing