Behind the Seen

by Charles Koppelman

Editing department, Triangle Pictures Corporation, 1917.

  So things remained until Iwan Serrurier, who was neither an editor nor a film worker, invented the Moviola, the world’s first editing machine. A Dutchman, he came to the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century, made a fortune in real estate, and became intrigued by the technical advances taking place here. Serrurier’s initial idea was to invent a film-viewing machine for the home, (comparable to the Victrola for playing records)—the first home entertainment system. He built a model with beautiful cabinet work, and got it patented; one of his five children named it in a family contest. Priced at $600 in 1920 (about $5,600 in today’s dollars) his machines were beyond the reach of a normal household. So who could afford them? Serrurier thought studio executives might use the Moviola to view dailies in the comfort of their own offices.

  Serrurier went to the movie studios but succeeded in selling just three machines. Only after going to the Douglas Fairbanks Studios (the same facility where Walter worked on K-19 some 75 years later) did Serrurier finally see how movies were being put together. He watched an editor trying to move the film back and forth by hand to get the equivalent of a moving picture. The man told Serrurier he might be interested in the machine if it were modified for use on an editing bench. Over a weekend, Serrurier retooled the Moviola for professional use, stripping it of its varnished wood cabinet, and on Monday brought the revamped prototype back to the editor. The Moviola was a hit, and in 1924 Serrurier sold his first editing machine to Fairbanks Studios for $125 (about $1,370 today—not much more than the cost of Apple’s Final Cut Pro edit system).

  Demand for Moviolas took off during the 1930s, then boomed during World War II, when hundreds of military and propaganda films were being produced each year. All the newsreels shown in theaters to keep Americans abreast of the latest war developments were cut on Moviolas. Serrurier’s company added a small editing bench and splicer and shipped these self-contained post-production units overseas. The first “broadcast journalists” shot, processed, and edited short films on location, then sent the newsreels home. They were the precursors of today’s field reporters, who use satellite-linked cameras to send TV and Web-delivered news clips of events as they occur.

  An upright Moviola editing machine, the type Murch first used when he began working in the film industry.

  By the time Walter Murch first encountered the Moviola, it had been in use with few changes for over four decades. It still had its beefed-up sewing machine motor, forward and reverse foot pedals, exposed flywheel, and a hand-brake. The editor, working standing up or perched on a stool, watched a smallish image flicker on a viewfinder no bigger than a postcard. With the help of an assistant who stood behind hanging up “trims” (small clips of film), the editor slowly built up a reel of good takes. Each reel had a maximum capacity of 1,000 feet, or just over 11 minutes. For sound, the Moviola could handle one separate reel of audio that had been transferred from ¼-inch tape to 35mm magnetic film—essentially audiotape in 35mm gauge.

  The frustrations of editing on a Moviola are legendary. The machine loves to eat film, scratching or chewing up workprint inside its uncompromising steel mechanism. The intermittent motion of the film clatters noisily. The viewing image is small. And by only being able to run one audio track at a time, it gives the editor little control over sound, aside from dialogue.

  The first flatbed film editing system, an alternative to the Moviola, was introduced in Germany by Wilhelm Steenbeck in 1931. The Steenbeck, like the later model made by KEM, provided a larger image viewing area, virtually silent operation, a rotating-prism lens, three tracks of sound, and a generally more comfortable working environment. The editor could now work sitting down as if at an office desk, instead of standing up at the Moviola like a lathe operator. When Coppola began planning his edit for The Rain People on a trip to Europe in 1967 and brought back a Steenbeck editing machine, it was the first flatbed to be used, by editor Barry Malkin, on a motion picture in the U.S.

