Walter Murch

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Walter Murch (2008)

Walter Murch (* 12. July 1943 in New York ) is an American film editor , director , screenwriter and sound engineer ( sound designer ).

Life

Walter Murch studied Romance languages ​​and art history in Italy and Paris from 1963 to 1964. When he found out that there were now film schools in the United States, he applied and received a scholarship for the USC graduate program , where he met George Lucas . He left USC in 1967 and was hired by Encyclopaedia Britannica Educational Films. He then edited commercials for Dove Films.

Murch worked for the American Zoetrope film production company as a film editor and mixer on the Francis Ford Coppola film The Rain People (1969). He then edited his first feature film THX 1138 with George Lucas and was involved in the sound design of American graffiti .

This was followed by renewed collaboration with Coppola when he took over the editing and sound design for the film The Godfather . He then did the same for another Coppola film, The Dialog , for which Murch received his first Oscar nomination. In 1974 Murch also took over the sound mixing for the film The Godfather - Part II .

During his sound design for the film Apocalypse Now , he invented the term “sound designer” for this work, and together with some colleagues developed the 5.1 channel array cinema sound format that is common today , which offers much greater sound design options. In 1980 he won his first Oscar for his work as mixer for Apocalypse Now . He was also nominated for an Oscar for his work as the film editor.

In 1997 Murch won two more Academy Awards for film editing and sound design for Anthony Minghella's The English Patient .

In 2003 Murch edited the film On the Road to Cold Mountain , which also comes from Anthony Minghella. For the first time he used the Apple software Final Cut Pro together with standard Power Mac G4 computers to edit the film. This was extremely unusual at the time, as Avid was the market leader and no major Hollywood production was edited on such a comparatively cheap system. This work earned Murch another Oscar nomination.

Murch only directed the movie Oz - A Fantastic World and the episode "The General" of Star Wars: Clone Wars .

In 2008 he was appointed to the competition jury of the 58th Berlin Film Festival .

In 2015 he was selected as the winner of the Vision Award at the Locarno International Film Festival .

Filmography (selection)

As an editor

As a director

literature

  • Michael Ondaatje: The Art of Film Editing - Conversations with Walter Murch. Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich / Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-446-20588-8 .
  • Charles Koppelman: Behind the Seen - How Walter Murch Edited Cold Mountain Using Apple's Final Cut Pro and What This Means for Cinema. New Riders Press, 2004, ISBN 0-7357-1426-6 .
own works
  • Walter Murch: One blink, one cut. The art of film editing. Alexander Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-89581-109-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Michael Ondaatje: The Art of Film Editing - Conversations with Walter Murch.
  2. ^ Charles Koppelman: Behind the Seen - How Walter Murch Edited Cold Mountain Using Apple's Final Cut Pro and What This Means for Cinema.
  3. ↑ Directed on imdb.com
personal data
SURNAME Murch, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American film editor and sound engineer
DATE OF BIRTH July 12, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH New York , New York, United States