Walter Scott Murch (born July 12, 1943) is an American film editor and sound designer. With a career stretching back to 1969, including work on Apocalypse Now, The Godfather I and II, American Graffiti and The English Patient, including three Academy Award wins (from six nominations for editing and three for sound mixing), he has been referred to as, "the most respected film editor and sound designer in the modern cinema. "
Early life
Murch was born in New York City, New York, the son of Katharine (née Scott) and Canadian-born Walter Tandy Murch (1907–1967), a painter. As a boy, he began to experiment with sound recording, taping unusual sounds and layering them into new combinations. 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's film school, successfully encouraging Deschanel to follow them. There all three encountered, and became friends with, fellow students such as George Lucas, Hal Barwood, Robert Dalva, Willard Huyck, Don Glut and John Milius; all of them would go on to be successful filmmakers. Not long after film school, in 1969, Murch, Lucas, and others joined Francis Ford Coppola at American Zoetrope in San Francisco. Murch and his family settled in Bolinas, California, in 1972.
Podcasts:
Walter Murch
ALBUMS
- THX 1138 released:
THX 1138
- What's Wrong
- On the Job
- End of Shift
- Home
- Chemical Imbalance
- Forbidden Proximity
- SEN's Plan
- Mind-Lock
- Trial and Punishment
- Medical Diagnosis
- Fighting Back
- Prison Without Walls
- Foot Chase
- Tagged
- Intruder's Prayer
- The Fate of LUH 3417
- Jet Cars
- Restricted Expressway
- Nothing to Fear
- Radio Chatter Voices
- The All-Pervasive Voice
- Music as Sound Effects
- Creating Echo Effects
- Cubistic Sound in the Trial
- Torture Scene
- Music Box in the MRI Scene
- Room Tone in the Limbo Prison
- Thunder in Limbo
- Dynamic Range in the Rushing H
- I Think I Ran Over a Wookiee
- Jet Car Sound Effects
- Motorcycle Sound Effects