The Conversation
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Editor Walter Murch on the Golden Ratio, Recreating a ’70s-era Editing Room and The Conversation
Watching a documentary on film history, editor Walter Murch was struck by how different cinematographers tended to frame faces in close-ups similarly. “I noticed something peculiar,” he said. “No matter what the film was, the eyes of performers in close-up seemed to float along the same line from shot to shot.” Murch tested his theory by tying a string of knitting yarn across his television screen. Dividing measurements from above and below the line gave him 1.618, a number that represents phi, or the golden ratio. Further measurements of faces in close-ups—from the upper frame edges to hairlines, from chins […]
by Daniel Eagan on Jan 18, 2023 -
“He’d Kill You If He Got the Chance…”: Editor Walter Murch on Coppola’s The Conversation, the Nodal Concept of Montage and Our Modern Surveillance State
“If I really thought of the consequences all the time, I certainly wouldn’t have been in the business…” — Frank Terpil, Confessions of a Dangerous Man “Everybody has a public life, a private life, and a secret life.” — Pete Hamill There’s perhaps no greater contribution to the latter-day postmodern suspense genre than Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation. An exhaustive study of a lone artisan drawn into a web of deceit and treachery, it has long been held as both a prescient cinematic landmark and a seminal Ur-text. And yet fifty years after its premiere, the film is still an […]
by Evan Louison on Jan 12, 2022 -
When Life Becomes a Movie
The man in the white fedora is photographing his fettuccine. Later, he’ll put a filter on it and post it to Instagram while he’s on the toilet. Girls from Tokyo line up against a mural of Malcom X, then turn around, asses out, Kardashian style. A young man on the corner is videoing himself and addresses his followers with a “Hi guys.” He points his phone at a chihuahua on the corner and says, “This is everything!” He reaches down, the chihuahua bares its teeth. That last part will be edited out. Mark Zuckerberg is in his lab again, this […]
by Noah Buschel on Sep 5, 2017 -
Watch: “A Conversation. With Walter Murch”
This year, the legendary Walter Murch received a “Vision Award — Nescens” from the just-completed Locarno Film Festival, and this neat short film was presumably made to accompany the presentation. Director Niccolò Castelli places Murch in a warehouse very much like Harry Caul’s setup in The Conversation. Murch plays with previously recorded analogue tape of him talking about how we’re introduced to the concept of music while in the womb, then talks about the process and history of the manipulations he just executed on the Revox. It’s a typical combination of Murch’s trademark bigger-picture thinking and acute technical knowledge.
by Vadim Rizov on Aug 17, 2015 -
Francis Ford Coppola Talks to Toronto at TIFF
Last Sunday, a sold-out audience awarded Francis Ford Coppola a standing ovation when he strolled into the 548-seat Cinema 1 at TIFF’s Bell Lightbox, the new multiplex at the center of the world’s largest film festival after Cannes. To the adoring audience, Coppola smiled warmly and cracked, “I’m very embarrassed I left my black shoes on the plane,” as he sat down at center stage in tan shoes and a dark suit with TIFF Festival Director Cameron Bailey. This event was a rare 85-minute chat directly with his audience and enjoyed all the hype of a red-carpet premiere. In fact, […]
by Allan Tong on Sep 14, 2011 -
PARK CITY CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK #2: BEATS, RHYMES, ODDBALLS
After its first weekend has drawn to a close, the 2011 Sundance Film Festival has seen a flurry of buying activity from movies both expected to sell for significant amounts (Jesse Peretz’s My Idiot Brother, which went to the Weinstein Company for $7 million) and movies no one expected to go for as much as they did (Drake Doremus‘ Like Crazy, which without a significant movie star in it went for $4 million to Paramount). While I haven’t seen either film, they both seem to have both their admirers and detractors. In a U.S. Dramatic Competition heavy on formally ambitious […]
by Brandon Harris on Jan 25, 2011 -
BETWEEN THOUGHT AND EXPRESSION LIES CONVERSATION
Before this post, a full disclosure: I have sat on numerous panels in the last year, including Woodstock, SXSW, the Conversation NYC, and the IFP’s Script to Screen. Many of these panels have had something to do with “new models” or “the future of independent film.” My panel at Script to Screen was different because it was simply a one-on-one with writer/director Terry George, and it gave me some of the best advice: when trying to write seriously, disconnect your internet router and pack it away. In my experience sometimes panels can be really stimulating and provocative, and sometimes they […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 12, 2010
