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He is also a personal hero of mine. What Murch brings to the world of editing is an unmatched passion for the cut as well as a frighteningly detailed sensibility for everything that it does to the human psyche.  It is something filmmakers should be grateful to cling to (read In The Blink Of An Eye and The Conversations) when they find themselves swimming in the sometimes scary muck of shots and takes.

Logging footage is often the first place to start after the cameras have stopped rolling. This can often be a tedious process, where you are naming shots and takes, and making notes about what’s good and what’s expendable. But thanks in part to Murch’s approach, I have learned to respect and enjoy this part immensely.

First I make myself a playlist of music that in some way is associated with the project, and then begin carefully going through each shot and take, making my initial gut reaction notes. First impressions are rather key. It can be the most glaring of elements (a camera bump, a line of dialogue that stands out, a gesture) or the most subtle (a blink, a look, a quirk). When I’ve exhausted all the takes from a setup, I grab a representative still, something that seems like a key moment from the shot. Once I’ve gathered up all the stills representing every setup from the production, I lay them all out in grids and create a book. The shots are in a rough sequence order, but most if not all of the shots are in an order that was never intended for the film’s story flow; this helps shake me out of any tendency to see the film in only one way as I go through each scene to put the film together on the timeline.

So when it finally comes time to cut a scene, I am not blindly scavenging through files for bits of shots (a method that not only frustrates the editor, but the film itself as well). To avoid this trap, I have laid out road maps, Murch-inspired road maps, to help me get somewhere desirable, somewhere hopefully special. Either way, thankfully, the journey is just as fun as the destination. - Alex

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After a search for available maps from books and other sources, the decision to create it as a prop was deemed necessary, since multiple versions would be needed for the sake of production.

The first step was to find a hero map.

Next began the process of staining the printout copies of the map using the morning’s leftover espresso and a towel for brushing. At first just a light coat is done, and then intermittent second coats across the page.

As the paper becomes saturated, the stain spreads, giving it a uniformity.

Next coffee grounds are sprinkled overtop, and then worked lightly into various sections with a wet towel. This will add darker blotches to the surface.

Folding the map back and forth over its creases to induce wear.

The finishing touches involve tearing the left side to suggest the map was lifted from a book, and giving the page a dog-ear. It will also help to obscure some of the map edges, to avoid the look of printer paper sizing.

This grade-school technique (for making treasure maps) was a lot of fun to revisit.