Behind the Seen Read online

  Behind the Seen

  HOW WALTER MURCH EDITED COLD MOUNTAIN

  USING APPLE’S FINAL CUT PRO AND WHAT THIS MEANS FOR CINEMA

  CHARLES KOPPELMAN

  BEHIND the SEEN: HOW WALTER MURCH EDITED COLD MOUNTAIN USING APPLE’S FINAL CUT PRO AND WHAT THIS MEANS FOR CINEMA

  Charles Koppelman

  New Riders

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  Copyright © 2005 by Charles Koppelman

  Executive editor: Marjorie Baer

  Editor: Douglas Cruickshank

  Production editor: Hilal Sala

  Copyeditor: William Rodarmor

  Proofreader: Evan Pricco

  Technical editors: Sean Cullen, Ramy Katrib, Zed Saeed

  Photo editing and research: Kristin Piljay

  Indexer: Emily Glossbrenner, FireCrystal Communications

  Cover design: Aren Howell

  Cover photo: Steve Double/RETNA

  Interior design and composition: Kim Scott

  Notice of Rights

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information on getting permission for reprints and excerpts, contact [email protected].

  Permission was graciously extended by the respective publishers to quote the following works: Growing Up in Hollywood by Robert Parrish. © 1976 Little, Brown and Company, New York, NY Text commentary from The Conversation DVD. © 2003 Paramount Studio, Hollywood, CA

  Notice of Liability

  The information in this book is distributed on an “As Is” basis, without warranty. While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of the book, neither the author nor Peachpit shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the instructions contained in this book or by the computer software and hardware products described in it.

  Trademarks

  Apple, Final Cut Pro, and Final Cut are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc., registered in the United States and other countries.

  Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and Peachpit was aware of a trademark claim, the designations appear as requested by the owner of the trademark. All other product names and services identified throughout this book are used in an editorial fashion only and for the benefit of such companies with no intention of infringement of the trademark. No such use, or the use of any trade name, is intended to convey endorsement or other affiliation with this book.

  ISBN 0-7357-1426-6

  9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Printed and bound in the United States of America

  For my mother.

  Contents

  Foreword by Anthony Minghella

  Introduction

  CHAPTER 1 The Last Preview

  CHAPTER 2 Running on the Fault Line

  CHAPTER 3 Kicking the Tires

  CHAPTER 4 Give Me a Reason Not To

  CHAPTER 5 Keys to the Kingdom

  CHAPTER 6 Scenes I Can Cut!

  CHAPTER 7 The Flow of It

  CHAPTER 8 The Hemidemisemiquaver

  CHAPTER 9 Another Rubicon Crossed

  CHAPTER 10 Time and Endless Patience

  CHAPTER 11 Bullets Explosions Music People

  CHAPTER 12 Finding the Film You Have

  Epilogue

  Appendix

  Photo Credits

  Index

  Foreword

  By Anthony Minghella

  Years ago, as an eager young playwright, I spent two weeks at an English Stately Home, working with an encouraging group of actors and a director. It was my first contact with professionals and I had a thrilling time, writing, rehearsing, learning. My group was one of seven at this sponsored fortnight for promising young writers and directors, and we were scheduled to present some aspect of the work we had been doing at the end of the workshop. Our days were frantic and intense and we paid little attention to our surroundings, except to note—with some amusement, with some disdain—that our formidable residence was still at least partly occupied by an eccentric aristocracy, complete with butlers and maids. We would glimpse activity, at the end of a hall, at the edge of the ha-ha: an elderly gentleman in a bathchair, brandishing an ear trumpet; the sudden squeal of a nurse. I was more class-conscious, perhaps, in those days and was dismissive of these goings-on as I tried to write about the slow death of the fishing community in the North of England, where I then lived.

