The Conversations

Finally finishing reading the reading, I have to confess that there are several pages I skipped. But the book is very interesting and it gives me an opportunity to look behind the screen and think about film editing. I have never thought about editing, not as much as I think of directing and acting. But after reading this chapter, I realized that the job and responsibility of a director and an editor is quite different and somehow related tightly.

The sentences below are some of my best or impressed me the most:

*The director is ultimately the immune system of the film.

*The editor works at both the macroscopic and microscopic level : ranging from deciding how long precisely each shot is held,to restructuring and repositioning scenes, and sometimes to eliminating entire subplots.

*Editing with eyes half opened-- you can't express your opinion unreservedly.

*You need to get out, to be part of something larger than yourself, yet you're drawn to this particular film in the hope that it will speak to you directly.

*What we think of as normal is largely a question of what we are most often exposed to.

This book let me see film making in a new direction-- the editors' aspects,whose work has not been accredited enough. I understand that editors must see the values that others may not see, they must construct the frames in a way that can arouse direct emotions to each audience.

I like the part where Murch and Ondaatje talked about the similarities and differences between writing and editing films. It made me understand editing better, though I still don't know nothing about 'sound tracks'. Anyway, it's a new experience.