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Behind the Seen: How Walter Murch Edited Cold Mountain Using Apple's Final Cut Pro and What This Means for Cinema (VOICES) |
Author: Charles Koppelman
Published: 2004-10-31 |
List price: $39.99
Our price: $26.39
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As of: December 01st, 2008 06:52:09 PM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 Stop the marketing!
I can't believe this book is getting so many good reviews. Half of the book is about how Mr Murch, God on earth, is such a great person. The author spends most of boring us with details of no importance about Mr Murch looking outside the window, walking to have a chat with Expert Y, making the whole thing such a big thing...what a risk it was...what a pressure to comit for such an exploit...when most of the readers are only interested in Final Cut rather than Mr Murch. You could throw away 80% of the book to get the interesting bit...maybe even more. It reminds me when I was a kid trying to use a piece of butter to spread it all over as many slices of bread I could. At least I was eating bread...here I pay for forest to be destroyed, rivers to be poluted...and still nothing to learn.
 Apple Seeds Hollywood
This book offers a fascinating record of the interaction between art and technology, artist and corporation. It describes in thorough detail the logistsics of shooting and editing a feature film from start to finish using a totally untried and discouraged software and hardware tool chain formerly for amatuer efforts only.
The meeting of Silicon Valley and Hollywood industries creates a riveting plot that is hard to put down. The gorgeous graphic layout and attention to detail also help.
Only grumble was the detachment of one page from the binding, but if you don't sleep next to your copy, it probably won't be a concern.
Anyone interested in cutting edge (hah!) technology and/or legendary Bay area genius Walter Murch must read this book.
 Not required reading
Get this is book if you want to read all about...
1. Walter Murch.
2. Cold Mountain.
3. What it was like to edit a feature film on consumer software that was not ready for prime time.
4. The practical problems facing an editor.
Do not get this book if you want to improve your editing technique. While Murch drops some nuggets of useful information here and here, I think that you have to go through too much irrelevant material to make it worthwhile. The lessons that Walter learned from FCP 3.0 are outdated, for the most part.
Disappointed. Not what I expected
I picked up this book expecting to get a blow-by-blow account of the editing of Cold Mountain and how Walter Murch translated his film cutting techiniques (that are well explained in either "In the Blink of an Eye" or "The Conversations...") into Final Cut Pro.
Instead the bulk of the book was spent in excruciating detail about the selection of Final Cut Pro as an editing platform. There was much talk of the concerns around using FCP3 to edit a feature-length film project. Likewise there was too much detail about the worries they had about shipping these systems to Romania for the edit. Would they have tech support?!? Would they have enough hard drive space?!? Would it survive customs?!?
There are even copies of e-mails of the order of the system and how grand a moment it was... Sorry, I found the inclusion of this material to be boring. I lost interest well before the edit actually started.
To me it was more a story of how Digital Film Tree (God Bless 'em. They ARE good people.) took a big chance on championing this effort and how they supported Murch and his Assistant Editor to provide the technical knowledge of FCP than it was about the actual Edit of Cold Mountain.
The information IS dated now that FCP is in version 5.1 (as of 4/2006) and that may have tainted my read of the book.
 How Walter Murch Edited Cold Mountain Using Apple's Final Cut Pro and What This Means for Cinema, First Edition
Interesting, well written and easy to get your head around.
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