29 Facts About Walter Murch

Walter Scott Murch was born on July 12,1943 and is an American film editor, director, writer and sound designer.

Walter Murch is the author of a popular book on film editing, In the Blink of an Eye, and is the subject of Michael Ondaatje's book The Conversations.

Walter Murch is the grandson of Louise Tandy Murch, a music teacher who was the subject of the 1975 documentary film At 99: A Portrait of Louise Tandy Murch and of Mary Elizabeth MacCallum Scott, a Canadian physician, educator and Christian medical missionary.

Walter Murch attended The Collegiate School, a private preparatory school in Manhattan, from 1949 to 1961.

Walter Murch assisted with the July 29th 1961 live broadcast of a 12-hour folk music Hootenanny produced by Izzy Young.

Walter Murch then attended Johns Hopkins University from 1961 to 1965, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in Liberal Arts.

Walter Murch started editing and mixing sound with Francis Ford Coppola's The Rain People.

Walter Murch did sound design work on Apocalypse Now, for which he won his first Academy Award in 1979 and he was significantly involved in the re-editing work that resulted in the extended Apocalypse Now Redux in 2001.

In 1988 Walter Murch was one of the editors on The Unbearable Lightness of Being, directed by Philip Kaufman.

Walter Murch's reason for this is that where editing film is an editorial process, the creative 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.

Walter Murch has written one book on film editing, In the Blink of an Eye, which has been translated into many languages including Chinese, Italian, Hebrew, Spanish, French, German, Hungarian and Persian.

Walter Murch's book describes many of his notable techniques used in his film editing.

Walter Murch was the subject of Michael Ondaatje's book The Conversations, which consists of several conversations between Ondaatje and Murch; the book emerged from Murch's editing of The English Patient, which was based on Ondaatje's novel of the same name.

In 2007 the documentary Walter Murch premiered at the San Francisco International Film Festival, which centered on Walter Murch and his thoughts on filmmaking.

Additionally, the film is the first to credit anyone as Sound Designer, a professional designation that Walter Murch is widely attributed to have coined as a means to help legitimize the field of post-production sound, much in the way William Cameron Menzies coined the term "Production Designer" in the 1930s.

In recent years, Walter Murch has asserted that the Meyer Sound subwoofers were more "emotionally significant" to the film's presentations than were the two surround channels.

In 1996, Walter Murch worked on Anthony Minghella's The English Patient, which was based on Michael Ondaatje's novel of the same name.

Walter Murch won Oscars both for his sound mixing and for his editing.

Walter Murch's editing Oscar was the first to be awarded for an electronically edited film, and he is the only person ever to win Oscars for both sound mixing and film editing.

In 2003, Walter 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.

Walter Murch received an Academy Award nomination for this work; his efforts on the film were documented in Charles Koppelman's 2004 book Behind the Seen.

In 2012, Walter Murch was invited to serve as a mentor for the Rolex Mentor and Protege Arts Initiative, an international philanthropic program that pairs masters in their disciplines with emerging talents for a year of one-to-one creative exchange.

Out of a gifted field of candidates, Walter Murch chose Italian film editor Sara Fgaier as his protegee.

Walter Murch is the 2012 recipient of the Nikola Tesla Award given by the International Press Academy Satellite Awards for "Visionary Achievement in Filmmaking Technology".

In 2015, Walter Murch was presented with the Vision Award Nescens, at the 68th Locarno Film Festival, for his contributions to cinema.

In 2016, Walter Murch was awarded an honorary doctorate of media by the Southampton Solent University in Southampton, England along with Anne Coates who received an honorary Doctorate of Arts.

In 2018, Walter Murch was awarded an honorary doctorate of arts by the University of Hertfordshire, for his contribution to the film industry in the county of Hertfordshire and his contribution towards The Elstree Project and the Film and Television Production degrees.

Walter Murch is the only film editor to have received Academy Award nominations for films edited on four different systems:.

Walter Murch married Muriel Ann "Aggie" Slater at Riverside Church, New York City, on August 6,1965.