In case anybody was still wondering if Avid’s recent rebranding was a good idea, I recently attended two industry events that helped prove that the company that brought us Media Composer twenty years ago is not going anywhere anytime soon.  With a renewed sense of forward thinking and a commitment to actually listening to the users of their product, Avid’s recent releases of their 3.0 and 4.0 versions of Media Composer, along with a spiffy new series of hardware, helped prove to customers that there are still some advantages to throwing down a little extra cash to buy the editing toolset used by the majority of big-budget Hollywood productions.

The first event I attended (GenCre8 at The Echoplex on November 7) took me completely by surprise, as I was unaware it was an Avid-sponsored event until I arrived.  Billed as a “secret performance by The Crystal Method” (the celebrated hard-edged electronic music duo whose music you’d probably recognize from various TV shows and car commercials), the event attracted a niche crowd of music enthusiasts from the Los Angeles area.  Arriving at the event not fully sure how or why it was free (or even if I would make it inside), I was pleasantly surprised to see Avid banners draped everywhere upon entering and instantly recalled how Avid rebranded all of their subsidiary companies under the single name “Avid” last year to minimize confusion and unify their many divisions.

In addition to being a full-fledged electronic music performance, the event featured a 20-minute demonstration by the opening act (a rap duo called “The Chosen Few,” who were actually pretty talented) to promote Pro Tools and demonstrate how easy and fast it is to create beats using their software.  While the spiel itself could have been streamlined a little bit (it seemed to drag on at times, partly because the guy working the computer was also simultaneously trying to describe how Pro Tools works), the entire event was a pretty savvy marketing maneuver.  What better way to promote a product and establish brand identity than a demonstration to a captive audience who has already proven interest and dedication to electronic music just by showing up to a “secret” show?  Not to mention the fact that attendees would have a positive association with the Avid brand regardless of the demonstration, simply due to the fact that The Crystal Method played an incredible set afterward.  Very slick, Avid.  I tip my hat to you.

The second event I attended was billed as an Avid event from the start.  The LAFCPUG (Los Angeles Final Cut Pro User Group) spent an evening (November 18) discussing the differences between Avid Media Composer and Final Cut Pro and evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of each.  Fellow editing bloggers Shane Ross and Steve Cohen each gave demonstrations on the new Media Composer 4.0’s ability to Mix-and-Match frame rates and resolutions in real-time, as well as the new AMA architecture and advancements in Trim Mode and Segment Mode.  The highlight of the night, however, was the keynote address by Walter Murch, the undisputed “godfather of editing.”  After spending the last 7 years using Final Cut Pro, Walter recently joined the film “The Wolfman” mid-stream when they were already firmly entrenched in an Avid workflow.  Given his unique perspective having gone from Avid to Final Cut and back again, Walter was able to give candid insight into the technical advantages and disadvantages of each system.  It was interesteing to note that while Walter praised some of Avid’s new features, when prodded by an audience member’s question, he responded that if given the choice, he would still cut his next feature on Final Cut.

Aside from being a great networking opportunity (I got to introduce myself to three of my favorite editing bloggers and shake hands with my idol), the event reinforced the notion that both platforms are moving in the right direction and that the rivalry between the two companies is good for the industry (competition = innovation and aggressively low pricing).  As technology continues to advance and workflows move increasingly toward high definition, tapeless acquisition, and web-based delivery, it will be fascinating to see how Avid and Final Cut each adapt to the continuously changing landscape of the film and television industries.

As pessoas dizem que não dá pra viver na edição por muito tempo, que é estressante, que você não é valorizado, vai morar 1h30 do trabalho, ter gastrite, pressão alta, tendinite, problemas para dormir tudo antes dos 35 anos e pagar aos trancos e barrancos um carro 1.0. Só que eu ainda tenho esperanças de ser algo mais que um apertador de botão. Sério. Boba eu né?

Nessa época em que editores (apenas editores, criadores da montagem) são uma espécie em extinção e a demanda por outros softwares como After Effects, Motion Graphics até mesmo Mocha pelo mercado audiovisual de pós-produção algumas pessoas ainda persistem e vivem (de grandes projetos) de montagem e de cinema tanto no cenário internacional quanto nacional. Aqui mesmo na produtora eu tive um exemplo quando a Idê Lacreta veio finalizar o filme da Suzana Amaral, ou a Cristina Amaral, editora do Falsa Loura.

São mulheres, o que nesse setor do audiovisual são minoria, maiores de 30 anos e que são requisitadas para grandes projetos e esse é o tema do post: quando eu crescer, quero ser igual a elas! Sim, uma versão 2.0 dos profissionais que começaram lá nos anos 70 a fazer cinema, editar, mas também gerir projetos artísticos da pós que envolvem outros programas afinal progredir, evoluir, reinveintar e estudar são coisas que não pretendo nunca deixar de fazer.

Um exemplo, nesse caso masculino, lá da gringa é o editor Walter Murch, editor do célebre Apocalypse Now na ativa até hoje. Ok, ok, não é qualquer um que tem contatos ou potencial para fazer o que ele fez, mas eu adoraria pelo menos arriscar.

Prestem atenção na ambiência criada, o timming de montagem e com certeza deliciem – se ao som de The Doors.

The New York Institute for the Humanities & the Humanities Initiative at NYU present an all-day

HALLOWEEN WONDER CABINET
curated by Lawrence Weschler

A day of illustrated talks, screenings, and multimedia presentations with Laurie Anderson, Michael Benson, Chandler Burr, Walter Murch,David Wilson and many others.

Saturday October 31
11 am till 9:30 pm
NYU’s Cantor Film Center
36 East 8th Street, NYC

Free and Open to the Public (on a first-come, first-in basis)
Every once in a while, Lawrence Weschler, the director of the New York Institute for the Humanities, and author, among others, of the Pulitzer-nominatedMr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder (a work of “magic-realist nonfiction” arising out of an investigation of the premodern roots of the postmodern Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles), gets it into his head to contrive a day of sublimely odd, wonderflecked and just plain cool presentations, braided one after the next in a thematic order intermittently evident to himself, if no one else. This year, he proposes to do so on Saturday October 31, which is to say Halloween.

