Behind the Seen

by Charles Koppelman

  Other editors may freeze the two sides of an edit (with the outgoing frame in one window, the incoming frame in the other window) to carefully study how they relate. But this isn’t Murch’s way. At the crucial moment of the cut, he insists on working from instincts to give him the kind of emotional connection to the film he wants. “I started this on the KEM when I was editing The Conversation, and I used the mechanical frame counter. I would set it to 000 at some arbitrary point upstream from a potential cut point, run the film, and would hit the stop button where it felt right, and read the frame counter; let’s say it was 145. And then do it all over again a couple more times, hoping for the same 145. The Avid was very efficient at this—better than the KEM, in fact. One of the first things I asked about Final Cut Pro was its ability to do editing on the fly.”

  February 9, 2003, Murch’s Journal

  It is a miracle: the ability—more often than not—to think this shot needs a one-frame trim at the tail. And then be able on the first try to run the shot and hit the trim marker, and get a reading of –1. How is it done? It is mysterious to me. By looking at the rhythms of the image as a kind of visual music, I guess, and then hitting the mark when the new instrument (the new shot) should enter. Musicians do it all the time. Not coincidentally, the frame corresponds to the smallest interval in music: the hemidemisemiquaver. The hdsq is 1/32 note, and it would correspond to a film frame at a metronomic setting of 180.

  “If I can’t do this,” Murch wrote in In the Blink of an Eye, “if I can’t hit the same frame repeatedly at 24 frames per second, I know there is something wrong in my approach to the shot, and I adjust my thinking until I find a frame I can hit.”

  Murch’s on-the-fly technique derives from his theory of “the blink.” The edit in film—“a total and instantaneous displacement of one field of vision with another”—isn’t so different from what we do thousands of times every day in real life when we blink our eyes. While editing Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation, Murch realized his decisions about where to cut shots were coinciding with actor Gene Hackman’s eye blinks. Early one morning, after staying up all night working on The Conversation, Murch walked up from Folsom to Market Street in San Francisco for breakfast. He passed a Christian Science Reading Room with a display copy of that day’s newspaper in the window. It featured a story about film director John Huston, who had just directed Fat City. Murch stopped to read the interview. Huston said an ideal film seems to be like thought itself; the viewer’s eyes seem to project the images. Huston observed that we regularly cut out unnecessary information by blinking as our gaze adjusts, say, from a person sitting next us to a lamp across the room. Huston’s idea connected to what Murch had himself just experienced editing scenes of Harry Caul in The Conversation.

  Murch’s edit-on-the fly technique makes a cut in the blink of an eye.

  Murch took the idea one step further by noticing that we also blink when separating thoughts and sorting things out. “Start a conversation with somebody and watch when they blink,” he says. “I believe you will find the listener will blink at the precise moment he or she ‘gets’ the idea of what you are saying, not an instant earlier or later.” Murch now understood why his edit points were aligning so closely with Gene Hackman’s eye blinks in The Conversation. The actor had so thoroughly become Harry Caul he was demonstrating his completed thoughts and feelings in this specific, instinctually physiological way.

  For several hours Murch proceeds with the Cold Mountain battle sequence. He advances through the Final Cut timeline by “scrubbing” back and forth to locate each shot in the battle scene that had felt excessive on that earlier pass. Using his reflexive technique to intuit a new cut point, he marks then removes the superfluous frames. After finishing this pass Murch sets the playhead back to the beginning of the revised sequence. He cracks his knuckles one by one, turns to his left, still standing, crosses one leg over the other, puts one hand on his hip and rests an elbow on the drafting table. He presses play and watches the results on the big monitor. How does it feel? Does it move along properly? Is there a rhythm to it? Did he drop anything important? Were any telling moments compromised? No, it looks fine for now. The battle is now shorter by one minute and a half. He will show it to Anthony later in the day, when he returns from a meeting at the British Film Institute. For now, he sets it aside.