  So in 1972, another challenge for Murch on The Conversation, in addition to editing his first feature and dealing with seemingly intractable story problems, was the new editing machine he was using—this one a huge, gray, ultramodern KEM Universal “8-plate” flatbed, similar to the one that Thelma Schoonmaker had used to edit Woodstock in 1970. Until The Conversation, all of Murch’s picture editing experience had been on the traditional upright American Moviola. The sleek German KEM had two rotating-prism screens, was push-button operated and capable of playing three tracks of sound at the same time. But it required film workprint to be strung together in large 1000-foot (11-minute) rolls of consecutive shots, rather than spooled into cupcake-sized individual takes a minute or two long, as used on a Moviola. The two machines require working in different modes, which Murch likens to a sculptor using different materials: instead of building up the “sculpture” of the film from small bits of “clay,” as would have been the case with a Moviola, editing with a KEM involves chiseling away chunks of “marble” from large blocks of film, ultimately revealing the movie hidden inside.

  A KEM Universal flatbed editing machine.

  Although it is a mechanical device, the Moviola is in fact a non-linear system with more organizational similarities to random-access computerized editing than to the linear KEM system. Consequently Murch’s change to the linear KEM from the non-linear Moviola actually required more of a wrenching conceptual shift than the shift he would eventually make from film-based editing to digital editing. After The Conversation, Murch would switch back and forth between KEM and Moviola over the following 20 years, depending on the director he was working for and the editorial style of the film.

  From Apocalypse Now, directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Murch used an Avid to edit Apocalypse Now Redux, the director’s cut, released in 2001.

  Thus began, on his first feature film, Murch’s participation in the search for the filmmaker’s Holy Grail: a technique for assembling motion pictures that would be fast, cheap, and transparent; immediately responsive to creative ideas without the process itself getting in the way; and a method of reproducing film image and sound as near as possible to what audiences experience.

  As early as 1968, Coppola, Lucas, and Murch had been investigating a precocious attempt at computer-controlled editing. The CMX film-editing computer, like mainframes of the day, was expensive and bulky, filling an entire room with hardware, but it gave Murch a glimpse of the future. A few years later, Coppola and Murch proposed using a more developed CMX system to edit parts of The Godfather, but the studio turned them down, citing unreliable data storage and exorbitant costs.

  By the late 1970s and early ’80s, as the personal computer came of age and began to revolutionize home and work, many different computer-based film editing systems came along: E-Pix, EMC, D-Vision, Lucasfilm’s EditDroid, and others. As Murch points out in his 1995 book, In the Blink of an Eye, “A tremendous amount of research and development was invested in these systems, particularly when you consider that, although professional film is an expensive medium, there is not a lot of professional film equipment in the world (compared, for instance, to medical equipment).” Of course, television offered more business opportunities, and digital post-production took off worldwide in the broadcast industry. In all of these early systems, the computer was used simply to control the movement of analogue media (VHS tapes, laserdiscs, etc.) stored on transport devices that were umbilically linked to the computer.

  By the late 1980s, speedier processors and better data storage capabilities made it possible to digitize film images directly to a computer’s hard drive. After getting its inauguration on commercials and high-end documentaries, the Avid editing system for film began to appear in feature-film editing rooms. Murch’s initial experience with Avid was on a music video for Linda Ronstadt in 1994, and for a short, layered sequence in the 1994 film, I Love Trouble. The first feature film he edited entirely on the Avid was The English Patient. The Avid was his system of choice on the
next several films: The Talented Mr. Ripley, the recut of Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil, Apocalypse Now Redux, and K-19.

  But the Avid had certain limitations and difficulties. For one thing it is relatively expensive. The Avid Film Composer, which simulates film editing and contains the necessary film-to-video conversion protocols, cost $80,000 to $100,000 when Murch first used it in the 1990s, so feature-film budgets would normally allow for only two machines, at most. (Some films limped along with only one.) Even with two machines, one of them is usually dedicated to doing all the “housekeeping,” such as file management and making tapes for other crew members—sound editors, music composers, producers. The Avid is a “closed” system, meaning its architecture is designed to run only proprietary software, and its way of digitizing and replaying the image is unique. Expensive new versions and upgrades have to be purchased, and only from Avid. Finally, for a long time the company was infamous for providing spotty technical support and resisting innovation and input from filmmakers.