As you will see from the program below, the first half of the day will focus generally on the stellar, the planetary, the cosmological and the astronomic. Later in the day, presentations will begin to morph into a consideration of the experience itself of drop-jawed amazement. Toward the end of the procession, attention will turn to things somewhat more infinitesimal: the molecular basis of smell, insect camouflage, and (to round out the day, Halloween after all) the downright hallucinogenic.

SESSION I

11:00 am

A celebratory fanfare by avant garde, downtown (and well nigh breathless) saxophone player COLIN STETSON

11:10 am

LAURIE ANDERSON, the celebrated performance artist and hipster sage, who will dilate on her days, a few seasons back, as visiting artist-in-residence with the good folks at NASA. (Note: She will be replacing the previously announced bead-artist Liza Lou in this slot.)

11:45 am

Filmmaker and photographic archivist MICHAEL BENSON will be evoking the entire universe as seen from the point of view of the Hubble and other deep space observatories, subject of his latest book, Far Out,which in turn follows on from his last, the critically celebrated,Beyond, which took the same sort of survey of the photographic legacy of interplanetary space probes.

SESSION II

1:45 pm

The eminent film and sound editor WALTER MURCH (Apocalypse Now, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The English Patient, The Conversations, etc.) will reveal a whole other side of his famously overbrimming curiosity, which is to say his excavation and systematic rehabilitation of a long discredited theory as to the placement of planets and moons in relation to the bodies around which they orbit, a formula which turns out to accurately predict 85% of such orbits, and which, when properly rejiggered, turns out to coincide with the formula for the Pythagorean octave (talk about the music of the spheres!).

3:00 pm

DAVID WILSON, the MacArthur winning Jurassic Technologist himself, will evoke the Russian mystical origins of the Soviet space program, subject of a trilogy of heartrendingly lovely short films, a full decade in the making, currently coming to closure at the fourteen-seat Borzoi Theater atop his LA museum.

4:00 pm

A rarely screened short, filmed during the last months of the Khrushchevite Thaw, in which the Soviet master PAVEL KOGAN trains a hidden camera on a succession of common Russians at the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad, as they gaze, positively awestruck, at Leonardo’s rendition of a Virgin and Child. That film will in turn be coupled with an uncanny set of recent shorts in whichJOSH MELNICKtrains a highspeed high-definition excruciatingly slow-motion digital camera upon wayfarers on the New York city subway, staring, positively dumbstruck, at nothing in particular.

5:00 pm

A similar pairing, as in the above, this time two vantages of life on earth; the first in which the renowned avant garde filmmaker PETER HUTTON, of Bard College, trains his attention on the play of light dappling an Icelandic fjord; and the second in which MATT COOLIDGE, of LA’s Center for Land Use Interpretation (sister institution to David Wilson’s Museum of Jurassic Technology) trains his camera out the side of a helicopter for a jaw-dropping twenty-minute single-take survey of Houston’s petrochemical channel, arguably the most ecstatically industrialized swath of real estate in the world.

SESSION III

6:30 pm

New York Timesscent critic CHANDLER BURR (The Emperor of Scentand The Perfect Scent: A Year inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York), singing the Nose Fantastic, which is to say plumbing the still mind-boggling mysteries involved in how it is that we smell anything at all (complete with blotter-swatch demonstrations).

7:30 pm

Entomologist Extraordinaire MAY BERENBAUM of the University of Illinois, Champagne-Urbana (Ninety Nine Gnats,Nits and Nibblers;Bugs in the System; and The Earwig’s Tale: A Modern Bestiary of Multi-Legged Legends), who in honor of the evening’s festivities will consider Insects that Ape Shit (which is to say exceptionally novel, if creepy, insect disguises).

8:30 pm

HAMILTON MORRIS, the disconcertingly enterprising young pharmacopia correspondent of Vice Magazine, will round out the evening by reporting on all manner of oddities (penis mushrooms, Amazonian frog sweat, etc.) that he has ingested and that you might want to avoid.

Times above are approximate at best.

* SPECIAL NOTE *

{We hope as many of you as possible will be able to spend the day with us, feasting on the Wonder Cabinet in its entirety. However, should you be unable to stay for the whole program, we strongly recommend that you come for each session in full—you’ll understand why when you do!}

Nearest Subway Lines to Cantor Film Center, located at 36 East 8th Street (btw University Pl. & Greene St.), with caveat to check MTA’s weekend service advisories prior to heading over:

A, C, E, B, D, F, V to West 4th Street (6th Ave.)
R, W to 8th St.–NYU (Broadway)
6 to Astor Place

For further information, visit www.nyih.as.nyu.edu or contact the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU at nyih.info@nyu.edu

The Humanities Initiative at NYU sponsors research, collaborative teaching, conferences, working groups, and outreach by way of fostering a university-wide community in the humanities. Launched in 2007, its mission replaces and significantly expands that of the former Humanities Council. For further information on the Humanities Initiative, please visit www.humanitiesinitiative.org or call 212.998.2190.

The New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU was established in 1976 for promoting the exchange of ideas between academics, professionals, politicians, diplomats, writers, journalists, musicians, painters, and other artists in New York City–and between all of them and the city. It currently comprises 220 fellows. Throughout the year, the NYIH organizes numerous public events and symposia.

From Walter Murch, an Academy Award-winning film editor and sound designer:

“As I’ve gone through life, I’ve found that your chances for happiness are increased if you wind up doing something that is a reflection of what you loved most when you were somewhere between nine and eleven years old…At that age, you know enough of the world to have opinions about things, but you’re not old enough yet to be overly influenced by the crowd or by what other people are doing or what you think you ‘should’ be doing. If what you do later on ties into that reservoir in some way, then you are nurturing some essential part of yourself. It’s certainly been true in my case. I’m doing now, at fifty-eight, almost exactly what most excited me when I was eleven.  But I went through a whole late-adolescent phase when I thought: Splicing sounds together can’t be a real occupation, maybe I should be a geologist or teach art history.”
– from The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film

“uma moviola é tão importante quanto uma câmera. é a última parada entre o sonho de um diretor e o público.”

