Walter Murch and the sound of the cut

Walter Murch works on both sides of the screen. He is a picture editor and a sound designer, credited as sound designer on Apocalypse Now (1979), a title he helped make familiar in Hollywood.

On The English Patient (1996) he won Oscars for both film editing and sound mixing, an uncommon double. His best-known idea comes from his book In the Blink of an Eye: a cut should feel like a blink, a natural shift of attention rather than a jolt.

He also ranks what makes a cut work. Emotion comes first, at 51 percent. Story follows at 23, rhythm at 10, eye-trace at 7, the flat screen plane at 5 and three-dimensional space at 4. If something has to give, give up the bottom of the list.

The method is practical. Murch often stands while he works, and he treats each shot as a thought that should end exactly when the audience is ready for the next one. Great editing, in his view, goes unnoticed because it matches how people already think.