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Behind the Seen: How Walter Murch Edited Cold Mountain Using Apple’s Final Cut Pro

Words by Ric Getter
February 2005

On the surface, the idea was almost insane. Take a desktop editing system that had never been used for a major motion picture to the other side of the world and cut an epic film a thousand miles from the closest source of technical support. But one of the world’s greatest film editors and sound designers had discovered what he believed was the world’s greatest editing system: Final Cut Pro.

Behind the Seen: How Walter Murch Edited Cold Mountain offers a detailed and exciting account of
both the crafting of an Academy Award-winning film
and the emergence of a new and untried technology.
It is a story of how the artistically brilliant Murch worked with a technologically brilliant team of fellow believers achieving a feat that even Apple was not sure the program was ready for.

With this book, screenwriter / director / author Charles Koppelman achieved an equally impressive feat of journalism. He follows Murch and his team through the project with a taut and detailed narrative. He offers intimate e-mail and journal excerpts along with concise and relevant commentaries on Murch’s other great films such as The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, and the memorably rich sound design of American Graffiti. Koppelman’s writing excels at striking a balance between the complex technology of the post-production process and the artistry of the editor’s craft.

We see Murch as highly focused and hyper-organized yet profoundly in touch with the intuitive and instinctive aspects of his art. At first, it was an issue of economy driving the decision to push Final Cut Pro into center stage on a Hollywood film. For the cost of an Avid, Murch and Miramax could employ several Final Cut stations. Instead of proprietary file formats, they had QuickTime and a system that could be carried anywhere on a laptop or pushed to its limits on G4s linked by an ultra-fast Fibrechannel network. But with the new technology came limitations and unexpected obstacles. The resulting story is a gripping tale, akin to Tracey Kidder’s Soul of a New Machine, that provides profound insight into the mind of a great editor and the skills of a team of craftsmen and technicians to succeed at the impossible

.Behind the Seen is beautifully presented and lavishly illustrated. It paints a rich picture of the people, places and technology behind the editing of the film.

New Riders/Peachpit Press
Price: $39.99
For more information log on to > www.Peachpit.com
348 pgs
ISBN 0-7357-1426-6

Buy it now!