Collected Data

"Films are very good at stirring up emotion but you have to be careful about which emotion you’re stirring up."

Sven Mikule interviews Walter Murch;

Inevitably, there is a coarsening of the message there because of trying to adapt to all these different sensibilities and different ways of thinking on the different continents of the globe. But very often it’s simply lazy filmmaking. It’s hard to make it the other way because of the uncertainty of it all, because it’s risky. I find it much more interesting to make things this way precisely because it does involve the audience in the film. And really the last creative act of any film is viewing by the audience. The audience are really the ones who are creating the film, it doesn’t really exist on the screen, it exists in a kind of penumbra between the audience and the screen, the interaction of those two things. And exactly what you’re saying allows that interaction to take place. Otherwise, the audience is just blasted by the things coming from the screen, and they just have to sit there and take it.


‘WATCHING FEATURE MOTION PICTURES IN THEATERS IS BARELY A HUNDRED YEARS OLD, AND I’VE BEEN WORKING IN FILMS FOR HALF THAT TIME’