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.
LECTURER, n. One with his hand in your pocket, his tongue in your ear and his faith in your patience.
Competitive skills are desperately needed by poor children in America, and realistic recognition of the economic roles that they may someday have an opportunity to fill is obviously important, too. But there is more to life, and there ought to be much more to childhood, than readiness for economic functions.
I would rather have one article a day of this sort; and these ten or twenty lines might readily represent a whole day's hard work in the way of concentrated, intense thinking and revision, polish of style, weighing of words.
. . . finally, I couldn't imagine how I could live without books, and I stopped dreaming about marrying that Chinese prince. . . .
One of the things I'm best at is modeling. I find someone who is best at something I want to learn. Then I model them, and learn it myself. Then, when I've proven it to myself, I teach it to others.
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
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