Behind the Seen

by Charles Koppelman

  All very best wishes from

  Walter Murch

  * * *

  June 20, 2002, Murch’s Journal

  Avid system vs. FCP: Avid would cost $62,000 to purchase (edit point). We would need two of them for $124,000. We get four [FCP] stations for $54,000 = $13,500 each. Not much more than what I paid for the Pro Tools stations back in 1998. Wrote FCP letter and list to Ant and Bill and Iain. Godspeed!

  Then, on Sunday morning, June 23, after a few days spent wrapping up his affairs, including getting a bad tooth pulled, Walter departs for the San Francisco airport to catch his plane to London where Aggie arrived a few weeks earlier, to care for her ailing mother.

  June 24, 2002, Murch’s Journal

  Arrive at London, no one from the film to meet me as planned. I took the train in, too much luggage to handle myself, but I did it. Didn’t have any pound coins for the trolley, but the ticket lady gave me change. Then the first trolley I got at Paddington had a wonky front wheel, so I switched to another one which worked fine, then got a cab to Kingstown Street, and there was Aggie!

  Chapter 5. Keys to the Kingdom

  Bucharest, Romania.

  JUNE 24, 2002—LONDON, ENGLAND

  The filming of Cold Mountain in Romania starts in exactly three weeks, yet final approval of the editing platform Walter Murch will use to edit the movie is still up in the air. As of yet nothing is authorized. In the entertainment business, decisions like these typically get made “just in time.” No one seems panicked. As Walter says later, “If I even know where I’m going to be three weeks in advance, that’s a long lead time.”

  On arrival in London, Murch emails Minghella an updated set of script notes he wrote on the plane from California:

  * * *

  From: Walter Murch

  Subject: Script Notes

  Date: 6/24/02 10:36 AM

  To: Anthony Minghella

  Dear Ant:

  Here are some notes on the first forty pages, as a .pdf file. Don’t be afraid that there are thirteen pages! I am writing about everything and anything that comes into my head, also writing down applause. As always, there is “I think” and “It seems to me” and “maybe” hovering around everything, all written in the hopes that maybe 5% makes sense or might trigger something in your approach to the material. I made it to London, and am just about to jog around Regent’s Park to get some oxygen in me from the flight over. Weather is lovely. Lots of love and good wishes. W.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, since Murch wants to have his edit rooms in Bucharest set up and operating before filming begins on July 15, he must keep an eye on the progress of ordering and shipping his equipment. He sends an email to on-location producer Iain Smith that mostly concerns arrangements for visual effects design, and concludes: “Also, any progress on getting the FCP Apple editing equipment? We should have it on the ground and ready to install at the end of the first week of July. All best wishes, Walter.”

  Murch spends the following week with Aggie at their house in Primrose Hill, attending to family matters. During that time DigitalFilm Tree finalizes an equipment list for four Final Cut Pro editorial stations using Mac G4s networked together with 1.2 terabytes of storage using a Rorke Data shared area network (SAN) with all the required monitors, video cards, cables, and accessories. On June 25, Ramy sends an email to producer Bill Horberg with this itemized breakdown. The total comes to $133,904. Of this, $56,000 is for four Final Cut Pro stations—hardware, software, the Aurora capture system for proper digitizing, five monitors, extra memory, and cables. The remaining $78,000 is for the data storage systems, hard drives, other accessories, and supplies. The next day Ramy forwards a copy of that message to Zed, who is still in New York. Ramy gets a response early the next morning: “Awesome stuff, dude! I’ll be praying. Zed.”

  A conference call among Ramy, producer Bill Horberg, and Linda Borgeson, the post-production supervisor for Miramax, is set up by Horberg’s assistant for late afternoon that same day to review the equipment list. By email Ramy alerts Walter in London, and Sean, who is still in San Francisco preparing to leave for Romania.

  A few hours later—and before the conference call—Ramy gets Walter’s return email message: “I talked to Linda Borgeson a couple of weeks ago and she is very keen on FCP. Bill is keen on saving money. Emphasize how much $$ saving in comparison to Avid, and Apple’s interest and support of this project. Protect the idea of four stations as being crucial to the way we are multi-tasking: editing, assisting, file management, making tapes, and digitizing, all at the same time. On ‘Ripley’ in Rome, with two Avid stations, we would grind to a stop until someone from London could fly down to fix the problem... Good luck! Walter M.”