- orson welles

o grande orson welles faz uma bela homenagem ao ofício do montador no vídeo aí acima. norman hollyn, que tem um blog deslumbrante sobre essa profissão (e da qual, como vocês bem sabem, é membro destacado), notou um erro “crasso” na fala do mestre, e lançou um super-desafio a quem conseguisse descobri-lo. fiquem à vontade. já eu gastei uma boa meia hora pensando em um monte de coisas antes de desistir de vez e olhar a resposta. e qual será essa resposta maravilhosa, vocês me perguntam. 

muito bem: a estranha máquina pré-histórica do vídeo de welles, que ele apresenta como sendo uma moviola, é, na verdade, uma steenbeck, velha conhecida de todos os montadores dos quatro continentes (não, atento leitor, não esqueci de continente nenhum, não seja ingênuo), produzida por empresa concorrente e que, segundo consta, tem utilidade e funcionamento completamente distintos.

então escuta aqui, norman hollyn e companhia, o senhores vão me desculpar se estou estragando a vossa douta brincadeirinha, mas pra saber isso a pessoa tinha que ser do tempo da nina hartley! como é que eu vou saber de uma coisa dessas? não tenho vergonha nenhuma em admitir que não sei o que é, nem nunca vi, nem nunca tinha ouvido falar de uma steenbeck (e vocês, que não acharam interessante ver o vídeo, e que, portanto, não sabem nem o que é uma moviola, vão se informar, que isso aqui não é um desses cursinhos de história do cinema que vocês fazem no unibanco). ora essa! ou vocês estão pensando que eu nasci no tempo do onço? quando eu nasci, isso tudo aqui não era mato, não, vô!

acontece que, pra pessoas como eu e a minha amiga nina (não é a hartley, é a nina aqui do sócasando), que aprenderam esse belo ofício na era do final cut pro (informem-se), do soundtrack pro, e do mac book pro (tudo isso é coisa de pro, então, informem-se), imaginar que, um dia, seres humanos talentosos e capazes foram castigados brutalmente com uma coisa chamada “montagem linear” é um pesadelo horroroso, uma coisa nojenta, permitida apenas em um mundo sem deus como o do século 20. 

pra vocês que gostariam de poder imaginar também, pensem como seria se eu tivesse de escrever este texto todo a lápis. daí lá vem o nêgo me corrigir de novo, “não seria com máquina de escrever, no caso?”, não, meu filho, você não sabe do que eu estou falando, apenas imagine se tudo que você tem de escrever fosse a lápis. sacaram? quer dizer, é claro que eu não ia ficar aqui lambendo a testa só pra informar leitores dessa qualidade, e daí vocês ficariam sem este texto, e nunca saberiam que houve no mundo duas coisas muito interessantes chamadas “orson welles” e “moviola”. e olhem que eu estou falando de escrever um textinho porcaria que nem este aqui, que a gente mal relê. imaginem, no entanto, ter de fazer uma coisa deslumbrante e delicada como montar um filme, cortando e colando, cortando e colando, e com aquelas tiras quilométricas de filme revelado pelo chão, tudo se espalhando pelos quatro cantos da sala, e depois ainda ter de ficar fuçando a lata do lixo, com a testa toda colada de durex, tentando encontrar aquela maldita cena que saiu do filme na semana passada, mas agora vai voltar, gente! esse negócio de moviola devia ser um inferno!

mas quando você começa a reparar, tem sempre algum sujeito falando da moviola, do passado do cinema, do “cinema físico”, quando o cara era obrigado a meter a mão, e isso supostamente fazia o cara pensar. por exemplo, nesta província do rio de janeiro, em que me encontro, existe um professor de montagem que obriga os alunos a passar um semestre inteiro editando exercícios nessa máquina divina. agora, me digam uma coisa, a gente é palhaço, por acaso? por que a gente vai fazer isso? daí esse professor, que provavelmente não faz um filme de verdade desde os tempos da dita cuja, deve ser um desses “curta-metragistas” de 70 anos que (agora, por favor, não insistam comigo) ainda não entenderam que curta-metragem é apenas uma coisa que gente jovem faz tentando se vender, esse professor, enfim, responde exaltado que, por dificultar imensamente o trabalho do montador, a moviola forçava o coitado a refletir mais sobre o que ia fazer. quer dizer, é o mesmo papo-furado que o pessoal fica falando do vídeo digital.

fiquem espertos, amigos, não repitam na rua augusta essas mentiras. o que essas pessoas estão lamentando, por pura sem-vergonhice, é mesmo a morte da pélicula cinematográfica, e isso da película eu nem vou comentar. é aquela turma da “textura”, do “movimento”, do “etéreo”, das coisas que “serão perdidas” com o cinema digital, enfim, são os caras que não sabem usar o vídeo direito e que, graças a deus, vão finalmente perder o bonde da história dentro de uns poucos anos. um exemplo de pessoa assim é o cineasta walter lima júnior, cujo último filme, os desafinados, quem sabe será o último subproduto deletério do cinema-novo no brasil. eu nunca toquei numa moviola e, aparentemente, já refleti muito mais sobre o assunto do que esses velhacos. é o tal negócio, como diria horácio, laudator temporibus acti (informem-se) e agora fui muito além de todos vocês, não preciso dizer mais nada. vamos parar de romantizar uma profissão perfeitamente respeitável, não existe um só montador sério neste mundo que sinta saudades da moviola (e muito menos da steenbeck).

quer dizer, o grande orson welles fazia muito bem em passar longe dessa geringonça, e se ele, por acaso, do alto de sua grandeza, fez uma cena com uma steenbeck achando que era uma moviola, foi porque ele já tinha contracenado com atores mais importantes, e principalmente porque, como todo bom cineasta, ele era um grande enganador, e sabia que o nome do negócio não tinha a menor importância, o que tinha importância era ensinar pra vocês, cinéfilos ingênuos e desinformados, que o cinema é uma arte mentirosa e artificial, e que um filme não sai pronto da cabeça de um diretor, há processos, há técnicas, e sobretudo há muitas pessoas envolvidas, porque nada no cinema presta quando a gente decide fazer o trabalho todo sozinho. entre essas pessoas brilhantes e criativas estão os montadores, e alguns deles, como o sr. norman hollyn, são tão generosos que estão até fazendo blogs na internet, e publicando livros bem curtinhos e fáceis de ler, como o do sr. walter murch, onde vocês poderão aprender tudo sobre essa grande arte, e assim poderão agitar ainda mais suas rodinhas.

então, minha gente, vâmo se informar!

