Categories
Digital Interesting

Walter Murch on the Digital Revolution

Legendary editor and sound designer Walter Murch recently gave an illuminating talk at the Chicago Humanities Festival

The art and science of cinema is undergoing seismic changes as it completes the transition from analogue to digital.

Who better to guide us through this transition than legendary editor and sound designer Walter Murch?

He recently discussed the evolution of film technology from 5.1 sound to Final Cut Pro with Lawrence Weschler at the Chicago Humanities Festival.

As an editor Murch’s career has straddled the transition from traditional celluloid to modern digital cinema.

But he is equally important as a sound designer, virtually inventing 5.1 surround sound with Coppola on Apocalypse Now.

You can watch the hour long discussion here:

Among the subjects they discussed were:

  • The episode of Clone Wars he recently directed
  • How THX 1138 (1971) began as a student project
  • The last completely analogue film he worked on was Fred Zinneman’s Julia (1977)
  • How the work print of Apocalypse Now (1979) weighed 7 tonnes
  • The link between information, energy and money
  • A truly brilliant comparison between the financial meltdown and cancer

> Walter Murch at Wikipedia
> Collected articles on Walter Murch at Film Sound
> From Celluloid to Digital