  The conference call goes well. Horberg agrees in principle to go with Final Cut Pro. Questions remain to be answered, however. Who will provide support for Walter on the ground in Bucharest? Should the systems be leased or purchased? What items might be obtained in London, where post production will continue once filming concludes in Romania?

  In a matter of days, these questions are getting answered. A London-based rental house, Edit Hire, will rent Beta SP decks, VHS decks, CD players, timecode and film code burners, and other hardware. The film production office will purchase stock and expendables—blank videotapes for telecine transfers from film, blank DVDs for burning copies of digitized film dailies to be sent to Miramax and to the other producers, paper, labels, and other supplies. With information now being exchanged about shipping logistics, it looks like it becomes a done deal at the moment Walter is in the air, flying to Bucharest.

  One major question remains: Who will go to Romania to put the systems together? DigitalFilm Tree always planned to assemble and rigorously test everything in Los Angeles before shipping, but once it all arrives in Bucharest someone needs to be there who can help get the systems configured.

  * * *

  From: Bill Horberg

  To: Ramy Katrib

  Subject: Update/DFT systems

  Date: July 1, 2002

  ...it seems the critical path will be a support person on the ground here next week with the equipment for set up and commencement of smooth running operation... we are anxious to know who that individual might be... we really need to know today or tomorrow a.m. where we stand.

  Regards,

  Bill

  * * *

  The pressure is on DFT to come up with an on-site technical person, otherwise Horberg might quash using FCP. Ramy immediately puts out email to the DFT network of FCP experts with the subject line: “Update/DFT Murch Support—Important!!” to see who among Walt Shires, Zed Saeed, Mike Stroven, Shawn Paper, and Tim Serda is available and wants to go to Bucharest. “We have to pick a candidate for Romania soon... Everyone, please advise. As you all know, there is a little history here in the making. — Best, Ramy.”

  Zed recalls Ramy phoning him to follow up on this email: “I remember sitting with a friend and the phone rang and Ramy said, ‘Zed, this is Ramy. I need you to go to Romania.’ I didn’t ask anything. I said, ‘Yeah, sure!’ It didn’t work out because of my passport situation. This is the post-9/11 world, remember, and I’ve got a Pakistani passport. Not exactly the credentials you want for flying to Romania at that time.”

  As it turns out, Jim Foreman will go to Romania. He is from Aurora, the company in Michigan that is supplying the Ignitor capture card for digitizing, outputting, and viewing video in Final Cut Pro. He will first come to Los Angeles to join DFT in assembling and testing the systems.

  July 1, 2002, Murch’s Journal

  Arrive Bucharest. Feeling is Italy 1963 and Havana 1989, with Marriott Las Vegas 2002, Paris 1889, and Moscow 1955.

  On arriving and checking into the Marriott, Walter takes a two-mile run around deposed Romanian dictator Ceaucescu’s former palace, now the Palatul Parlamentului—the biggest building in Europe. Later, just after midnight Bucharest time (afternoon in Los Angeles), Ramy receives final word from Miramax by email a
pproving purchase of the Final Cut Pro setup. “This email confirms that Cold Mountain Ltd. will purchase and/or lease computers, editorial software, media storage, and peripherals based on the breakdown in the 6/25/02 quote #5085 provided by DigitalFilm Tree.... I understand that you will immediately begin ordering and assembling the systems with the intent to ship from LA to Romania by Friday July 5... Best, Linda Borgeson; VP Post-production; Miramax Films.” A momentous idea becomes reality.

  Former Romanian dictator Ceaucescu’s Palace.

  Even a film company as large and well known as Miramax must set up an account and get credit approval from Apple. There are credit applications, purchase orders, and wire transfers to process. Apple’s managers are caught up in end-of-quarter financial matters and their attention isn’t focused on DigitalFilm Tree’s need to complete purchase and lease arrangements. The schedule for getting the equipment off to Bucharest in time for Walter to begin working with initial footage is now falling behind. Ramy and the DFT staff still have to receive the software and hardware in Los Angeles, plug it all together, test it, dismantle it, and ship it halfway around the world to a former Soviet-bloc nation with uncertain customs procedures. Ramy has no choice but to make the plunge, even if it might put DFT out of business.

