We spoke to film historian Howard Berry about his feature documentary, Her Name Was Moviola, which premiered earlier this summer at Sheffield DocFest 2024.
The film showcases not only the Moviola – an analogue editing machine used from the 1920s to the 1990s – but the collaborative nature of the editor-assistant editor relationship, as acclaimed film editor Walter Murch and his assistant Dan Farrell recut a scene from Mike Leigh’s 2014 drama, Mr. Turner, using pre-digital tools.
It was a pleasure to discuss film heritage, repairing Stanley Kubrick’s Steenbeck, and the importance of documenting experiences for future generations. S
Howard, where did the idea for the film first come From?
The idea for the film was an idea that Walter [Murch] had had, for about 15 or so years. It dawned on him that no one had ever filmed the process of an editor and an assistant editor working together as they would have done in the cutting room, using the pre-digital tools they would have worked on to edit a scene. And he felt like that was an important part of film history, and the craft side of film that needed to be documented before the opportunity to do so disappeared.
All of my creative work had been film heritage-related, so it was a natural fit for me. It was a delightful serendipity that merged all of the things I was interested in, with Walter’s desire to tell that story.
You had to source lots of editing equipment to tell this story, including the Moviola and Acmade film numbering machine. Did you ever worry that you might not find all the necessary items?
Right up until the last week before we started filming, we didn’t have everything.
One of the hardest things to find was mag stripe audio. I was also looking at the same time for white leader, and I thought ‘white leader, I’ll definitely be able to find in London’, but I couldn’t find it anywhere! It was quite a shock to me; I used to use white leader when I was cutting on a Steenbeck in VFX in Soho, and that was in 2009… so not terribly long ago. I eventually found white leader in Burbank.
They also had mag stripe, but then there was nowhere to be able to transfer audio onto mag stripe! Eventually, I found a man in Kent who had a machine to record mag audio onto mag stripe, but no way to monitor it as we were doing it. We did nine and a half reels of mag stripe played in from our Mike Leigh footage, and that was three days before the shoot. It was like crossing your fingers, and hoping for the best that it was going to work. We didn’t know until Dan loaded it into the synchroniser on the first day of the shoot whether or not there was audio. It was so nerve-racking!
And weirdly, some of the things which I thought would be completely obscure, we found instantly. The first item I bought was the rubber numbering machine.
Walter’s list was really precise. It was through a lot of treasure hunting and good fortune that everything came together.
In the film, you reverse-engineer Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner footage for use with the Moviola. What was this process like, and how did it come about?
We needed to find a sympathetic director who would allow us full access to their rushes. I made contact with Mike Leigh through a cinema club. I explained what we were going to do and he went: ‘Yeah. Right. Okay. I totally get what you are trying to do. You’re completely mad. Whatever you want, you can have it.’
We were looking at Peterloo or Mr. Turner – knowing that they were shot digitally – because we thought we’d be able to have full access to all of the digital rushes. We could then get those printed onto film. The concern was anything else would be in a film vault somewhere, and if the negative was cut, it was cut, we couldn’t get new prints.
And so we were very, very lucky. In the end, I was delivered a hard drive of the entire Avid project of Mr. Turner, and we were allowed to pick any scenes we liked. Mike didn’t know what we worked with until the day that he sits down in the film!
And you were able to use Stanley Kubrick’s Steenbeck to review that very scene! Was that always the plan?
That was not the plan. We had a treatment of what steps needed to be captured – from the film arriving from the lab to the very final director’s review. The dailies review and the director’s review were originally meant to take place in a preview cinema.
It was Walter who suggested we watch it on a Steenbeck. The screen would be big enough, and it’s a nice way to introduce the Steenbeck. It’s not the real part of the process that would have been done, although in several cutting rooms, once the Steenbeck was introduced, they worked side by side, the Moviola and the Steenbeck together.
I was on the phone with Joe Dunton, supplier to Stanley [Kubrick], because I work with the Kubrick estate. It has been a part of my work for over 15 years. I’m very good friends with the family, and I’ve been involved with running events celebrating Stanley’s work and life.
I remembered that the Kubrick estate have a Steenbeck. So I went to Stanley’s family, and asked if the Steenbeck worked, and they said, well, no.
They pulled it out for the Design Museum when they did the touring Stanley Kubrick exhibition in 2019. They filmed the Steenbeck as part of the promo video for the exhibition but Jane, the archivist at the estate, had to literally keep her hand on the switch because after 90 seconds, the entire fuse box would trip, and she’d have to turn it back on again.
I said, if I could find someone to repair it, would that be okay? Of course. Absolutely. So I found someone.
It was never the plan to use the Steenbeck, but as part of the budget of the film, we paid to repair Stanley Kubrick’s Steenbeck, which I feel jolly proud about! We got the delight of having that part of heritage on display, and the connection with the Kubrick estate in the film, which as far as I’m concerned, is so much more of a joy than sitting in the dark room with the projector.
The film closes with a statement that ‘this is almost certainly the last scene that will ever be edited on a Moviola’. How do you feel about that?
I don’t think the Moviola will disappear entirely now that our film is done. I’m sure there are other people who’ve got working Moviolas that they might be using, but I’m absolutely certain that there’s no feature film being made where someone is doing this process. I mean, it was almost impossible for us to achieve it with just two scenes from a film. To get enough material, enough numbering tape, enough mag stripe…
I think the statement that Walter makes is correct. Yeah, it’s probably going to be the last ever scene edited on a Moviola, and I think that we’ve done it justice. I think we’ve done the Moviola’s swan song, but positioned it for all its glory, front and centre of the film, and done it with affection and love.
It’s weird to make a love letter to a machine when we are also simultaneously carving the letters on its gravestone! But it’s done with a lot of affection.
The film now exists, and there’s an opportunity for people who had never seen the Moviola, or never had the opportunity to use one, or never even heard of one, to now see this machine in operation and understand its place in cinema history. So we hope that that’s what the film will achieve as well.
What would you like the legacy of the film to be for future generations who may not be able to use this machinery anymore?
That touches very much on the point of Walter’s original intention that we needed to capture this before those with the memory or ability to do so were gone, and any working machines left, hadn’t found their way into landfill. So there was absolutely an urgent preservation need behind the film.
What we want for the legacy of the film is for it to be a piece that tells that piece of history. A film that will keep that awareness alive now that it has been told.
We didn’t cheat anything. Yes, we use digital footage, but the moment [the prints] arrived, everything was authentic. There was absolutely nothing else there that was artificial about the process.
We were genuine in wanting to make sure that this was documented for future generations, for people who have a love of just how films are made as well. Their favourite film could be something from the ’20s or from the ’60s… it would have been cut on a Moviola. So to keep that [memory] alive one last time was an important thing in our mind as well.
