WALTER MURCH's HD View

(From Millimeter.com -- By Michael Goldman)

Famed editor WALTER MURCH's continually evolving approach to editing high-end feature films continued on his latest film, JARHEAD.

Among the changes he implemented on the project from previous approaches was the decision to cut the piece
(on FINAL CUT PRO 5) relying primarily on HD media in the form of 720p/24fps QUICKTIMES in the DVCPRO HD format as his dailies source material.

Early in production in Los Angeles, Murch routinely viewed both film dailies and HD images side by side. After his editing room moved to SKYWALKER SOUND near San Francisco a few weeks later, Murch decided for the first time in his career that he would forego using film dailies entirely while cutting the movie. His repeated tests satisfied Murch that 720p HD media clips would be sufficient for achieving the film's creative needs.

So he switched over even as director SAM MENDES continued to view traditional film dailies throughout production in Los Angeles.

"I was in Los Angeles for the first three to four weeks of shooting, and there I was able to view film dailies and HD dailies synched up in projection rooms at UNIVERSAL," Murch says.

"But when we switched to my cutting room in Marin County,
I started watching the material exclusively on a 50-inch plasma screen. The quality and my experience viewing HD dailies and film dailies side by side convinced me to dispense with looking at film dailies, and rely exclusively on HD transfers the rest of the way. That was a big change for me, but the transfers were so good, and I realized that if I am confident in the transfer, I'm perfectly happy to let HD be my first exposure to the material I'm editing."

In other words, Murch believed the HD dailies compared favorably enough to film dailies that they did not require, as his longtime assistant SEAN CULLEN explains it, "Any unnatural leaps of imagination during the editing process."

Walter Murch's HD View