Walter Murch Explains the Golden Ratio in Cinematic Framing

His credits include (amongst many others) films like The Godfather, The English Patient, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, and The Talented Mr. Ripley.

He’s also the author of the most-read book about film editing, In the Blink of an Eye. 

Yes, you guessed it. I’m talking about the one and only Walter Murch. 

Credit: Piotr Toczyński

He’s already been to CAMERIMAGE Festival in 2015 when he received a Golden Frog Award for Editorial Sensitivity to Cinematography. 

Walter Murch brought great news to Poland. He’s writing a new book! It makes me so happy!

Murch is known for drawing his inspiration from many sources and for his ability to explain editing concepts using analogies like no other person. 

The content of his presentation at the festival was never shown publicly before. He used math to break down cinematic framing in a very unique way. 

The story goes that one day, working on a chapter of a book about editors using blowups and reframing techniques, he noticed that the eyes almost always fall in the same proportion to the top and bottom edges of a frame. He took some yarn from his wife Aggie and marked a golden ratio line on the screen. Surprisingly, most of the shots he tested it on, had an eye line right on or right next to that line. 

What is a golden ratio? It’s a number that rules the universe. It can be spotted from the way galaxies are formed to the growth of sunflower seeds. It’s pretty much all around. Including proportions of our bodies. 

It equals (approximately) 1.618, and it’s considered the most pleasing proportion to the eye. 

On a face, the eyes are located in a golden ratio between the hairline and the chin and that’s why, Murch concludes, it’s the most natural framing cinematographers use over and over again. 

Credit: Piotr Toczyński

He actually made a few phone calls and sent a few emails to get the opinion of people we worked with, including Frances Ford Copolla. 

His theory was that either he discovered something that cinematographers secretly knew for decades or that they just do it intuitively. 

The latter seems to be what people he asked to claim. Cinematographers told him that they just try to make the face comfortable within a frame. And, unintentionally, it ends up placing the eyes in the golden ratio between the top and bottom edge of a frame. 

He then proceeded and made a number of calculations, showing the audience how the golden ratio is all over our faces and as a result all over most known movie shots.

He then opened the seminar to an audience question and sure enough—people responded very well. 

And to me, the best thing is that with his new book, we're going to experience more of that brilliant mind soon. 

Are you excited to read it when it comes out? Let us know in the comments.