  JULY 3, 2002—LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

  At 1:00 a.m. Ramy makes a decision and sends email to Miramax and to DFT’s purchasing contact at Apple: “Hello everyone. On Tuesday DigitalFilm Tree began ordering system components. A director of financial services at Apple will check on the credit approval process now taking place at Apple/London. We trust all will go well as we are ordering on our credit to facilitate faster delivery, — Best Regards, Ramy.”

  Sean Cullen later recalls the situation, “We had done a lot of, ‘We’re ready! We’re ready!’ but the money hadn’t come through, and DigitalFilm Tree ended up basically saying, ‘We’re going to buy these things for you now and ship them off to you, and we are going to assume that we are going to get paid.’ They took a big risk—a major risk. We said, ‘That would save us. Are you sure?’ And Ramy said, ‘Yeah, because we care about it. We’ve worked on it, we’ve done it, we’re going to do it.’” That kind of impassioned faith is unusual in any business. But in the film business, where checks are rarely used anymore—money only moves by wire transfer—this sort of trust is unheard of.

  Now, less than three hours after Ramy received the email from Linda Borgeson at Miramax approving DFT’s quote, he gets the first electronic notice from the Apple purchasing system confirming acquisition of four Mac G4s and four Cinema Tools 1.0/Final Cut Pro 3.0 bundles, totaling nearly $16,000: “Dear Apple Reseller, Thank you for placing your order with Apple Computer, Inc. Your order has been successfully received and is currently being processed... Thank you again for choosing Apple Computer!”

  For Walter, the first order of film business in Bucharest is to select a location for what will become the home of the Cold Mountain edit. That means going to visit Kodak Cinelabs Romania, and Castel, a Romanian production company.

  July 3, 2002, Murch’s Journal

  Great day at Kodak the lab of our dreams. Good rooms, great people, etc. etc. As soon as our equipment arrives, we should be moving in. They were plastering the walls as we looked at them.

  Walter can locate his editing rooms on the second floor of the lab’s facility, which means timely access to film dailies and to telecine transfers—the videotape copies the lab makes from those film dailies. Kodak Cinelabs is one of a handful of far-flung “pocket” film labs Kodak is locating around the world to better service local and regional filmmakers. They can do this by utilizing the same kinds of miniaturized technologies used by one-hour photo processing shops. The lab is nearly three hours drive from the Cold Mountain sets in the Carpathian Mountains which, after extensive location scouting in the U.S., Canada, and Europe, director Anthony Minghella decided best resemble mid-19th century North Carolina. Setting up here, in Bucharest, and being self-contained and efficiently organized, is more of a priority for Murch than having access to actual filming many miles away. Arrangements will be made to get film dailies up to the set for Anthony and the producers to review.

  Like most professional director-editor relationships, Walter Murch and Anthony Minghella’s is a close creative partnership. Their association has a specific style with its own particular procedures, customs, and unspoken understandings. They each keep creative boundaries that best serve the interests of the film. For example, Walter is invited to read and make notes about the screenplay very early in Anthony’s writing process—in the case of Cold Mountain, a full year before commencing production in Romania. For Anthony, Walter isn’t simply an editor vetting the script for discontinuities, story flaws, or other hard-edged editorial concerns, such as, “If we saw Inman in town, we’d better see him leave town before he shows up in battle.” What Anthony draws on from Walter, first off, is his “story sense”—observations, analyses, and emotional responses.

  Kodak Cinelabs in Bucharest, Romania. Murch’s edit room will be located here, on the second floor.

  On the other extreme—keeping viewpoints separated—Walter holds to a mutually agreed-on “Don’t tell me, let me discover it myself” ritual. He doesn’t want to see Anthony’s on-set notes before he forms his own first impressions of the material. That information exists, of course—the script supervisor keeps a detailed log of the director’s reactions to each numbered take, such as “NG” (no good), or specific comments about particularly good line readings, or questions of camera focus. When Murch first watches dailies (alone in the lab’s projection room, not with Minghella, cast, or crew) he does so as a clean slate, without anyone else’s opinions to influence him. It’s a way of staying separate from the thrill (or agony) of production. The adrenaline rush that comes naturally during filming can make a so-so take seem wonderful, just as low blood sugar can make a great shot seem terrible. These sorts of distortions can easily find their way into the on-set script notes. That’s why an editor’s obligation, as Murch sees it, is to experience the footage without filters. The only value to him is what’s on the screen. Murch will not look at Minghella’s notes until his second viewing of the footage weeks later, just before he begins the actual cutting. For much the same reasons—keeping himself immune from inappropriate influences—Murch doesn’t make any effort to visit the set, or even get to know actors face to face. Indeed, during the four months of shooting Cold Mountain, Murch will go to the set only four or five times.