Michel Chion należy do którejś tam fali kompozytorów muzyki elektroakustycznej i konkretnej. Publikuje rzadko i jeśli ktoś nie wie gdzie szukać, zapewne o nim nigdy nie słyszał. Można rzucić uchem na jego “Requiem” – klasyczne dzieło musique concrète z 1978 roku, wydane pierwotnie przez INA GRM (strona, co symptomatyczne dla Francuzów, jedynie po francusku) a potem wznowione przez Sub Rosę.

Recenzja i płyta do przetestowania tutaj. Pełna biografia, jakby ktoś chciał, znajduje się tutaj.

Równolegle do twórczości muzycznej, Chion zajmuje się teorią, a ściślej związkiem muzyki i filmu. Muzyka elektroakustyczna i konkretna dość dobrze wpisuje się w postulat “kina dla ucha” – nic dziwnego, że wielu kompozytorów poświęca się równolegle komponowaniu do filmu lub studiami nad związkiem pomiędzy obrazem i dźwiękiem.

Poniżej można pobrać w całości ksiązkę Michela Chiona “Audio-Vision”, jedną z kilku które poświęcił muzyce w służbie kinematografii. Nie jest to praca popularyzatorska, zatem jeśli ktoś ma problem z klasyfikacjami i typologiami, może czuć się nieco zagubiony. Tak czy owak warto chociażby przekartkować, zatrzymująć się jedynie przy analizie warstwy dźwiękowej w takich klasykach arthouse’u jak “Persona” Bergmana czy “La Dolce Vita” Felliniego. Mimo ciężkiego kalibru, spojrzenie Chiona pomaga zrozumieć, jak bardzo muzyka i dźwięk są istotnym elementem w języku filmu i jak obie formy sztuki stymulowały się wzajemnie, od czasu, gdy seansom przygrywał taper (dzisiaj w tej roli widzimy raczej Emitera, niż pianistę) aż do narodzin dojrzałego, współczesnego kina artystycznego.

Z przedmowy Waltera Murcha:

We begin to hear before we are born, four and a half months after conception. From then on, we develop in a continuous and luxurious bath of sounds: the song of our mother’s voice, the swash of her breathing, the trumpeting of her intestines, the timpani of her heart. Throughout the second four-and-a-half months, Sound rules as solitary Queen of our senses: the close and liquid world of uterine darkness makes Sight and Smell impossible, Taste monochromatic, and Touch a dim and generalized hint of what is to come.

Birth brings with it the sudden and simultaneous ignition of the other four senses, and an intense competition for the throne that Sound had claimed as hers. The most notable pretender is the darting and insistent Sight, who dubs himself King as if the throne had been standing vacant, waiting for him. Ever discreet, Sound pulls a veil of oblivion across her reign and withdraws into the shadows, keeping a watchful eye on the braggart Sight. If she gives up her throne, it is doubtful that she gives up her crown.

Michel Chion – Audio-Vision” (Columbia University Press)

Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Conversation” is really about two conversations; one between a couple (Cindy Williams and Frederic Forest) in a crowded square and one between Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) and his conscience. Harry Caul is a freelance wiretapper- a man paid to listen in on secret conversations, but he’s not concerned with what is being said but rather the quality of the recording. In fact it seems as if he’s not concerned with anything except his recordings. Gene Hackman plays him as a lonely, curious, seemingly emotionless man focused on one thing and one thing only: his job.

His loneliness is an extension of his job. When you are paid to record conversations without being seen, it’s only natural to be paranoid and that paranoia leads to loneliness. He triple locks his apartment door and has an unlisted phone number (and for good measure, he keeps the phone hidden in a drawer). He has a mistress that he visits on lonely nights. In a wonderful scene we see Harry visit his mistress played by Teri Garr and we realize that even this woman that has shared many intimate nights with him has no idea who Harry is inside. This is a man that triple locks his emotions.

Although Harry is regarded as a genius in his profession, his personal life isn’t as secure as he’d like it to be. His landlord has keys to his apartment completely unbeknownst to him, and his mistress knows that Harry often watches her from a stairwell. He informs his landlord that he’d like the keys to his apartment because there’s no need for him to have any. What about in an emergency such as a fire? Harry responds, “I have no personal belongings to worry about – except my keys.” He is completely shut out of any emotions and feelings to the point that he owns nothing of personal value.

Harry sees this as a strength. His job requires him to listen in on conversations but not be concerned with what is being said. He must be concerned only with the recording. However, his current assignment has struck a cord buried deep inside him. He is being paid to record the conversation of a couple walking in a crowded square. His assistant Stan (John Cazale) assumes it’s because they are being suspected of an affair, but it’s not Harry’s job to assume. When pouring over the recording, he hears something that causes him to begin to listen: “He’d kill us if he had the chance.”

Harry plays it over and over, obsessing over it. We discover later that an assignment years earlier had led to the murder of three people, including a woman and child. Is his current job going to lead to the same? Slowly Harry’s world begins to spiral out of control. He is followed, the tapes are stolen, and he fears for the lives of the couple. He’s tried so hard to avoid feeling anything in the hopes that he’ll be able to press on free from guilt, but this conversation has hammered his conscience. The final third of the movie is so filled with suspense and tension that we think we’re going to snap along with Harry.

