I am also of the "fast scrolling through footage" school. Most, if not all of us, don't have the luxury of time to ponder our edits the way Murch does... as well as a team of great Assistant Editors to track things, hang stills on the wall, as he does.
But another point Murch makes, is that "You only have only one first impression of a shot." The way a shot or performance affects you the very first time you see it is not unlike the way the audience will see it. That's why he takes copious notes the first time through of his impressions.
...but as I said, we all don't have the luxury of time... so fast-shuttling makes sense on several levels.
George
Maybe the disconnect here is that Mr. Murch is NOT saying that that's the ONLY way you view footage, but that it is an ADDITIONAL way to view footage.
If you've read any of his books, you know that he is INTIMATELY familiar with EVERY SINGLE SHOT that he has access to. He keeps meticulous notes and logs footage EXTREMELY thoroughly.
The point is that it is very hard to keep every moment of an entire production locked in your head. The more footage you have, the more footage you forget. Just because something is well logged only means that you can access it if you can remember to ASK your NLE for that shot. But editing is CONTEXTUAL. So, when you are logging, you may not have the CONTEXT to know that some odd bit of movement or outtake or mistake, or maybe a brilliant little moment from a scene that later gets cut, will work for something totally different in your sequence.
Shuttling helps remind your brain - "Oh yeah! I remember that. That would work here!" Sometimes well logged footage ends up in the wrong bin. I've had that happen. I'm sure others have as well. That shot could be "lost" to you. I've had stuff imported incorrectly from file-based media and gets named incorrectly or associated with the wrong scene. Maybe a shot accidentally gets deleted or something in the course of the edit.
But if you've run all this stuff together and occasionally scroll through it, it re-energizes you to the possibilities. It spurs "kizmet" or whatever you want to call it. A chance encounter with a shot that you wouldn't have thought of in its context of bins and logging. A little bit of chance in an edit has saved me more times than I can remember.
Your point of watching each take carefully is a great one... unfortunately, for it to work like the above, you'd have to review every shot in your footage every time you make an edit. That would get a little time consuming.
Not buying the wisdom of Murch and others with more experience and chops than you only hurts one person, and it ain't me.
Steve Hullfish
contributor: www.provideocoalition.com
author: "The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction"
On Dec 20, 2010, at 3:00 PM, switthaus wrote:
> I think by actually watching each scene, you can also come up with good or better ideas from the footage that the client may not have known they even had. Far better than watching a tape shuttle by. Sorry Mr. Murch, I am not buying. :-)
>
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