  An editor’s responsibility, as Murch sees it, is “partly to anticipate, partly to control the thought processes of the audience. To give them what they want and/or what they need just before they have to ‘ask’ for it—to be surprising yet self-evident at the same time.”

  There’s another reason Murch edits in real time—why he doesn’t stop frames on his monitor to make decisions about where to end a shot. This stems from his “rule of six,” a hierarchy of what constitutes a good edit. The list upends a traditional film-school approach that normally puts “continuity of three-dimensional space” as the top priority of editing. For example, you see a woman open a door and walk halfway across the room in shot A. In closer shot B, you find her at that same halfway point as she continues across the room to sit on a sofa. Not maintaining that spatial logic, “was seen as a failure of rigor or skill,” as Murch writes in his book, In the Blink of an Eye. Murch puts this objective at the bottom of his list. Instead, emotion, “the hardest thing to define and deal with,” is at the top. “How do you want the audience to feel? What they finally remember is not the editing, not the camerawork, not the performances, not even the story—it’s how they felt.”

  Film editing means aiming at a moving target. A shot length that feels appropriate today might not seem that way later when adjacent scenes and sequences have been changed or reordered. Every edit decision, no matter how trivial it seems or how few frames it involves, throws a pebble into a placid pond. It ripples all the surrounding material. That’s why there is a constancy and perseverance to film editing—viewing, reviewing, and rethinking. Through it, the work itself takes on a persistent rhythm.

  * * *

  From In the Blink of an Eye

  The Rule of Six

  1. Emotion 51%

  2. Story 23%

  3. Rhythm 10%

  4. Eye-trace 7%

  5. Two-dimensional plane of screen 5%

  6. Three-dimensional space of action 4%

  An ideal cut (for me) is the one that satisfies all the following six criteria at once: 1) it is true to the emotion of the moment; 2) it advances the story; 3) it occurs at a moment that is rhythmically interesting and “right”; 4) it acknowledges what you might call “eye-trace”—the concern with the location and movement of the audience’s focus of interest within the frame; 5) it respects “planarity”—the grammar of three dimensions transposed by photography to two (the dimensions of stage-line, etc.); 6) and it respects the three-dimensional continuity of the actual space (where people are in the room and in relation to one another).

  Emotion, at the top of the list, is the thing that you should try to preserve at all costs. If you find you have to sacrifice certain of those six things to make a cut, sacrifice your way up, item by item, from the bottom. The values I put after each item are slightly tongue in cheek, but not completely... emotion is worth more than all five of the things underneath it... there is a practical side to this, which is that if the emotion is right and the story is advanced in a unique, interesting way, in the right rhythm, the audience will tend to be unaware of (or unconcerned about) editorial problems with lower-order items like eye-trace, stage-line, spatial continuity, etc. The general principle seems to be that satisfying the criteria of items higher on the list tends to obscure problems with items lower on the list, but not vice versa.

  * * *

  Examining structure, not just of individual shots, but of the entire film, is Murch and Minghella’s principal task now. They gaze at the overall narrative arc of the film’s architecture. Naturally, its overarching forms are most apparent when seeing the work in its entirety. So it’s not s
urprising that after screening the first assembly in mid-February, Murch and Minghella now focus on the “two stories”—those of the protagonists, Ada and Inman, whose narratives alternate on screen throughout most of the film. The characters only appear together for a short time at the beginning and the end of the story. This “double-helix” structure, as Murch calls it, comparing the narrative to the shape of DNA, is a difficulty inherent in the premise of the book Cold Mountain. Minghella had no choice but to carry over this configuration in the film adaptation. The movie’s shape must accommodate that fact, yet also find a rhythmic equilibrium that keeps the Ada-Inman relationship in the forefront of the audience’s mind. Their romance has barely begun when they are separated by the onset of the Civil War. They remain separated by place and by the dramatically different consequences of the same war. Their desire for each other must be present, accessible to the filmgoer, yet remain unfulfilled until the end of Cold Mountain. This is a formidable storytelling challenge. And one that Minghella and Murch felt from the start.

