Walter Murch

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Walter Murch speaking 13 March 2005

Walter Scott Murch (born July 12, 1943) is an Academy Award–winning film editor/sound mixer.

He went to The Collegiate School, a private preparatory school for boys 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 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, Walter and Coppola 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 1996, Murch won two more Oscars for his sound mixing and picture editing of Anthony Minghella's The English Patient. Murch's Oscar for picture editing was the first to be awarded for an electronically edited film (using the Avid system). He is the only person to win multiple Oscars in these two categories in the same year.

He has directed one film, Return to Oz, which he co-wrote with Gill Dennis.

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 and his efforts on the film were documented in Charles Koppelman's 2004 book Behind the Seen.

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 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.

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.

He has written one book on film editing, In the Blink of an Eye (2001), and was the subject of Michael Ondaatje's book The Conversations (2002), as well as Charles Koppelman's book Behind the Seen (2004).

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

Murch is 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: Carrie Angland, Connie Angland, Walter Slater Murch and Beatrice Murch.