In the Blink of an Eye

Books on Film

In The Blink of an Eye

by Walter Murch

Walter Murch was an editor on ‘Apocalypse Now’, ‘The Conversation’, ‘The Talented Mr. Ripley’ and a bunch of others. This book is based on a lecture he gave on editing.

It’s a short book (146 pages) and only about half of it is based on the lecture. The second half is about his thoughts on moving over to digital editing. Despite the short length I’d still call it essential reading for anyone interested in filmmaking.

I saw one review on Amazon where someone was complaining that it doesn’t actually teach anything about editing apart from ‘one trick’. That’s a complete misreading of it though. He’s not trying to teach a bunch of editing ‘tricks’ but talking about an overall philosophy and I’d say the book is probably more valuable to a director or DP than to an editor.

The book is short so I can’t really get into too much detail so I’ll end by saying I loved this book and consider it essential. Buy it!