  It came to our last day and the presentations. My group did well to make something out of the very little I had managed to make for them. Others had been enormously productive. We watched, discussed, enjoyed. It came to the final group, Group Seven. Their leader apologized. They had nothing whatsoever to show for their two weeks. We were taken aback. But then one of the actors appeared with an ear trumpet. Another pushed on a bathchair. Another appeared in a nurse’s uniform. And all of us—utterly duped, and delighted to have been—began to applaud.

  Charles Koppelman’s excellent, original, and tremendously informative book pulled me back to this experience. I thought I knew most of what happened over the course of making Cold Mountain, but reading Behind the Seen led me to realize that there was the equivalent of a Group Seven in play throughout pre-production, filming, and post-production, led by the incomparable Walter Murch, to whom this book is a deserved love letter. Frequently, Koppelman’s account reads like a thriller as he foregrounds the massive experiment that was going on just inside my peripheral vision. Walter and his Group Seven gang, here known as the DigitalFilm Tree gang (Ramy, Zed, Edvin, Walt, Tim, Dan, Mark, and their colleagues), with the extraordinary Sean Cullen as a serene co-conspirator and problem solver, pulled off an audacious coup. They persuaded me, my producers, and the film studio to endorse editing an ambitious and expensive movie using software which was unproven at this level, and whose own manufacturer was of two minds about lending whole-hearted support. It was a very good job I hadn’t read some of these chapters before I began shooting!

  Almost unremarked, there has been an astonishing revolution in cinema and Behind the Seen invites us to pay attention to it. I entered a dozen drafts of my handwritten screenplay into my G4 laptop using an excellent program called Final Draft. I ended work on Cold Mountain using Final Cut Pro. From Final Draft, then, to Final Cut and in between, using the same computer, I compiled location photographs, made storyboard animatics, reviewed casting sessions and budgets, wrote my notes and emails, contemplated dailies, watched various cuts, considered effects shots, title sequences, prepared ADR scripts, and tested music cues. This happened on planes, in bed, on locations, in restaurants, on trains in many different countries, at the most eccentric times of the day and night. It’s only a handful of years ago that not one of these activities would have been possible without my visiting a studio facility of some description, without my needing a whole host of accomplices, without the benefit of different and bulky machines. Film has practically disappeared from filmmaking. I barely saw any celluloid during Cold Mountain and one of the most exciting chapters in the process was working on the digital grading of the movie. Finally, the same degree of precision and care can be applied to the way each frame looks as has long
been taken for granted in the way each moment sounds. It can only be a matter of time before digital projection becomes the norm and, beyond that, albeit on an approaching horizon, is a method of digital capture which truly competes with the pointillist mysteries created by film chemistry. Parallel with these changes—and equally profound—is the implicit democratization of the movie-making process produced by the size, cost, and portability of capturing devices. All this, coupled with the facility to make visual effects, sound effects, picture edits, and music on the same lightweight and mobile machine—and the opportunity to stream that information on the Internet—will surely alter what all of us understand by filmmaking. At the very least it will present enormous challenges. Even if Apple doesn’t emerge in this book as quite the ally I had supposed on Cold Mountain, Steve Jobs and his team have been and will be as important to the story of cinema as Fellini or Spielberg or Disney.

  For the moment, though, making a movie remains a gargantuan and sometimes grotesque marathon. So many people are involved, so many dollars spent, so many days and months consumed, so much tilting at windmills endured, so much effort poured into an odyssey which sometimes produces a couple of hours of entertainment and only very occasionally something more, and lasting. Behind the Seen celebrates this glorious folly. The view from the boiler room, where Koppelman’s book is situated, is not always the same as the view from the bridge, and the diaries and notes Walter has shared with Charles are, like all such accounts, subjective. But that, of course, is the point. Behind the Seen achieves something remarkable: a chronicle about technology and data, machines and methodologies that also manages to record a story of friendships and dreams—not least the dreams I have been lucky enough to share with my friend and editor over three films and for almost a decade. If you read this book you will be left in no doubt that Walter Murch is a marvel. And he is.

