In The Blink of An Eye: A BBC Between the Covers Book Club Pick

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When people realised they could splice together two separate images discontinuously and the audience could still comprehend what was happening, ‘films were no longer earthbound’ as Murch puts it. I spend a lot of time on twitter talking about the books and TV shows that I love, how the writing is going or just chatting about random stuff like the weather, kids, and food.

One thing reading this book has made me realise is that I need to re-read Asimov's 1953 novel The Caves of Steel, which features a (far future) detective Elijah Bailey who is teamed up with the robotic detective R. She believes in gut instinct, experience and being able to read people’s emotions which is everything the AI Lock can’t do and is only programmed to work on logic and facts. There’s plenty of tension, enhanced by the anonymous perspective of a young man suffering at the hands of shadowy figures, and effective twists in the plot. Picked to lead a pilot programme that has her paired with AIDE (Artificially Intelligent Detective Entity) Lock, Kat’s instincts come up against Lock’s logic. Real heart to it and the characters surrounding the main protagonists have a good feel too with the option of their backstory being expanded in the future - hopefully!Lock is powered by hundreds of millions of case notes and internet entries and an ability to digest all of that data in the blink of an eye. Although I solved the case very early, I still found myself engrossed in the story and blazing through it like Usain Bolt at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Likened by Murch to Frankenstein’s Monster, cuts not only pull pieces together, but what they create is greater than the sum of its parts.

Professor Okonedo also adds to the dynamic, providing additional insight into police procedure and how they work with other organisations.Kat and her boss are cynical about politicians’ intention to cut resources / officers and replace them with technology not capable of nuance and intuition. Walter Murch Talks the Subtleties of Editing Systems, the Myth of Shot Length, and Visual Sensitivity". Murch has a chapter on all the new software out on editing film and he is still a bit skeptical it can deliver on all its claims. Aparte de su conocimiento del montaje y de un sentido artístico audiovisual que podíamos dar por hecho, Murch tiene una sensibilidad literaria y una prosa envidiables.

That's only when he's not nagging on about the fact that he likes to put his KEM on an elevated surface, because he prefers to edit while standing up. It's a quick read, probably only a few hours from front to back, so there's really no reason at all not to pick it up and read it. In the Blink of an Eye explores the potential future of technology with an in-depth, unforgettabl e look at grief and humanity, and how surprisingly , one can aide the other. Even better are the bits where he delves further, into the theoretical underpinnings of what a cut is, and why they work at all given the unfamiliarity of jump cuts in day to day life (so one would think).

I'm very late in reading this book, particularly as I've had it on my TBR for so long, but I'm very glad I've now caught up as it was a brilliant story with a truly fascinating premise, and blended the thrills, mystery and humour in a way that I loved. Murch treats the reader to a wonderful ride through the aesthetics and practical concerns of cutting film. But not only are cuts a pragmatic tool for the filmmaker, they can actually enhance the experience - be a preferred tool of choice.