Walter Murch

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Walter Murch

Image:WalterMurch.jpg
Walter Murch speaking 13 March 2005

Birth name

Walter Scott Murch

Born

July 12 1943 (age 66)
New York City, New York

Years active

1958 - present

Spouse(s)

Aggie Murch (1965-)

Awards
Academy Awards
Best Sound 1979 Apocalypse Now 1996 The English Patient Best Editing 1996 The English Patient
BAFTA Awards
Best Sound 1974 The Conversation Best Editing 1974 The Conversation 1996 The English Patient
Other Awards
Eddie The English Patient 1996

Walter Scott Murch (born July 12, 1943) is an Academy Award–winning film editor/sound mixer, the son of painter Walter Tandy Murch (1907-1967). Murch married Muriel Ann (Aggie) at Riverside Church, New York City, on August 6, 1965. Walter and Aggie have 4 children: Walter Slater Murch, Beatrice Murch, Carrie Angland, and Connie Angland.

He went to The Collegiate School, a private preparatory school in Manhattan, from 1949 to 1961. He then attended Johns Hopkins University from 1961 to 1965, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in Liberal Arts. While at Hopkins, he met future director/screenwriter Matthew Robbins and cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, with whom he staged a number of happenings. In 1965, Murch and Robbins enrolled in the graduate program of the University of Southern California film school, successfully encouraging Deschanel to follow them. There all three encountered, and became friends with, fellow students such as George Lucas, Hal Barwood, Willard Huyck, Don Glut and John Milius all of whom would go on to be successful filmmakers.

Murch started editing and mixing sound with Francis Ford Coppola's The Rain People (1969). Subsequently, he worked on George Lucas's THX 1138, American Graffiti and Coppola's The Godfather before editing picture and mixing sound on Coppola's The Conversation, for which he received an Academy Award nomination in sound. Murch also mixed the sound for Coppola's The Godfather Part II which was released in 1974, the same year as The Conversation.

In 1976 he invented a film splicer which conceals the evidence of the splice by using extremely narrow but strongly adhesive strips of special polyester-silicone tape.

In 1979, he won an Oscar for the sound mix of Apocalypse Now as well as a nomination for picture editing. While working on the film, Murch adopted the theatrical term Sound Designer, with which Coppola had become familiar in 1972, and along with colleagues originated the current standard film sound format, the 5.1 channel array, helping to elevate the art and impact of film sound to a new level. Apocalypse Now was the first multi-channel film to be mixed using a computerized mixing board.

In 1985 he directed his one film, Return to Oz, which he co-wrote with Gill Dennis.

In 1996, Murch worked on Anthony Minghella's The English Patient, which was based on Michael Ondaatje's novel of the same name. Murch won Oscars both for his sound mixing and for his editing. Murch's editing Oscar was the first to be awarded for an electronically edited film (using the Avid system), and he is the only person ever to win Oscars in both sound and film editing.

In 2003, Murch edited another Anthony Minghella film, Cold Mountain on Apple's sub-$1000 Final Cut Pro software using off the shelf Power Mac G4 computers. This was a leap for such a big-budget film, where expensive Avid systems were usually the standard non-linear editing system. He received an Academy Award nomination for this work; his efforts on the film were documented in Charles Koppelman's 2004 book Behind the Seen.^[1]

Murch has written one book on film editing, In the Blink of an Eye (2001).^[2] Murch was the subject of Michael Ondaatje's book The Conversations (2002);^[3] the book, which incorporates from several conversations between Ondaatje and Murch, emerged from Murch's editing of The English Patient, which was based on Ondaatje's novel of the same name.

In 2007 the documentary Murch premiered at the San Francisco International Film Festival, which centered on Walter Murch and his thoughts on film making.^[4]

In 2006, he was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters by the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver, Canada.

Unlike most film editors today, Murch works standing up, comparing the process of film editing to "brain surgery and short-order cooking", since both cooks and surgeons stand when they work. In contrast, when writing, he does so lying down. His reason for this is that where editing film is an editorial process, the creation process of writing is opposite that, and so he lies down rather than sit or stand up, to separate his editing mind from his creating mind.^{[citation needed]}

He is perhaps the only film editor in history to have received Academy nominations for films edited on four different systems:

Julia (1977) using upright Moviola
Apocalypse Now (1979), Ghost (1990), and The Godfather, Part III (1990) using KEM flatbed
The English Patient (1996) using Avid, and
Cold Mountain (2003) using Final Cut Pro.

[edit] References

^ Koppelman, Charles (2004). Behind the Seen: How Walter Murch Edited Cold Mountain Using Apple's Final Cut Pro and What This Means for Cinema (New Riders Press) ISBN 978-073571426.
^ Murch, Walter (2001). In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing (Silman-James Press). ISBN 1-879505-62-2.
^ Ondaatje, Michael (2004). The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Film Editing (New York: Random House).
^ Ichioka, Edie and Ichioka, David (2007). Walter Murch on Editing. Webpage retrieved Dec. 24, 2007.