This applies to many film jobs, not just editing: half the job is doing the job, and the other half is finding ways to get along with people and tuning yourself in to the delicacy of the situation.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the balance between technical skills and interpersonal abilities in film jobs.
Walter Murch emphasizes that in professions like film editing, success is not only about the technical execution of one's tasks but also about the ability to collaborate effectively with others and be sensitive to the nuances of social dynamics. It implies that soft skills in communication and emotional awareness are as crucial as the hard skills related to the job itself.
In practice
During a film production workshop, this quote can be used to emphasize the importance of teamwork.
You can always make a film somehow. You can beg, borrow, steal the equipment, use credit cards, use your friends' goodwill, wheedle your way into this or that situation. The real problem is, how do you get people to see it once it is made?
Film editing is now something almost everyone can do at a simple level and enjoy it, but to take it to a higher level requires the same dedication and persistence that any art form does.
The notion of directing a film is the invention of critics - the whole eloquence of cinema is achieved in the editing room.
I believe that one of the secret engines that allows cinema to work, and have the marvelous power over us that it does, is the fact that for thousands of years we have spent eight hours every night in a 'cinematic' dream-state, and so are familiar with this version of reality.
There are many, many nouns for the act of looking - a glance, a glimpse, a peep - but there's no noun for the act of listening. In general, we don't think primarily about sound. So I have a different perspective on the world; I can construct soundscapes that have an effect on people, but they don't know why. It's a sort of subterfuge.
Film is really the one art form that can effectively use silence. Music and theater can play with silence, but they can't sustain silence without losing energy, whereas film can go into a silent mode and stay there for minutes at a time.
... there is no valid teaching from which there does not emerge something learned and through which the learner does not become capable of recreating and remaking what has been taught.
Newspapers are the schoolmasters of the common people.
Anyone can repeat a technical explanation they read in a text-book or blog post.
I can find in my undergraduate classes, bright students who do not know that the stars rise and set at night, or even that the Sun is a star.
Sometimes it seems the only accomplishment my education ever bestowed on me was the ability to think in quotations.
In many professions, what used to matter most were abilities associated with the left side of the brain: linear, sequential, spreadsheet kind of faculties. Those still matter, but they're not enough.
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