  Ruby’s (Renée Zellweger) arrival at Black Cove Farm.

  In his post-first-assembly journal entry, Murch called the opening “long and eccentric.” He meant there are two different problems in the beginning section: 1) two principal characters, Ruby and Reverend Veasey, don’t show up until the end of the first act, approximately 50 minutes from the start; and 2) asynchronous shifts in time and place between Cold Mountain in 1861 and the Battle of Petersburg in 1864 may be too demanding.

  Shortly after screening the first assembly, Murch and Minghella discovered a possible solution to these problems in the first act: Ada’s letter-writing to Inman.

  February 25, 2003, Murch’s Journal

  We go over the ‘bungee cord’ section during the letter writing, and see what we can restructure to make the ‘tenses’ of the film (past-present) lie easier next to each other.

  Ada’s difficulties at the beginning of the film, after her father dies and before Ruby arrives, could be condensed by adding material to her letters in a voice-over narration that is “expandable and contractible.” This “bungee-cord” section is one of those “hinge” scenes that Murch expects and needs in every film—a section capable of absorbing major structural changes that occur before and/or after it, while also being malleable enough to enlarge and shrink as necessary over the course of editing.

  Originally, a series of scenes were linked to each other in real time: Ada’s father dies, she tries to cope with Black Cove Farm on her own, she suffers in the winter, she is threatened by Major Teague. But these scenes seem to drag. They could be used, however, more as fragments if they become elements within Ada’s letters to Inman. Production-wise, augmenting Ada’s letters beyond the original screenplay (and what was shot on location) is relatively painless and affordable: Minghella sends Kidman more letter text to read; she records the new voiceover in a sound studio in New York; a sound file of the material is emailed to Murch in London; Sean Cullen integrates it into the audio flow of FCP; and Murch can now start to sketch out a structure, relating the new audio to the appropriate scene fragments. Some directors hate the process of adding new dialogue to their films. Minghella loves the opportunity to record newly written lines that either deepen his original intentions, or revise them completely. Like the editing itself, it’s another opportunity to rewrite the film.

  Ada’s (Nicole Kidman) letters to Inman prove to be an important structural opportunity for Minghella and Murch to solve story problems.

  Expanding Ada’s letters may also smooth out the problematic shifts in time and place that Murch noted in his journal entry. Even before leaving for Romania, Walter wrote about this issue in his script notes to Minghella: “Time/space transitions in which the story leaps back and forth with an accelerating time scale; there is a tricky area between page 20 and 34.” It’s not a problem of simply using flashbacks—a device some directors and screenwriters consider a cliché and refuse to use—and it’s not a problem of parallel locations (Cold Mountain/Inman’s walking). It’s the complicated way those two dimensions interact.

  Cold Mountain begins in 1864 at the Battle of Petersburg. After a big explosion under their trenches, Inman and his fellow Confederates fight the Federal army troops who are trapped in a death pit created by the blast they themselves set. Then the movie goes back in time to 1861, when Ada first arrives at Cold Mountain and meets Inman. After their love interest is established, the story returns to the aftermath at Petersburg. We see Inman get a bullet in the neck while on a night mission across enemy lines. When the story returns again to Cold Mountain, it doesn’t pick up where we left off. Time has passed, several days at least. And as the story progresses with Ada and Inman together at Cold Mountain during 1861, it makes internal leaps forward in time. Minghella likes this structural motif. He tells non-linear stories and expects an audience to work a little harder to follow them.

  The big explosion at the Battle of Petersburg, 1864. After this scene the film shifts locations to North Carolina and goes back in time to the year 1861.

  In the first 33 pages of the August 2001 version of the Cold Mountain screenplay (essentially Act I) there are 11 time shifts and 6 location changes. Some of these movements shift both dimensions simultaneously. And time moves at a different, quicker pace in Ada’s Cold Mountain scenes than it does in Inman’s war and recovery scenes. Eventually, about an hour into the film, at page 34, when Inman encounters Reverend Veasey (Philip Seymour Hoffman), Inman and Ada’s stories have caught up with each other. Both characters now occupy the same time frame. Thereafter the two main characters are intercut by location. After showing the lovers in parallel time, they finally converge in space at the film’s climax, in the Rocky Gorge on Cold Mountain.