Coppola has made some of the greatest movies ever and one of the enduring traits of his greats is the amount of time he takes to set up character and story. Take for example, the wedding scene in “The Godfather,” the trip down the river in “Apocalypse Now,” and the absorption into the world of Harry Caul in “The Conversation.” Coppola knows that the secret to creating a succesful thriller is for the audience to care about the characters. And while watching “The Conversation” I wanted to reach into the screen and shake some feeling into Harry Caul. And at the end when Caul is having a paranoid breakdown, we don’t pity him but we understand him.

Gene Hackman considers this movie his greatest performance and it’s one of the most powerful I’ve ever seen. He’s stoic, nuanced, emotionless, and later he is obsessive, paranoid, and crazed. Hackman’s Caul sits with us and causes us to stop and look around and check our phones for bugs and wonder if anyone is listening. The other performances are strong, as well. Cindy Williams and Frederic Forest play the couple Caul is paid to listen to, and Robert Duvall makes an appearance as Cindy Williams’ suspecting husband. Harrison Ford turns in a great performance as Duvall’s assistant, and Allen Garfield makes a small supporting role memorable as a competing surveillance freelancer. But Hackman’s performance stands out well above the rest.

The acting, along with the directing and editing, make “The Conversation” one of the best thrillers I have ever seen. Coppola and his editors (Walter Murch and Richard Chew) intercut pieces of the conversation with the couple to shots of Caul trying to interpret what is being said which adds to the mystery of the story. The script (written by Coppola) is airtight with sparse dialogue and a surprise ending that I didn’t see coming until it was made clear. And the final scene in the movie is heartbreaking and maddening all at once. Caul has ransacked his apartment searching for listening devices and all that remains are bare walls and floors mirroring his personal life. But he still has his saxaphone – his one link to any emotion and all we can do is listen.

MPAA Rating: PG

Running Time: 113 Minutes

Starring: Gene Hackman (Harry Caul); John Cazale (Stanley); Allen Garfield (Bernie Moran); Frederic Forest (Mark); Cindy Williams (Ann); Robert Duvall (Director); Harrison Ford (Martin Stett); Teri Garr (Amy); Michael Higgins (Paul); Elizabeth MacRae (Meredith)

Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola; written by Francis Ford Coppola; produced by Francis Ford Coppola and Fred Roos. A Paramount Pictures release.

It was pure serendipity.  Finding out there would be an interview with Michael Ondaatje at the Banff Summer Arts Festival was a wonderful surprise.  Hours later I was on my way to Banff National Park.  The 90-minutes drive through the Rockies listening to the soundtrack of The English Patient was surreal.  And the destination was just as picturesque and dreamlike:

In the event entitled ‘Literary Primetime’, Michael Ondaatje, the Sri Lanka born Canadian poet, novelist, filmmaker, winner of the Booker Prize for The English Patient, was interviewed by Marni Jackson, the Chair of the Literary Journalism Program at The Banff Centre, an acclaimed writer in her own right.

Ondaatje’s impressive body of work includes novels, memoir and a dozen books of poetry, editorial work and documentary filmmaking.  But perhaps the most famous is The English Patient, which was adapted into film by the late Anthony Minghella.  The movie was awarded nine Academy Awards in 1996.

The literary event started off with Ondaatje reading several passages from Divisadero, a book that brought him the fifth Governor General Literary Award.  I sat in the huge dining hall with an audience of a couple hundreds, entranced.  From afar I held my gaze at the silver haired writer framed by the large picture windows, the evening sun seeping through majestic evergreens, and silence shrouded the place except for one man’s gentle voice.  It was simply mesmerizing.

But it was the interview that made the dreamlike experience most rewarding.  The conversation explored the creative mind behind the writing process.  I jotted down some helpful tidbits:

Curiosity goes a long way.  It sparks off the research process, generating and sustaining the creative energy for the work.

Listen to the rhythm of the sentences.   “He would” or “he’d” could elicit very different effects.  Sound advice from a poet.

I was excited to hear Ondaatje address questions stemming from his book The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film, which coincidentally, I am currently reading.  Murch was the film editor of The English Patient, one of my all time favorite movies.  The serendipity is most gratifying.  The art of film editing parallels that of writing… the essence is knowing what to cut, and when to move on.

While Minghella was writing the screenplay, Ondaatje was involved in the drafts.  The story had to be taken apart and rewritten to be adapted into film.  When you see your work being dismantled and reconstructed into another form, I imagine it takes courage, trust, and humility to accept that.  Ondaatje appreciates the art form of film and respects others’ expertise, entrusting his work in their hands.  This team effort, this alchemy of talents is most prominent in the making of the movie.

In the Interview, Ondaatje was asked about one excerpt from The Conversations. The writer and the film editor shares a common appreciation for the Chinese auteur Wong Kar Wai and his film In The Mood For Love.  The layering of sounds suggests the multiplicity of going-ons, events happening off-screen.  Such an effect can also be found in The English Patient.  The thickness of the actual and imaginary scenes adds complexity and depth, weaving a much more interesting tapestry.  Again, the parallel can be drawn with novel writing.  It’s the multiple offerings and the possibilities of interpretations that make a piece of writing intriguing:

“We are not held hostage by just one certain story, or if we are, we know it is just one opinion: there are clear hints of other versions.” (The Conversations, p. 160)

There were a couple of ideas I was a bit surprised to find.

First there is the ubiquitous self-doubt throughout the writer’s creative process.  Strange, and yet comforting, to find talented minds share this same psyche.  It is a humble sign to admit self-doubt.  The architect Frank Gehry and the late filmmaker Sydney Pollack came to mind.

“Her only virtue is self-doubt.” (Divisadero).

Second, and perhaps the most precious gem I collected from the event was reflected by Odaajte’s own words on the creation of a story: “I don’t know what would happen… I don’t want to know.”  The excitement of writing is that the story reveals itself as if it has a life of its own.  The writing process is an exploratory experience.  How gratifying to know we don’t need to follow a predetermined structure to plug in the story elements.  The creative mind is not bound by structure.  Let the story lead, and, enjoy the ride.

