Walter Murch

Selected Filmography:

THX 1138 – 1971 – Sound Editor

The Godfather – 1972 – Picture Editor

American Graffiti – 1973 – Sound Editor

The Conversation – 1974 – Picture & Sound Editor

Julia – 1977 – Picture Editor

The Godfather part II – 1974 – Sound Editor

Apocalypse Now – 1979 – Picture & Sound Editor

Ghost – 1990 – Picture & Sound Editor

The Godfather part III – 1990 – Picture Editor

The English Patient – 1996 – Picture & Sound Editor

The Talented Mr Ripley – 1999 – Picture & Sound Editor

Cold Mountain – 2003 – Picture & Sound Editor

Walter Murch was born in 1943 in New York. He is widely recognized as one of the best in his career of film editing who is also equally active in both picture and sound editing.

In 1979 he won an Academy Award for best sound mix of Apocalypse Now as well as being nominated for best picture editing. Murch is acknowledged as the person who created the term Sound Designer, and along with colleagues developed the current standard film sound format, the 5.1 channel. Apocalypse Now was the first multi-channel film to be mixed using computerized mixing board.

In 1996, Murch won an Academy Award for best sound and picture editing, the first to be awarded for an electronically edited film using the Avid editing software. Murch is also the only person ever to win Academy Awards for both his sound mixing and picture editing. In 2003, Murch edited Cold Mountain on Apple’s editing software ‘Final Cut Pro’ this had never been done for a big budget film, where Avid systems were usually the standard non-linear editing system.

Murch is the only film editor to have received Academy Award nominations for films edited on four different systems, them being;-

Julia (1977) – using Moviola

Apocalypse Now (1979), Ghost (1990), The Godfather, part III (1990) – using KEM Flatbed

The English Patient (1996) – using Avid

Cold Mountain (2003) – using Final Cut Pro

Murch believes that “the wonderful thing about film construction is that it’s such a new thing in the human experience. We’ve only been doing this for barely a hundred years, and we’ve only just beginning to unlock the possibilities” (Chang, (2012) p. 14). Murch’s rule of thumb is not to present more than two and a half thematic layers to the audience at any moment, because “I’m interested in the balance between clarity on the one hand and density in the other”. Murch believes that if you have four simultaneous layers, the audience will only catch one or two things, but they won’t enjoy the “harmonic integration of all the elements”.

Bibliography

Chang, J. (2012). Editing. USA. Focal Press.