The Oscar-winning editor and sound designer behind such films as “Apocalypse Now” and “The English Patient” gave students and film aficionados insight into his work as part of the Spring Cinema Series, April 13.
Three-time Oscar winner Walter Murch discussed his experience editing Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Conversation,” starring Gene Hackman, in conjunction with a screening of the film in Carol E. Ellis Auditorium.
“I treat [editing] like a mysterious documentary,” Murch said. “It’s up to me to put it together.”
Set in San Francisco, the film focuses on private investigator Harry Caul (Hackman) who specializes in audio surveillance. Murch relied heavily on the progression of sound to convey Caul’s deepening obsession with the recording of the titular conversation.
“The idea of the film was that the conversation itself would remain the same, but more pieces would be filled in, and then you would see it in different context,” Murch said. “You would understand more and more that this innocent conversation actually had darker roots to it.”
The similarities between Caul’s intense scrutiny of sound and Murch’s own dedication to aural artistry weren’t lost on the filmmaker: “[There was] the sense that his hands were my hands, and what he did was what I did,” Murch said.
Murch also spoke about technological changes to sound and editing with the introduction of software like Final Cut Pro that allows random access to any point in a recording. While Murch agreed that digital editing is here to stay and has made his job easier, he said limitations are sometimes valuable.
“[Digital editing software] will give you exactly what you want, but sometimes you don’t really know what you want,” Murch said. “The older editing systems, because they weren’t random access, wound up sometimes giving you what you needed, rather than what you wanted.”
Working with physical film, Murch often went searching for a specific take, only to find something better during the search.
“Teaching editing, one of the books that usually gets brought up is his ‘In the Blink of an Eye,’ talking about his editing experiences,” said Jim Helmer, who teaches video production at SRJC. “I was pleased to hear him speak about the positive and negative aspects of non-linear editing.”
Digital software and the expertise of years working with sound technology can also make incredible discoveries come to life. The Library of Congress asked Murch to sync a sound recording thought to be the audio portion of the “Dickson Experimental Sound Film.” The film, which depicts a violinist and accompanying dancers, utilized the Kinetoscope, an early attempt to synchronize sound and film developed by William Dickson and Thomas Edison.
However, Edison never got the sound and film to match up. Murch did.
“Once something is digitized, it’s like silly putty,” Murch said. “You can stretch it or press it, do all kinds of stuff to it. It was one of those magic moments where the hair on the back of your neck stands up because I realized I was the first person to see this in sync since they shot it. Even they couldn’t see it in sync because it was the first time human beings had ever confronted the issue of synchronicity of two mediums: image and sound.”
Murch’s award-winning work and renown continue to attract younger filmmakers and movie-goers. “It was really cool to have him here because it’s rare that you get to meet or even listen to somebody who’s had that much experience over that great of a time span seeing the development and the changes in the film industry,” said SRJC student Tyler Jackson. “I’ve been stoked for this night since I heard that he was coming.”