  As he worked on Avid systems, Murch kept his eye on other developments in the digital editing world. Premiere, by Adobe Systems, came out in 1991. The software was suitable for commercials, documentaries, and other projects originating on video, but it couldn’t translate 24-frame-per-second film into 30-frame-per-second video.

  Meanwhile, the San Francisco-based media software developer Macromedia was having great success with programs for multimedia and Web development, such as Director, Dreamweaver, and Flash. It had been working on a digital editing system called Key Grip, that could operate on Apple’s Macintosh, but the company was concentrating on Web tools and didn’t see much future for its new editing application, and so sold it to Apple in 1998 before ever releasing a finished product. In 1999 Apple released a revamped version of Macromedia’s application as Final Cut Pro, a digital editing system designed to compete with Premiere for consumers, students, and low-end professionals. This caught Murch’s eye, as it caught the attention of other film editors on the lookout for technological advances. He had been using a Macintosh since 1986 and has always been a fan of Apple. He liked the company’s belief in supporting professionals in the creative arts with tools that were innovative and responsive to users’ needs.

  Murch first used the Avid Film Composer on The English Patient when he had it set up in his office at home. Assistant editor Edie Ichioka, seen above, describes it as, “a surreal setting for editing, with a wood-burning stove, and chicken clucks in the morning that aren’t coming out of your edit machine, but are actually coming out of chickens in the barn below.”

  In June 2002, Walter was preparing to leave for Romania to start work on Cold Mountain. The project meant being out of the country for a year and a half. He’d barely had time to catch his breath, having finished sound mixing on K-19 only four weeks earlier. This would be his third picture with director Anthony Minghella, so Walter knew how Minghella liked to work: shooting an abundance of material for later review and editing; constantly re-examining assumptions about story, structure, and character; and revising picture and sound right up to delivery of the final mix and cut negative. As with their two previous films, Murch would be both picture editor and re-recording mixer. Now, as if he didn’t already have enough challenges ahead of him, Walter was thinking about making another dramatic jump-shift in editing methodology: editing Cold Mountain with Final Cut Pro—Apple’s $995 off-the-shelf software. Had his desire to find the Holy Grail of film editing become an obsession? Was Murch getting too far ahead of the pack, becoming an errant knight? He may intrepid, but Murch isn’t reckless. His longtime assistant editor, Sean Cullen, helped Murch weigh the risks and locate the most qualified sherpas available to guide their journey—but they were not in Cupertino. People at Apple reacted variously to the news about Murch’s intention to use Final Cut Pro, ranging from euphoria and excitement to caution and deep misgivings. So for help, Murch and Cullen instead went to a 1920s Tudor-style building on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, halfway between the Whisky a Go Go and the Roxy nightclubs.

  Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas in The English Patient, the first motion picture Murch edited on an Avid Film Composer digital editing system.

  Chapter 3. Kicking the Tires

  Walter Murch edited the motion picture K-19: The Widowmaker on an Avid editing system in 2002 at The Lot.

  EARLY JANUARY 2002—WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA

  Walter Murch is at the former Warner Hollywood Studio, now called The Lot, editing K-19, starring Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson, and directed by Kathryn Bigelow. His first assistant, Sean Cullen, comes into the room. Murch is editing on his Avid system. He works standing up, the way some writers do. “Walter,” Sean asks during a pause, “what do you think about this Final Cut Pro thing?”

  Apple Computer’s Final Cut is considered to be a “prosumer” application, midway between professional and consumer, though it is widely used to edit documentaries, TV commercials, and low-budget independent films. Hobbyists, students, and filmmaker wannabes love it because it’s cheap and easy to learn. For a film editor of Murch’s stature to consider using FCP on a big movie could presage the long-predicted convergence of consumer-level digital video tools and the Hollywood film industry.

  “Hmm,” Walter murmurs. “Let’s keep an eye on it.” An understated response, but to people who know him as well as Sean does, it means, “I’m interested!”