At the end of the Interview, Ondaatje was asked about a skills and job match questionnaire he once did when he was a young man.  The results showed that he could make one good customs officer.  Aren’t we all glad he had chosen to march to a different drummer and diverged in his career plan.

***

Français :

Apple sort la version 3 de son fabuleux outil de postproduction.

La suite contient :

• Final Cut Pro 7
• Motion 4
• Soundtrack Pro 3
• Color 1.5
• Compressor 3.5
• DVD Studio Pro 4

Le site d’Apple vous énumère les nouveautés du produit ici.

Pour les geeks, voici quelques spécificités techniques.

Une vidéo nous montre le Maître du montage de film Walter Murch en action utilisant la nouvelle version de Final Cut avec son réalisateur fétiche, Francis Ford Coppola.

***

English:

Apple launches the 3rd version 3 of its fabulous postproduction tool.

The suite contains:

• Final Cut Pro 7
• Motion 4
• Soundtrack Pro 3
• Color 1.5
• Compressor 3.5
• DVD Studio Pro 4

Apple website gives the new features of the product here.

For the geeks, here are some of the Tech specs.

A video shows the Master of film editing Walter Murch in action using the new version of Final Cut with his preferred director, Francis Ford Coppola.

WALTER MURCH

I first got to know about Murch when I read some years back that Michael Ondaatje had written a book on him. I was intrigued, a famous novelist squeezing a book out of conversations with a film editor?

Welcome to Murch. He is not only the editor (and sound designer) of landmark movies like Apocalypse Now and Godfather, he is also a rare species. A person with a fascinating brain. A philosopher, a polymath, a veritable renaissance man in Hollywood.

The most noticeable thing about his discourses is an almost preternatural ability to make connections. Especially between cinema and other mediums. He views present-day cinema with the eyes of somebody hundreds of years in the future trying to put into perspective the baby steps of a new art form.

Has some really interesting things to say.

On doing it standing up:

“Editing is sort of a strange combination of being a brain surgeon and a short-order cook. You’ll never see those guys sitting down on the job. The more you engage your entire body in the process of editing, the better and more balletic the flow of images will be. I might be sitting when I’m reviewing material, but when I’m choosing the point to cut out of a shot, I will always jump out of the chair. A gunfighter will always stand, because it’s the fastest, most accurate way to get to his gun. Imagine “High Noon” with Gary Cooper sitting in a chair. I feel the fastest, most accurate way to choose the critically important frame I will cut out of a shot is to be standing. I have kind of a gunfighter’s stance.”

On a door slamming:

“If I go out to record a door-slam, I don’t think I’m recording a door-slam. I think I am recording the space in which a door-slam happens.”

On future cinema historians:

“I think future generations with powers we can’t even imagine will look back on filmmaking in the 20th century and say, How did they do all that, back then, with their ridiculously limited resources?”

On Beethoven’s music:

“When you listen to Beethoven’s music now, and hear those sudden shifts in tonality, rhythm, and musical focus, it is as if you can hear the grammar of film ­ cuts, dissolves, fades, superimposures, long shots, close shots ­ being worked out in musical terms.”

On the possibility of cinematic notation:

“I think cinema is perhaps now where music was before musical notation — writing music as a sequence of marks on paper — was invented … I like to think cinema is stumbling around in the “pre-notation” phase of its history. We’re still doing it all by the seat of our pants. Not that we haven’t made wonderful things. But if you compare music in the 12th century with music in the 18th century, you can clearly sense a difference of several orders of magnitude in technical and emotional development, and this was all made possible by the ability to write music on paper. Whether we will ever be able to write anything like cinematic notation, I don’t know. But it’s interesting to think about.”

On doing it lying down:

“When I write a script, I lie down — because that’s the opposite of standing up. I stand up to edit, so I lie down to write. I take a little tape recorder and, without being aware of it, go into a light hypnotic trance. I pretend the film is finished and I’m simply describing what was happening. I start out chronologically but then skip around. Anything that occurs to me, I say into the recorder. Because I’m lying down, because my eyes are closed, because I’m not looking at anything, and the ideas are being captured only by this silent scribe — the tape recorder — there’s nothing for me to criticize. It’s just coming out.

That is my way of disarming the editorial side. Putting myself in a situation that is as opposite as possible to how I edit, both physically and mentally. To encourage those ideas to come out of the woods like little animals and drink at the pool safely, without feeling that the falcon is going to come down and tear them apart.”

What Walter Wants:

“One hope I have is that someone will put a HiDef camera into orbit, giving a full-frame view of the Earth spinning below, and this will be made available to everyone on HiDef cable channel 427 or whatever. Then, when plasma screens – or liquid crystal, or digital wallpaper – get large enough, this image can then occupy the entire wall of a room in your house. You’ll be able to go into that room and do other things – read a book, or listen to music, and occasionally look up – and one entire wall of the room is the Earth as it actually is at the very moment that you’re looking at it. It would be as if your room were in orbit.

You’d begin to see Earthly events in context – a volcanic eruption in Peru, or the pollution coming out of New York harbor, or the hurricane threatening New Orleans, floods in Bangladesh – and it will begin to change our awareness of our relationship to the Earth in a profound way, the way the mirror changed our relationship to ourselves, and deepened our sense of identity as individuals. Given the technology that we have today, I’m interested that it hasn’t already happened yet. Given the state of the world at the moment, I hope it happens soon.”

.

(Read a wonderful Murch interview here by Geoff Manaugh; another interview here by William Kallay discussing Murch’s restoration work on Edison’s film – the first sound film ever made; and extracts from the Ondaatje book here)

The sun is out and the darkness has gone. It only seems like yesterday that we were huddled round a cigarette in the grips of winter, wondering with pleading eyes if we’d see another dawn.

Things have been busy and posting has been as sparse as a good Guy Ritchie movie. Notice how I don’t tag Guy Ritchie on this post, the man is loathsome. THE THREE TENNERS is now at the latter stages of post production. This evening I’ve been creeping around the streets of Ravelston (the place where I live) like Walter Murch trying to find the wonderful nuance of sound that will bring my film to life. Where in this picture can I find a place for a boiler sparking into life? I swear to god it’s like a post apocalyptic rescue ship taking off from the dusty, barren remains of the earth, or at least it sounds like it.