  Minghella and Murch conclude that asymmetrical shifts in space and time at the beginning of Cold Mountain might be too complex for the good of the overall story. Having Ada recount more about her plight in a longer letter would simplify the story arc without giving up important information or dramatic scenes. “This allows us to be brief and succinct,” Murch says about the structural change. “We will hear her voice reading the letter and then there will be a scenelette, then she’ll read some more, then there’s another scenelette. That gives us a well-defined area where time can be freely elastic. She’s bringing Inman (and us) up to date on everything that happened to her over a three- or four-year period, 1861 to 1864.” The volunteer at the hospital finishes reading the letter to Inman, who hears the final lines from Ada, “Come back to me.” We follow him briefly in his recovery, talking to the peanut vendor outside the hospital. When Inman escapes through the hospital window at dawn and begins his journey home, he’s now caught up in time with Ada. “That morning he’s hitting the beach,” Murch says, “is the same morning that Ada goes to sell her father’s watch at the store, so all the acceleration in time—the bungee cord—happens in the turbulence of the letter.”

  Expanding the letter has another unexpected benefit: it strengthens a connection the film wants to make between Ada and Inman even while they are away from each other. She writes and he reads; they are intimately together, at least in spirit, while being apart physically. And it’s believable that letter writing nurtures their bond—it’s in keeping with the reality of the Civil War, as Ken Burns drove home with his PBS series on the Civil War.

  Finally, the open structure to the newly edited letter scene allows Murch to find a home for a fragment of a longer scene between Ada and Captain Teague (Ray Winstone). Ada sits alone in the chapel that her recently deceased father (Donald Sutherland) had built when he came to Cold Mountain. Teague follows Ada inside, sits down behind her, and alternately threatens and woos her. In a beautifully Minghellian moment, not originally part of the book, Teague tells Ada to look him in the eye. Then, with a slight tremor he whispers, “I’m not nothing.” Minghella wrote the scene at the last moment, in desperation, as backup (“weather cover”) that could be shot indoors during a particularly rainy p
eriod on location. Miramax co-chairman Harvey Weinstein had his doubts about the scene. Yet it’s one of those wonderfully revealing scenes that lets the audience understand, even sympathize, with the bad guy—always a very difficult storytelling sleight of hand. The fragment plays just right inside the augmented letter sequence, without needing a beginning to set it up, or much of a middle for development.

  Captain Teague (Ray Winstone) tells Ada, “I’m not nothing.”

  Once Inman escapes from the military hospital to begin his journey back to Cold Mountain, his “film time” matches Ada’s.

  To get the film down from four hours to a releasable length, Murch and Minghella will have to do more than trim fat from specific shots, as in the battle scene, and restructure to compress time, as with Ada’s expanded letters. They must look for whole scenes that might be dropped. No magic number for Cold Mountain’s running time was pre-established. When Bill Horberg, one of the film’s producers, comes to visit in London, Murch notes Minghella’s aversion to being tied down.

  February 26, 2003, Murch’s Journal

  Bill Horberg visits: meeting with Anthony and me; discuss approach to film, how to make it better at the beginning, then how to cut it down. Anthony rejects idea of aiming for a particular length, quotes Godfather II in support.

  Murch and Minghella know full well that Miramax doesn’t want its showcase Christmas release, the film being positioned for top Oscar contention, to be three hours long. It’s largely a matter of economics. Theater owners and distributors hate it when a movie is so lengthy it can only have one decent evening showing. The cut-off point is about two and a half hours. To avoid conflict with the studio about the running time, Minghella and Murch would rather stay in control of the edit by making the cuts and rearrangements they choose for getting the film shorter. Weinstein is known for asking directors to make last-minute changes to their films. So the more Murch and Minghella do now to get ahead of the curve, the better.