In the Blink of an Eye

Meeting Walter Murch, and great books about filmmaking

I recently spent two weeks in Point Reyes at the Mesa Refuge. When I was there, I was walking around tiny Point Reyes Station and met Walter Murch.

Walter freaking Murch. Editor of The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, Ghost and that amazing Touch of Evil restoration. Sound Designer of The Godfather films, American Graffiti.

I introduced myself and told him that his book In the Blink of an Eye was one of the most influential books about film I had ever read. That’s probably underselling it. It was influential way beyond cinema. It affected how I think about perception.

In the book, Murch talks about what films have in common with dreams, how editing makes emotional connections for audiences and so much more.

Guillermo Del Toro recommends it.

Walter told me about his new book - Suddenly Something Clicked - and how he writes about the legendary one-shot in Children of Men. I talked about the camera being dynamic and he almost-gently corrected me.

Our conversation made me think about books that influenced me. There are lots, but here’s a couple that have put my filmmaking brain in order.

The Godfather Notebook.
The way Coppola breaks down the book into the ideas that you need for a film, not so much the script, is phenomenal.

I took the way he breaks the main scenes in the book down in to “Synopsis”, “The Times”, “Imagery and Tone”, “The Core” and “Pitfalls.” and used it as a touchstone for everything I was shooting on The Lure.

I taped it to the dashboard of the minivan we were travelling around in. So everytime before shooting I would see it and run through in my mind what the essence of the scene we were about to shoot was.

I know, I know. A Coppola book is a really obvious choice. I also thought about Burden of Dreams or Wim Wenders’ The Logic of Images, John Boorman’s Money Into Light, and Humphrey Jennings: Film-Maker, Painter, Poet.

But one book that really inspired me was the Faber and Faber book about Alan Clarke. He’s just bloody fantastic.

My battered copy of the Alan Clarke book.

Listening to Walter got me excited about learning about film again, so I decided to ask some other filmmakers I know for books that influenced them, and how it affected the way they make films or see the world, to see where they get inspiration...

Michael Pearce (Beast, Encounter, Echo Valley)

“For deep ruminations on cinema as an art form it would have to be Sculpting in Time, so many profound insights in there, I love when he talks about the best form of cinema being akin to Zen art “where, in our perception, precise observation of life passes paradoxically into sublime artistic imagery.” But then the film book that I’ve found the most practical use of is Directing Actors by Judith Weston, I think I must have underlined half of that book and read it every time before shooting a film. Lastly I think the one that seduced me with the romance of filmmaking history was Peter Biskind Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, I was 17 when I read it and I became enamoured with those 70s movies and filmmakers”

Crystal Moselle (The Wolfpack, Skate Kitchen, The Black Sea)

“Prob Fellini on Fellini. He broke all the rules and completely went from his instinct.”

Dan Covert (Geoff McFetridge: Drawing a Life)

Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry by Leanne Shapton

This isn't inherently a book about film, but it is the most influential book I have ever read. It’s an auction catalog of what remains after the dissolution of a relationship between two (fictional) lovers. The author took photos and wrote stories that document the moments and artifacts left from the relationship. To me what this book signifies is how electric a good idea can be, and the mountains of work it takes to bring that idea to life. Which in itself is the perfect encapsulation of filmmaking.

(I’d never even heard of this book before Dan sent it to me, which is exactly the kind of recommendation I expect from such thoughtful people as these).

Tell Me Something: Advice From Documentary by Jessica Edwards

This is a book for the true doc heads out there, and is something I come back to time and time again. It’s filled with one piece of advice from 50 documentary filmmakers of different stature's in the field. I’ve had this book for a long time, and whenever I come back to it (at a different place in my filmmaking career) I learn something new.

Ed Lovelace (Name Me Lawand, The Possibilities are Endless)

I mean Gus Van Sant “The Art of Making Movies” felt pretty great. And Herzog on Herzog.

Obviously “Story” and “Into the Woods” are actually the most important to me.
You can have all the doc ideas you need, and all the interesting ways of not just telling a story but executing one, but to truly understand story…

Sam Blair (Ronnie O’Sullivan: The Edge of Everything, Maradona ’86)

It's so hard choosing one film book because I have quite a lot of them, and I'm more of a fragments/magpie guy. Some books I've only read parts of, and they have still had a big impact on me.

One example of that is Watching by Thomas Sutcliffe. I have no idea who Mr Sutcliffe is, and picked up his book on a whim in a second-hand shop and have only ever read a couple of chapters. But somewhere in what I read, he articulated something that deeply chimed with feelings I had about filmmaking––or, more explicitly, the experience of watching films. In a nutshell, he writes about our emotional response to the figures we see on screen. Not our response to the emotion that is being portrayed, or whatever is unravelling in the narrative, but rather what he suggests could be a biological component to seeing a face projected at that scale (we are talking about cinema here). I suppose he articulated feelings I had about cinema and documentary that were about the experience of watching a film, and it was part of my attempt to understand why they moved me so much. He writes about how the scale of cinema—these huge projections—doesn’t equate to power in a domineering way (the way, say, a huge statue would), but instead invites an intimacy unique to cinema as an art form. That combination of scale and intimacy is something I try to have in mind as I crank out ‘sports docs’.

Tomás Gómez Bustillo (Chronicles of a Wandering Saint)

As far as books go, I think one that really impacted me recently was The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr (also a good Ted talk)

Instead of going down the formulaic road, I was really excited to see someone approach storytelling from more of an anthropological and even neuroscience approach, of how and why we relate to other human beings in fiction

I'll add one more: The Film/TV Director's Field Manual by Rob Spera

Rob was a teacher of mine at AFI and has been one of the biggest sources of inspiration and knowledge in demystifying the craft of directing and visual storytelling. His book is amazing because it has very bite sized maxims that cut right through the bullshit around directing out there, it gives you actual, actionable tools when you're getting ready to prep and shoot a film.

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I’m gathering up more scraps like these — books, conversations, unseen moments that have shaped the way we make films.

If you’d like to follow along (or know someone who would):

or send them this post. The more, the better.