Murch at work

Last night I returned to watching films like a Charlton Heston slurping water unknowingly from Jesus in BEN HUR. It was a magic feast which included the following picture.

Now this to me was a bit of an achievement. YES Fellini is one of the finest, most technically gifted filmmakers to have ever walked the earth, YES 8 1/2 is always in the top five, usually top 2 of the best films ever but do you think I could get through this thing without falling asleep?….. No. it may be that there is some kind of subliminal hypnotic thing going on with his pacing, lighting and camera moves because his films always have a valium type affect on me. Last night I pumped myself with enough caffeine to keep an elephant awake and sat through it……… The picture is tremendous.

]

Marcello Mastroianni is Guido, a film director trying to get to grips with his creativity, His many women and the array “guiding” voices that surround him, confusing his work with either simplistic babbling or pretentious over analysis. He slips into many dreams of childhood exposure to sex, religion and his experience of life with dazzling imagery and incredibly staged scenes. This is truly filmmaker’s film. I found myself rewinding scenes, playing them slow, examining cuts, moves and lighting with intense precision. I can feel a Fellini spell coming on which could blow my admiration gaskets after just coming out of a Josef Von Sternberg marathon. Incredible stuff, seriously, get a hold of it, you WON’T be disappointed.

I have to show a scene and what better than a big old slice of Saraghina. The only shame about this clip is you don’t see the horrific dressing down Guido suffers after satisfying his boyish curiosity. The priests are not as harsh as his Mother who comes close to disowning the boy. And what about Saraghina herself?? What a woman!! There she is just hanging about the beach doing the rumba for anyone who happens to be carrying some change. She reminds me of an ex I once had, the only difference is she’d rumba for free.

I’d love to post some more of this film as there’s so much great stuff. I don’t have the time so we’re on Youtube existing stock tonight folks, do enjoy though…….

Tetro being filmed in Argentina by Francis Ford Coppola was last year´s biggest news in the Buenos Aires film community–everyone wanted to work on it, and everyone also complained about it. From Francis getting his lap top stolen and loosing his “only copy” of the script (the guy doesn´t make backups?) to reports of the actors union shutting down the set to protest low wages to rumors of heir Sophia shutting down production to celebrate her birthday. . . well, now that is all in the past. What counts is the movie Coppola was able to film. Edited by my favorite editor of all times, Walter Murch (who gave a standing room only talk at a local film school), the trailer definitely is dramatic and poetic. I´m a bit surprised by the look–very low light and on HD, it looks unlike any other of Coppola´s films.  I´m always surprised when people in Argentina speak Spanish on screen, but that´s Hollywood folks. US debut is June 11th: news on it premiering in Argentina is still not available.

This definitely falls in the category of WTF. Still, I want to comment.

I’m pretty sure this video is advocating beatings of children, although it’s possible I might have missed the message of “Magical Martial Arts.”

The part where the crazy man punches at the kids at home while screaming duck is my favorite. But a close second is the editing; Walter Murch would be jealous! So are Fred and Sharon. What’s your favorite part? And …

Remember, as the song says:

“There’s a winner inside each and every one of us / There’s a warrior inside …”

If you liked this vid, you will also probably like this one.

Via, Anika.

Just now I completed my edit of my first short film, the Appraiser. It is an exciting endeavor and working hard with Jesse Low of Eternalight Productions, I have completed a product I am very happy with. Jesse is the producer, writer, director, and now friend I spent a lot of time with over about a week to turn the production into a wonderful vision. We’ve spent a lot of late nights toiling over shots in our limited time and watching the same things over and over again and our hard work paid off. We only had a week to work on editing it due to the constraints of the internet contest it is being entered in. As always there are issues to work with such as sound, inconsistent white balances, ect. but that is all part of the fun, thrill, and challenge involved with any production. But I will repeat, only begin short films if you are DEDICATED. There is a lot of heart, passion, and looking to the future motivating people rather than money and it speaks a lot about the hardworking people that make it possible.

I recently finished a book on film editing I highly recommend, In the Blink of an Eye by Walter Murch. It is a necessity for anyone wanting to be a film editor and is a short book packed with information that translates to any editing equipment. I won’t go into too much about it but if you plan on being an aspiring editor this is a must read.

That is really all for right now. I am about to pick up where I left off on the short film Alter’s editing because I hope to have it completed by next Saturday. There are some people looking to compose some tracks for it professionally so it should be interesting to see how that turns out. I will have another trailer for it coming soon upon completion. I will have some clips for you from the Appraiser as soon as it is all finished from the online contest it is in.  As always if you have any questions or comments for me, leave ‘em below.

Good Luck and Good Night,

Tim Karagosian

Dorothy awaits electroshock therapy in "Return to Oz".

(Walter Murch, 1986)

February 21, 2009

by Joel Crary

Why does a person watch a film more than once? Why do they watch a film 10, 20, 30 times? Maybe it’s to have a film’s message reasserted at a time when it is most needed. Maybe it’s purely the love for a story or narrative, a particular sequence of events that registers in a certain way. Films don’t change over time. Or do they? Most likely, a film cannot be understood or appreciated fully on first viewing. There are always little intricacies that need to be unraveled. Of course, the viewer changes over time. They are exposed to new thoughts, new attitudes, new opinions and new films. They can revisit a film armed with new perspectives and make something else out of it entirely. Certainly, what a film means to a viewer changes, if not the film itself.

I know that I am not through with watching “Return to Oz”. It is a film I have seen far more often than most others. Released in 1985 by Disney, most viewers paid it no attention. For me, it was a building block to my childhood. For many, it was a cause of kid nightmares, the source of which would never be traced until years later. I have read steady streams of comments on the Internet from viewers who see stills or clips from the film and exclaim, “Oh my God, it’s THAT movie!” with equal parts horror and fascination. People remember it but can’t place it. I grew up loving it.

