Walter Murch, the preeminent
editor of such movies as Apocalypse Now
(1979), The Unbearable Lightness of Being
(1988), The English Patient (1996),
and Cold Mountain (2003), wrote an
incisive book on film editing called In the Blink
of an Eye. In it, he said that
editors must be preoccupied with "misdirection" and keep in mind the
following questions: "What is the audience going to be thinking at any
particular moment? Where are they going to be looking? What do you want them to
think about? And, of course, what do you want them to feel?" (Murch, 2001,
page 21). In the fast-paced rhythm of current Hollywood blockbusters where cuts
are interspersed every 3-5 seconds, film editors must ask themselves these
questions about 1200 times per movie.
The essential skill of a film
editor is to create shot transitions that are so smooth that we are blind to
them. In this way, outstanding editors keep us from being aware of their own
craft. We are familiar with great actors, directors, and even producers, but how
many award-winning editors do you know? (At least you now know one—Walter Murch.)
In my mind, film editing defines in large part what makes movies distinct from other
art forms. Murch's description of the editor's role is much like that of a
psychologist who must be attuned to the thoughts and feelings of others. His
notion of "misdirection" resembles the ploy of magicians who also must
be aware of the viewer's attention and thoughts.
The psychologist Tim Smith
has conducted some of the best research in psychocinematics. By studying eye
movement behavior, he has shown that movies are extraordinarily potent stimuli
in driving and directing our attention. As we view the world (including movies),
our eyes fixate on a spot for about a third of a second and then jump to
another spot, fixate, then jump again, and so on. These jumps are called
saccadic eye movements, which are rapid, taking only 3/1000 of second to
complete. Occasionally our eyes will track a moving object, but about 95%
of the time they are motionless and fixated at a point in space. During
any fixation, you can only clearly see a relatively small focused area, which
amounts to a span of three or four words as you read this text. Thus, the position
and sequence of eye movements offer a record of what your attention is focused
on at any given moment.
Smith and colleagues recorded
eye fixations of groups of subjects while they watched clips of feature films,
such Blade Runner and There Will Be Blood. When they analyzed
the data what became evident was that the subjects all tended to fixate on
the same spot and move in synch from moment to moment. The figure below shows a
frame from the movie There Will Be
Blood with the circles representing where subjects were fixated at the
moment of viewing that frame. The cluster of circles shows that there was a
strong overlap or coherence of eye fixations among subjects as they watched the
movie. Smith refers to this gaze attraction as attentional synchrony. In fact, as the subjects watched a film these clusters seemed to move together as if all were being guided by the
moving images (for a video demo see Tim
Smith's blog).
As with Uri Hasson's fMRI analysis of coherent brain activity while watching movies (see March
15 blog), Smith has shown that filmmakers have found ways to control our attentional
focus as we follow the plot. Thus, as the Murch quote above suggests, a good filmmaker
understands the cognitive demands of viewing movies and knows how to guide the
viewer so as to drive the storytelling in a forceful manner both perceptually
and emotionally. In some respect we allow the filmmaker to guide and move us, as if we are on a fantastic vehicle that transports us through
the movie. When the plot is riveting, we all seem to move together and enjoy
the same magical ride.
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