Every film made in Hollywood from the mid-1920’s until the late 1960’s — the four-decade-long simmering summer of the studio system, encompassing the arrival of sound, Technicolor, 3-D, Cinemascope and Smell-O-Rama — was edited on a Moviola.

Join acclaimed film editor WALTER MURCH (nine Academy Award nominations and three wins), and esteemed film director MIKE LEIGH (seven Academy Award nominations, winner BAFTA Film Academy Fellowship) in a unique new documentary project which tells the story of Moviola editing.

As frustrating a machine as it sometimes was, the Moviola did the job it was called upon to do, and furthermore it enjoyed an almost fifty-year monopoly — at least in Hollywood — even though, curiously enough, it had been invented by a Dutchman!

We are proposing to make a documentary film about what it was like to edit 35mm films on a Moviola. If we don’t do something like this soon, it will be too late. Those of us with the muscle-memory of how to dance with the Moviola are exiting the scene, and all the necessary support equipment is disappearing into landfills with each passing day.

Perhaps more significantly than just the history of it, Moviola editing as you will see was highly external — every aspect of the process was a broad physical gesture in space and time. A bin is physically a bin, a splice is physically a splice, and you have to physically rewind using muscle power to get from the end of a reel back to the beginning, and so on.

Stanley Kubrick and his daughter Vivian, looking into the viewer of his Moviola

Strange to say, given the nature of the cinematic medium, there has never been a film made which explains all the details of Moviola editing from the lab to the finished cut. We hope to fix that before it is too late!

Costs

Recreating a 1970s edit room costs money. There are no edit suites frozen in time, and so we have to reassemble all the equipment and technology from scratch. We need to source items from people's basements, from disused store cupboards and museums.  Old tech also comes with its own issues of servicing and making it work again!

Thankfully we are well on our way - we have two Moviolas, and several pieces of required equipment including a 4-gang Synchroniser and an Acmade Rubber Numbering Machine for printing sequential letters and numbers on the edge of every foot of picture and sound, so that sync could be easily re-established once the film is cut up into individual clips.

Verna Fields - editor of Jaws and many other films - in her cutting room.

We do have more items to source, and the cost of printing 35mm film and getting magnetic 35mm audio transferred will be high.

This is where your help will make this achievable.  We're looking to raise £37,000 for the film, so that we can realise this film.  We are delighted to say that Warner Brothers have already donated £10,000, so we have £27,000 to go.  If we reach our target early, we may have a stretch goal or two we want to aim for!

The film and audio transfers will cost approx £5000.  Materials costs are approx £5000 - we've already spent £2500 to gather the items we already have.  Crew costs are low, because we can keep the crew small, but we do need to pay fair industry rates to all involved.

Impact

We feel this film has the potential to be useful and informative to many different audiences - from film students, historians, museums and those generally interested in the history of cinema or how films are made.  It will demonstrate key processes which would have been undertaken on some of the most important films in history, and will forever preserve the methods and craft of film editing in this way for future generations.

Marcia Lucas and husband George, with the Moviola in her cutting room

Risks & Challenges

We are aware that every film project comes with obstacles, especially in the recent environment of working with Covid-19, but we feel we are prepared and up to the challenge.  The filmmakers have a wide ranging network of industry contacts on which to call, to help source materials and equipment, and to locate the hidden gems we need to build our 1970s editing room.  We've even sourced the last ever stock of coding tape, from over 5000 miles away, so we truly believe that we can make this film happen.

Who is Making This Happen?

Our team includes two of the biggest names in film, along with an experienced crew with a wealth of industry knowledge and experience.

Walter Murch is one of the most famous names in film and sound editing. He has worked as film and sound editor on many acclaimed films including American Graffiti (1973), The Godfather: Part II (1974), The Conversation (1974), Julia (1976), Apocalypse Now (1979), for which he won an Oscar, The English Patient (1996), which won him a double Oscar in both film and sound editing, The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Cold Mountain (2003). Murch also directed Return to Oz (1985) at Elstree Studios and helped work on the restoration of Orson Welles’s classic Touch of Evil (1998).

For our film Walter has written the treatment, and is going to be on screen throughout, cutting footage with the Moviola, and demonstrating the techniques used by film editors, with his assistant editor Dan Farrell who worked in the cutting room with Walter on Return to Oz, The English Patient, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Cold Mountain and most recently on the documentary Coup 53 (2019).

Walter and Dan will once again re-team to edit a scene from one of Mike Leigh's films.

Mike Leigh is a highly acclaimed English film and theatre director, screenwriter and playwright.  His most notable works include the black comedy-drama Naked (1993), for which he won the Best Director Award at Cannes, the Oscar-nominated, BAFTA- and Palme d'Or-winning drama Secrets & Lies (1996), the Golden Lion-winning working-class drama Vera Drake (2004), and the Palme d'Or-nominated biopic Mr. Turner (2014).  His most recent film Peterloo was released in 2018.

Mike is very kindly allowing us to use his film archive to provide a wonderful drama scene for Walter and Dan to edit.  Mike will also be appearing in the film, to view the initial edit and discuss the cut with Walter, as well as returning to view the final edit and bring his own invaluable director's eye to the process.  We are hugely grateful to Mike's generosity and support for this project.

Howard Berry has been Head of Post-Production at the University of Hertfordshire's School of Creative Arts for seventeen years, where he has taught digital film editing to well over 1000 students. A recipient of both the University's Tutor of the Year and Inspirational Lecturer of the Year awards, Howard was also a finalist at the 2021 Broadcast Tech Innovation Awards for the remote post-production editing workflow he co-designed with EditShare.  He has worked as a VFX editor on numerous films including Scott Pilgrim vs The World, Green Zone, Sherlock Holmes and Kick-Ass, and relished the opportunity to use a Steenbeck while assisting VFX on The Dark Knight and Hellboy II.

Howard has been undertaking film production history research for over a decade, and co-created an oral history archive of interviews with people who worked at the studios in Elstree and Borehamwood.  Howard has personally interviewed Simon Pegg, Jan Harlan, Christiane Kubrick, Brian Blessed, Joe Turkell and Steven Spielberg.  He remains a close friend of the Kubrick family and has worked as a consultant to their archive and Warner Bros. for the past ten years.

Howard will be directing and producing this documentary.

What You Get For Your Help

We are offering a range of funding tiers and perks, so that our project is accessible to as many as possible - no matter your personal budget.  (Note all forms of Producer credits are honorary and do not equate to a role or actual involvement in the production of the film).

£20 - Backer Credit. Your name will be in the list of backers in the film itself.

£50 - Access to a private online Q&A with the filmmakers, with the opportunity to submit a question in advance to be answered.  Backer Credit is also included.

£100 - Audience invitation to our Online Premiere. Be one of the first to get to see the finished film! Backer Credit is also included.

£250 - Crowdfunder Producer Credit, Q&A and Online Premiere ticket.

£500 - Crowdfunder Associate Producer Credit, Q&A and VIP ticket to our in-person Premiere (Please note, travel to and from our in-person Premiere is at the expense of the backer and will not be paid for by the production. Location TBC.)

£1000 - Crowdfunder Executive Producer Credit. We're open to suggestions at this reward level!

We are so grateful to anyone who chooses to support our project, at whichever tier and perk you choose.