I’ll admit that I still get a thrill from “Return to Oz” for all its unapologetic creepiness and attraction to the downright grotesque. To the souls who have yet to see it, I take a unique pleasure in sitting down and showing them how Walter Murch and the film’s crew took the world’s perception of the over-the-rainbow Oz and twisted it inside out. Gone are the singing munchkins, shimmering landscapes and joyful Emerald City townsfolk that populated the 1939 musical. Dorothy’s journey into Oz is a jump from one disturbing, colourless wasteland to another. Placed into an institution due to her persisting belief in the existence of Oz, Dorothy escapes electroshock therapy and nearly drowns before awaking in the middle of Oz’s deadly desert, inches away from turning to sand. Oz has been decimated by a tyrant known as the Nome King, played by Nicol Williamson, who has divested the land of its emeralds and turned the people of the Emerald City to stone.

That’s L. Frank Baum’s world. Murch and crew paid close attention to “The Marvelous Land of Oz” and “Ozma of Oz” in their formulations of setting and character, crossing over elements of the two books in order to make Dorothy’s trip back to Oz complete in scope. Baum was not afraid to confront his child protagonists with almost hellish forces to overcome, and they are on display here. Of particular unsettling presence is Princess Mombi, played by Jean Marsh, a conflation of characters from both books, who has 31 heads to choose from, on display in cases where she dwells in the usurped Wizard’s palace. In one scene, a headless Mombi feels her way to the case containing her original head in order to have eyes to pursue Dorothy with. It’s the stuff of not wanting to fall asleep at night.

There is a persistent fear of decapitation throughout the entire film that I only noticed on a most recent viewing. Dorothy’s room in the institution is numbered 31, the same number given to the case containing Mombi’s original head. The doctors want to shock the bad “waking dreams” that plague Dorothy from her mind. New friends Jack Pumpkinhead and the Gump are decapitated at different points yet continue to speak freely. Mechanical man Tik-Tok’s neural impulses are wound by dials attached to his body, which wouldn’t operate otherwise. The nomes of Oz appear as visages in the land’s sediment, and the incarceration into the inanimate of Dorothy and her friends prompts the Nome King to grow a body. The pressure on Billina the hen to lay an egg suggests a fate under the axe, and what a pity that would be now that she’s learned to talk. Maybe that one is pushing it, but it’s all meant to show how horrible the world would be without imagination, done on a scale that portrays it as a scary and complete loss of humanity.

A movie set in the land of Oz is tough to make, and maybe another successful one will never see the light of day. “The Wizard of Oz” is, of course, a masterpiece in its own right. It has permeated the consciousness of the culture so thoroughly that it perhaps may never be tampered with without coming off crass and second rate. It meant a lot to me as a kid, who was feverishly addicted to all things Oz and knew exactly where to raid the Peterborough Public Library for every volume it carried. I have memories of sitting at the kitchen table writing a letter to the long-deceased Baum, and of a dream in which I was given a jewel-encrusted pendant by Ozma that I tried to recreate with construction paper and markers the next morning. The first substantial bit of writing I ever completed was a story set in Oz. As fanciful as I found the world, “Return to Oz” revealed a dark side to being young that I also took great delight in. It’s a delight that is currently appealing to viewers in the Harry Potter films and countless imitators. In that respect, “Return to Oz” was 20 years ahead of its time.

Walter Murch hasn’t directed another film since. An award-winning and accomplished editor and sound worker, he would later come to my attention as the man who put Orson Welles’ “Touch of Evil” back together the way Welles might have wanted it. There’s an admirable character trait there, expressed by a desire to remain true to what originally inspires us. “Return to Oz” continues to inspire me with its originality, its faithfulness, its darkness and imagination.

The Acme Siren’s Top 10 Free Music Downloads of 2008 – #2

If you haven’t seen THX 1138 you must do so immediately. George Lucas’s first movie, in my opinion, is his finest. No Skywalker or Boba Fett sadness in this piece. A strange story of self-control, love, and exploration featuring a very young Robert Duvall. Made with an almost non-existent budget (the film actually almost bankrupt Zoetrope Films) it shows Lucas’s ingenuity back when his genius was first emerging. But enough about the film let’s talk about the music. The download includes the complete score of the film WITH complementing dialouge and foley from the film. This is NOT the official soundtrack, it is many times better. Also included is a conversation with Walter Murch, the sound designer for the film, who talks about creating the sound and atmosphere which played such a large role in making this film not just good, but great.

Walter Murch – THX 1138 – 1:46:15

This music is good for: talking trash with film buffs.

By day a mild-mannered film editor…

No ideawhat this was all about:  I got it off Le Pais, and my Spanish is very limited (as those of you will know, who caught me out confusing it with Portuguese the other week!).

Walter Murch is the multiple-Oscar-winning editor of films like Apocolypse Now, the Godfwather movies and (sorry) The English Patient, which gives me hives, but enough of that.

This post is a cheat, because I have  been wanting to write something about Murch’s book on film editing, In the Blink of an Eye – but I don’t have time now to find the quotes. I will just note that his ideas are very interesting in terms of how editing film – making a coherent thing, a film, out of millions of frames – is above all a sequence of decisions. This frame or that frame? Which emotion to we want to emphasise here? What is the significance of the cut? And if you call it a “join,” how does that change your perception of it?

He has  interesting things to say about simplicity and the importance of achieving maximum effect with minimum “effects” – this is the guy who sound-edited Apocolypse Now on a principle of “Less is more,” so you know he knows what he’s talking about. If you think about it, there are lots of sound-bites from that movie at large in the culture: that’s because he made it so you could hear them and take them in.

More soon. I’m assembling some particular ideas involving quotes from other people as well. Meanwhile, here is Murch surrounded by the hundreds of individual “characteristic” frames he prints out and puts on the wall in the studio for reference points. And he does make clear that, as to that interesting word “characteristic,” what they are characteristic of is his perception of what a shot is about. In other words, there is no eye without judgement.