  Anthony Minghella

  Old Chapel Studios, London

  Summer 2004

  Introduction

  I first met Walter Murch at the Saul Zaentz Film Center in Berkeley, California in the mid-1990s when he was editing The English Patient, directed by Anthony Minghella, and I was developing, Dumbarton Bridge, my first feature film as a writer-director. We had a couple of lunches together, he agreed to look at my treatment, and then my screenplay. The idea that someone of Murch’s stature was reading this first-time director’s script was, well, a thrill and a confidence-booster. Nearly a year went by as I struggled to raise independent financing and assemble a filmmaking team. By that time The English Patient was released to great acclaim. I had not been in contact with Walter for quite a while. One very early Saturday morning, just after dawn, while I was strolling my sleepless infant daughter, Gaby, through the neighborhood, I chanced upon a young man sitting on his front steps reading. I glanced at the cover—it was Murch’s book on film editing, In the Blink of an Eye, which I had read before I first had lunch with Walter.

  “You’re reading Blink of an Eye!” I said to the stranger.

  “Yes, it’s amazing,” he said.

  I said I knew Murch. The young man’s eyes lit up.

  I felt this coincidence might be a portent—and I needed to act.

  Later that morning, after waiting until a more reasonable hour, I nervously phoned Walter at home. I explained the situation to him about my film and how I needed help. He asked what he might do. Understand—an independent filmmaker pulling a project together through sheer will and chutzpah learns to lose all sense of propriety and protocol. I steeled my will and requested he consider editing.

  There was a silence that seemed to go on forever.

  “I’m starting the re-edit of Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil,” he said, “so I’m pretty committed. But I will be working on it at the Zaentz Film Center, so I could be around for some advice if you want.”

  Right then he agreed to be the consulting editor. Later he connected me with the wonderfully talented editor I hired for Dumbarton Bridge (Robert Grahamjones, his former assistant editor). Two weeks before my first day of principal photography Walter walked me through his script notes. (Yes, I did a rewrite after that.) During post production he came into our edit room whenever I needed advice, and he attended screenings of each new assembly.

  This was my introduction to Walter Murch—the best possible way for beginning to get to know him—through active engagement on a film project. Credit goes to Frank Simeone for acquainting us.

  Several years later, in the summer of 2003, I’d heard Walter was editing Cold Mountain, the film directed by Anthony Minghella, using Apple’s Final Cut Pro system. There was already a lot of buzz about this in the film community, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area, because this had never been done before. Like everyone else, I was curious to know why he chose this $995 software to edit an $80 million studio film, and the creative and technological consequences.

  Around that same time, Lisa Brenneis, a friend and author of books on Final Cut Pro, put me in contact with Peachpit Press Executive Editor Marjorie Baer. Peachpit had published several successful books on digital film editing. I asked Marjorie if she’d be interested in a book about Walter Murch using Final Cut Pro to edit Cold Mountain. Marjorie, being the well-informed editor she is, knew of Murch and his groundbreaking venture. And having confident intuition, she said yes, then and there. And in your hands is the consequence of her decision.

  . . .

  This book takes a particular and unusual point of view about feature filmmaking. In most other accounts, the editor is either completely invisible or a shadowy, unfocussed presence. By putting the editor in the spotlight, and concentrating on the events surrounding the completion of the film, the inevitable consequence is that other, more familiar perspectives become foreshortened. I apologize in advance for not being just as thorough about every department’s crucial contributions to Cold Mountain, but it would have been impossible to achieve without expanding Behind the Seen far beyond its original mission.

  Taking this kind of journey with Walter Murch would never have begun had Anthony Minghella not said yes to my proposal. He did that quickly, enthusiastically, and with no small amount of personal and professional risk. I could only write this book by being on the scene, with complete access to the creative process as it unfolded. Anthony allowed me free rein during the editing in London for ten days in September 2003, and for a week during the final sound mixing, also in London, during November 2003. I also had the privilege of attending two preview test screenings in the New York area.