  Director Anthony Minghella in Bucharest watching dailies at the start of production.

  “I am the kind of editor who doesn’t like to go on the set,” Murch says. “I joke about it: If I have to go I look at the floor”—as he says this he shields his brow with his hands and looks down—“until I find the director’s shoes and I look up (Murch glances up), talk to him, and look back down again.” (Murch shields his brow again with his hands and looks down.) “I don’t want to know what it’s really like. I want to see only what’s on the screen because that is all the audience will ever see. And the editor has the responsibility to be the person on the film who isn’t influenced by the reality of the location or the mood of the set at the time. Or how difficult that shot was to get. Or how cold it was. The editor’s innocence about these things is a counter-weight: ‘Looks good to me!’ or, ‘Doesn’t look so great, no matter how much it costs.’ Everyone else who works on the film at this stage—director, producer, camera, sound, design, costume—can ‘see around the edge of the frame,’ so to speak.”

  The construction of Black Cove Farm, where Ada Monroe (Nicole Kidman) lives in Cold Mountain.

  Set builders working on Cold Mountain town near Brasov, Romania.

  July 5, 2002, Murch’s Journal

  Trip up to Carpathian Locations. Walter, Sean and me. Driven by Mike the Mathematician. See Battlefield: Black Cove Farm, Cold Mountain Town, Swangers. Very impressive work—needs to be shagged up a little when it is d
one. Signs though are too weathered. Meet Nicole Kidman at the Villa Hotel. Anthony there too, good to see him, good for Sean and Walter to see him. Meet the Tintype Man: Stephen. They are taking pictures of the locations using the old glass plate technology. Also pictures of Ada and Inman. Stephen was the guy that Barry Malkin suggested and I passed on to Tim—glad it worked out. He took a picture of me, a closeup.

  July 5, 2002, Murch’s Journal

  See rehearsal at Killing Fields and suggest that Brendan say his lines about Ruby based on a look from Teague, rather than the command to go to the tree. The command follows Brendan’s lines about Ruby, and then Brendan is defiant when talking about Pangle’s hat. [In the end this suggestion wasn’t followed.] Finished Notes for Ant—four pages of distilled notes, at 4am.

  A tintype of Walter Murch.

  L to R: Stephen Berkman, Sean Cullen, Mihai Bogdan, Walter Slater Murch on the set of Cold Mountain with Berkman’s equipment for making tintype photographs.

  From Cold Mountain: Characters Stobrod and Pangle in the campfire scene.

  July 6, 2002, Murch’s Journal

  Breakfast meeting with Ant, discussed script, Kodak, things in general in a brief meeting. Talked about the “tang” effect.

  Minghella and Tang

  Minghella’s “falling in love” with a book is his prerequisite for making a movie based on it. The English Patient, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and Cold Mountain are all examples of this. The challenge in making any film adapted from fiction is deciding what to keep, what to lose, and how to take abstract, often interior moods created in words and present them in pictures on the screen. On Cold Mountain, as on the other two films, Minghella is both screenwriter and director, so he adapts the story twice—first from book to script, then when turning his screenplay into images and sounds. He approaches a novel with respect and admiration, and does not begin adapting it into a screenplay until he feels immersed in its historical facts, geography, language, culture, and so on. Minghella spent one entire year just doing research before starting to write the script for Cold Mountain. He is fully prepared for the surgical process of getting the book into script. It’s a painful one, he says, because by definition it means losing the form and details that drew him to the story initially. To make it less traumatic, he doesn’t even have the book nearby when he adapts it. Describing the process of adapting Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, Minghella says he went into seclusion and brought piles of research materials and books but left the novel itself behind, for fear he might simply transcribe it word for word into screenplay format—that’s how much he loved it.