Walter Murch

My job as an editor is to gently prod the attention of the audience to look at various parts of the frame.…

— Walter Murch

One of the rules of the road is that if you want to create the sense of silence, it frequently has more…

— Walter Murch

Take any writer you want in the 19th century: they wrote with quill pens, dipping a piece of goose feather in ink…

— Walter Murch

Writing is a process of discovery of what you really do know. You can't limit yourself in advance to what you know,…

— Walter Murch

As I've gone through life, I've found that your chances for happiness are increased if you wind up doing something that is…

— Walter Murch

Film is really the one art form that can effectively use silence. Music and theater can play with silence, but they can't…

— Walter Murch

When I'm actually assembling a scene, I assemble it as a silent movie. Even if it's a dialog scene, I lip read…

— Walter Murch

Film editing is now something almost everyone can do at a simple level and enjoy it, but to take it to a…

— Walter Murch

The word processor is a better tool than a quill pen because you can do so much more with it, but on…

— Walter Murch

As I've gone through life, I've found that your chances for happiness are increased if you wind up doing something that is…

— Walter Murch

Blinking is some way of tabulating - a kind of carriage return, click, or save to disk - that helps the process…

— Walter Murch

You can always make a film somehow. You can beg, borrow, steal the equipment, use credit cards, use your friends' goodwill, wheedle…

— Walter Murch

Looking at a first assembly is kind of like looking at an overgrown garden. You can't just wade in with a weed…

— Walter Murch

If you want to freak your cat out, stare at your cat. If you want to reassure your cat, stare at your…

— Walter Murch

I believe that one of the secret engines that allows cinema to work, and have the marvelous power over us that it…

— Walter Murch

Every film is a puzzle really, from an editorial point of view.

— Walter Murch

I believe every editor should stand to edit. That's just my particular soapbox. Some things are so delicate and depend on such…

— Walter Murch

The Conversation' was the first film I edited on a flatbed machine - a KEM editing machine. I've been using Final Cut…

— Walter Murch

By manipulating what you hear and how you hear it - and what other things you don't hear - you can not…

— Walter Murch

Sound is a huge influence on peoples' attention.

— Walter Murch

Most of us are searching-consciously or unconsciously- for a degree of internal balance and harmony between ourselves and the outside world, and…

— Walter Murch

There are two kinds of filmmaking: Hitchcock's (the film is complete in the director's mind) and Coppola's (which thrives on process). For…

— Walter Murch

I re-mastered 'The Conversation' a few years ago for DVD. 'The Conversation' was the first film I edited on a flatbed machine…

— Walter Murch

There's a big link between trains and film. One of the first filmed objects was a train. The clickety-clack of the projector…

— Walter Murch

This applies to many film jobs, not just editing: half the job is doing the job, and the other half is finding…

— Walter Murch