  This kind of inside view of a major motion picture still in-progress is usually denied to an author because it is such a sensitive time with so much at stake. Anthony, I will always be in your debt.

  Cold Mountain producers Sydney Pollack, Bill Horberg, Albert Berger, and Ron Yerxa welcomed me and the idea of this book, which I appreciate.

  In addition to seeing Cold Mountain unfold in real time, I was blessed to have an ocean of background materials from Walter Murch. On my first research trip to New York, he offered to make his emails and personal journal available to me so I could chart the course he took on Cold Mountain. He’s been a serious journal-keeper for 30 years, and I knew immediately this and his electronic correspondence were going to prove bountiful for my research. When I began to read this material, and subsequent installments, I realized I had more on my hands than simply helpful background information—here were heartfelt and dramatic reports from the front lines that belonged in this story. So within these pages are generous excerpts from Walter’s 18-month journal on this project, and his 2,111 pages of email.

  Sean Cullen, Walter Murch’s assistant editor, was an incomparable resource for me. He never failed to provide thorough, well-explained answers to my oft-repeated, frequently naïve questions—be they another explanation of reverse-telecine, or which Underground line to use.

  Ramy Katrib and Zed Saeed at DigitalFilm Tree have been devoted in their support and enthusiasm for this book, while also giving me pricel
ess information and details.

  Tim Bricknell, Cassius Matthias, Karen Cattini, and everyone at Mirage Enterprises in London always made me feel at home, and for that I’m very grateful. Walter Slater Murch, Dei Reynolds, and Susannah Reid made room for me in their cramped edit space at the Old Chapel and they were great companions.

  Likewise, being able to write amidst friends and colleagues here at Fantasy Inc. and the Saul Zaentz Film Center is a pleasure: thanks especially to Steve Shurtz, Scott Roberts, Paul Zaentz, Bill Belmont, Terri Hinte, and Nancy Eichler.

  Appreciation to L. Wayne Alexander who helped put this enterprise together, to Dayna Holz who got me organized, to Debra Kalmon for her fine, enthusiastic transcribing, to Melanie Laird for helping set the stage, and to Bunny Alsup for being a Looking Glass guide.

  Jenni McCormick of American Cinema Editors (ACE), Michael Horton at the L.A. Final Cut Pro Users Group, and Philip Hodgetts at IntelligentAssistance.com all provided key background research assistance. Edie Ichioka generously filled in many blanks.

  There are an abundance of wonderful images herein: Greg Williams of London took the terrific shots at Minghella’s Old Chapel Studio. Thanks to Kristin Piljay for her expert photo editing and research, and to Steve Maruta for his photography and tireless work preparing images. Katrin Eismann and Sandee Cohen pitched in with location photos on the east coast. Shelley Wanger was generous in her advice.

  Kim Aubry, Anahid Nazarian, James Mockoski, and Rachel Eckerling at American Zoetrope, along with Kathleen Talbert—thanks for all your assistance.

  Miramax Films generously provided movie images from Cold Mountain and for that, thanks go to Harvey and Bob Weinstein, Steve Hutensky, and Brad Buchanan.

  Steve Jobs, Will Stein, Bill Hudson, and Brian Meaney at Apple have been forthcoming, generous, and supportive—I am appreciative.

  Thank you to Marjorie for saying yes, and for always being there with everything I needed. My gratitude to Nancy Ruenzel, the publisher of Peachpit, for saying yes to Marjorie and marshalling the resources. Everyone at Peachpit took this book into their collective heart, including Paula Baker, Harriet Goldberg, Rebecca Ross, Scott Cowlin, Kim Lombardi, Susan Nixon, Mimi Vitetta, and Evan Pricco. Special thanks to Damon Hampson and Sara Jane Todd for their creative marketing and publicity. And very special thanks to Hilal Sala for her patient and thorough project management.