  Over the course of nearly eight years, Cullen had worked at Murch’s side on The English Patient, The Talented Mr. Ripley, the restored Orson Welles classic, Touch of Evil, and Apocalypse Now Redux. They make a great partnership. Cullen is fearless when facing technological challenges. At the Yale School of Drama he received an MFA in Technical Design and Production in 1994. Cullen’s master’s thesis on motion control in theater included designs for a new Apple Macintosh interface. Cullen knows that Murch’s commitment to advancing film and sound technology goes back to when Murch got started in feature films in 1969, on The Rain People for Francis Ford Coppola—the first American movie to be edited (by Barry Malkin) on a flatbed Steenbeck editing table and re-recorded (by Murch) on a KEM flatbed mixing system. Ten years later, on Apocalypse Now, Murch and Coppola invented what later became known as the “5.1” sound format for movies when Murch mixed the film’s soundtrack (on cinema’s first automated mixing board) so helicopters could be heard flying in 360 degrees around the theater. Only problem was, no audio system could accommodate the effect then, so Coppola had speakers added or rewired in movie houses across the country, paying out of his own pocket. In the 1990s, this pioneering audio technology filtered down to consumers, who could begin listening to “surround sound” in their living rooms. So now, having spent his career seeking out and often inventing breakthroughs in post-production technologies, it was perfectly in character for Murch to explore the possibility of changing editing platforms for Cold Mountain.

  Sean Cullen has worked as an assistant editor with Walter Murch since 1994. Prior to his film work, Cullen did technical design at the San Francisco Opera and was technical director at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre.

  When Apple Macintosh computers arrived in the mid-1980s, Walter became a fan, and not just for personal use. He always had a Mac in the edit suite for note-taking and logging information. If there is a filmmaker who personified Apple’s “Think Different” campaign, it is Walter Murch.

  He had migrated from film-based editing to the Avid digital system in 1995 on The English Patient, though his initial motivation had nothing to do with technology per se. Murch needed to work out of his home in the Bay Area while filming continued on location in Italy and Tunisia. His son, Walter, had to undergo emergency surgery for a brain tumor, and it was only by going digital that Murch could stay near his son in California and keep up with the schedule. His Academy Award for Best Editing on The English Patient made it the first such Oscar for a film edited on a non-linear digital system.

  By the late 1990s Avid had a strong foothold in
the film industry, as well as in television news and advertising, where it first made its mark. But Murch and Cullen were looking for an alternative.

  Avid, headquartered in Tewksbury, Massachusetts, has a reputation among film editors and assistants for holding onto useful but expensive improvements for years at a time. Cullen and other assistant editors find the company’s backup support sketchy. Cullen says, and other assistant editors concur, that Avid systems are not easily accessible for troubleshooting problems. So a system crash can be a real crisis, often requiring an Avid-certified technician to help them recover, which can cost an editor days of work. Avid technicians have been known to ascribe problems to configurations that use non-Avid peripherals, such as an NEC monitor. Cullen describes using an Avid to be, “like dancing with a gorilla, and the gorilla always leads.” Murch and Cullen were looking for a digital editing system that could give them more flexibility, would cost less (affording them more workstations), and if it did crash, one they could more easily fix on their own.

  With their gift for problem solving, appreciation for Apple’s creative tools, and zest for challenges beyond mere editing, Murch and Cullen were ready to consider Apple’s Final Cut Pro, even if it hadn’t been fully road-tested.

  Just for fun, when the two were editing Apocalypse Now Redux at American Zoetrope in San Francisco in 1999 and 2000, Sean tried the newly released Final Cut Pro 1.0. The immediate problems with the application had more to do with housekeeping than anything else. With its corresponding FilmLogic software, FCP could track only key numbers—the coding system for tracking every frame of film negative—then used by Kodak. But Apocalypse Now had been shot in the 1970s, so the alpha/numeric stamps on its negative were long out of date. “I could probably get around that,” says Sean, “but it was too ‘ka-chunk’—too labor-intensive.”