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is it me or is the book “The Eye is Quicker” hard to understand?
I just read through the book The Eye is Quicker and i feel a lot of the times i am lost on what he is trying to explain.
it is like he is talking but doesnt just cut to the main point of what he means.
he will refer to an illustration and then go on talking about something else.
i am re-reading it to see if i can understand this guy..
anyone else agree on this?
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6 Replies
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i’ve always said that book would be best supplied with a dvd of the obscure clips he chose to reference.
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I found the same thing. He kind of blends the captions of the illustrations into the text…versus the traditional style of having the captions be supplemental material to the body of the text.
Erik
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i am re reading the book and i am reading it a whole lot slower now and actually pondering on everything he says.
now i am starting to understand his concepts better. Just takes a while to figure out what his run on sentences mean.
one sentence in particular i am having a hard time understanding, because after he writes it, he moves onto something else.
it says, “an effective cut can be made (usually)just before the last eye of the character is no longer visible.”
i dont have the book in front of me but that is the jist of it.
i am stumbling over the last part of the phrase “just before the last eye is no longer visible.”
this doesnt make sense to me. does he mean cut righ after the last eye clears the frame, or cut before that eye even touches the side of the frame?
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I would say he menas cut before it clears the frame. Once the eyes are no longer visible, the viewer will lose interest. So if you cut way after his eyes are out of the frame, say to his ear in a profile shot, the viewer is no longer interested and you’re now boring them with extra info they don’t care about. By cutting just before, you keep the viewers interest and convey that he is leaving the frame, you can safely move on to the next shot.
Erik
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Yeah… it does take some careful reading, and – in some cases – rereading.
I think part of the problem is a problem faced by *all* texts about film editing. Namely, using words and static diagrams to explain a visual and time-based art form. Personally, I wonder if the book would be better if it were $40, but included a DVD of all the film scenes he references.
But it is a good book, IMHO. I picked up some very useful tidbits from it.
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I actually gave up on reading this book because it eventually frustrated me too much. What really got to me was the structure he used for most of his sentences – this part is just inserted to illustrate his writing style – in the book. If you read the book you would know what I mean.
I found Walter Murch’s book “In the blink of an eye” a much easier and enjoyable read.
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