Walter
Murch
Background
information
l Walter Scott Murch
l Born in July 12, 1943
l Born in New York City
l An American film editor and sound designer
l Including the work on Apocalypse Now, The Godfather I, II and III,
American Graffiti and The English Patient
l Won three of the Academy Award from six nominations for editing and
three for sound mixing
l Regarded as “the most respected film editor and sound designer in
the modern cinema”
l Began to experiment with sound recording, taping unusual sounds and
layering them into new combinations
l Attended Johns Hopkins University from 1961 to 1965, graduated in
Liberal Arts
l Started editing and mixing sound with Francis Ford Coppola’s on the
work The Rain People in 1969
l As a pioneer of the film-sound world
l Murch utilizes the sound of trains in moments where he wants the
audience to reside in the character’s perspective
l Delving into non-diegetic sound design and an abstract remix
l Side By Side Interview - Walter Murch (2012) Film Documentary Movie
HD
l https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmTDAwpMag0
Walter Murch: Layering Sound
l He is one of original masters of post-production audio
l He is best known for his work on Apocalypse Now for which he won an
Academy Award.
l He is credited with coining the term Sound Design.
Apocalypse Now
l The first soundtrack edited on a digital system.
l 170 tracks or more
l When these layers are mixed up to 5 deep, (5 different layers
of sound), it is possible to maintain the clarity of the
track.
l Once you go beyond 5 layers, the mix will collapse into noise.
Apocalypse Now
helicopter attack scene
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9WaApWCoN0
1.Dialogue
2.Helicopters
3.Music
4.Small arms fire (AK47’s and M16’s)
5.Explosions (mortars, grenades, heavy
artillery
6.Footsteps and other foley Elements of the
scene
What we can learn- Mixing for Surround
l develop a stereo surround system with enhanced super low
frequencies.
l three front channels (left, centre, right)
l a subwoofer for the low frequencies
l two surround channels (left and right)
l To use stereo surround to its full potential, Murch and his team
carefully planned how and when to use each of the six channels.
l with skillful manipulation of the density of sound, a film that was
sometimes monophonic, sometimes stereo and sometimes stereo surround.
What we can
learn-Density and Psychadelic&Sound and Music
l It is a movie that really explores the contrast between sound and
picture.
l The frequent use of helicopters (the mood of the war & a drugs
and rock in war, with a strong psychedelic dimension.)
l The helicopter rotors are sometimes also pitched to the music. The
melding of sound and music is another of the innovative and challenging aspects
of the film.
What we can learn-The Legacy: Sound Design and 5.1
l Murch’s sound work in Apocalypse Now earned him an Oscar for Best
Sound
l it established the term Sound Designer.
l Apocalypse Now’s Dolby Stereo 70mm Six Track system, the Stereo
Surround, was also the precursor to today’s Dolby Digital 5.1.
l a perfect example of how filmmakers and sound designers could use
the new system to elevate cinema sound to a whole new level.
Bibliography
l Apocalypse Now clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9WaApWCoN0
l Side By Side Interview - Walter Murch (2012) Film Documentary Movie
HD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmTDAwpMag0
l Scott,M.(2014)
http://filmmakermagazine.com/88485-the-sound-of-helicopters-in-apocalypse-now/
l soundandinteraction
https://soundandinteraction.wordpress.com/2011/10/10/the-sound-of-%E2%80%9Capocalypse-now%E2%80%9D/
l HOLMAN, T, 2008, Surround Sound: Up and Running, Focal Press
Research
Be known for sound editing on big films
What did murch do?
Murch has done a lot and is these days
continues to develop and enhance cinema.
Murch started off editing sound on the
movie “the rain people” In 1969 for the American film director Francis Ford
Coppola
-Edits sound/music for movies
-Has worked for iconic movies ; The
Godfather 2 &3
-Famous for supporting software like final
cut
Murch has inspired lots of people as the
“Godfather” of sound editing in the film business
1) The Rule of 6
2) Cut on a blink of an eye
3) the L cut Walter Scott Murch (born July
12, 1943)
When and Where to make the Cut?
inspired by Walter Murch’s In the Blink of
an Eye American film editor and sound designer
The Rain People (1969),
The Godfather (1972),
The Conversation (1974),
The Godfather Part II (1974),
Apocalypse Now (1979), ə'pɒkəlɪps 启示
The English Patient (1996),
The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999),
Tetro (2009) Etc.
Unlike most film editors today, Murch works
standing up In the Blink of an Eye (2001) Editing: The Lovely Mix of Technical
Expertise, Artistic License, and Pure Instinct 2) Cut on a blink of an eye
Murch was cutting The Conversation (1974),
when he discovered something. Every single time he decided to make a cut, Gene
Hackman’s character would blink very close to the point where he decided to
cut. He came to the conclusion that often, a person will blink every time he or
she has a new whole thought or emotion. 1) The Rule of 6 List of priorities
when analyzing a good cut:
Emotion: 51% (Is it true to the emotion of
the moment?)
Story: 23% (Does it move the story forward?)
Rhythm: 10% (rhythmically interesting and “right")
Eye-Trace: 7% (the concern with the location and movement of the
audience's focus of interest within the frame)
Two-dimensional Plane of Screen: 5% (the grammar of three dimensions
transposed by photography to two)
Three-dimensional Space of Action: 4% (continuity of the actual space of
where people are in the room and in relation to one another) 3) the Dragnet
style and the L cut The Dragnet style - straight cuts, both the video and audio
of each character's entire line is included within each edit.
The L cut - a split edit, is an edit transition from one shot to another
in film or video, where the picture and sound are synchronized but the
transitions in each are not coincident. This is often done to enhance flow of
the film. 3 concepts from "In the Blink of an Eye":
1) The Rule of 6
2) Cut on a blink of an eye
3) the Dragnet style and the L cut
1. Walter Murch: Layering Sound Layering
Sound
2. Walter Murch
• Walter Murch is one of the original masters of post-production
audio.
• He has worked with Coppola on the Godfather films and is best known
for his work on Apocalypse Now for which he won an Academy Award.
• He is credited with coining the term Sound Design.
3. Apocalypse Now
• The first soundtrack edited on a digital system.
• Incredibly dense soundtrack involving 170 tracks or more at times.
• The sound mix took over 9 months to complete, with a staff of
around 25 people contributing.
4. Apocalypse Now
• In order to build up sound convincingly, Murch recognized that you
need to add enough sounds to add meaning and help tell the story.
• But when enough sounds get added together, it can produce white
noise, reducing the clarity of all the sounds.
5. Apocalypse Now
• Murch discovered that he could layer sounds by grouping
conceptually similar sounds into what he describes as layers.
• When these layers are mixed up to 5 deep, (5 different layers of
sound), it is possible to maintain the clarity of the track.
• Once you go beyond 5 layers, the mix will collapse into noise.
6. Apocalypse Now
7. Apocalypse Now
1.Dialogue
2.Helicopters
3.Music
4.Small arms fire (AK47’s and M16’s)
5.Explosions (mortars, grenades, heavy
artillery
6.Footsteps and other foley Elements of the
scene
8. Apocalypse Now
What we Hear
1.Dialogue(“I’m not going! I’m not going!”)
2.OtherVoices
3.Helicopters
4.Gunfire
5.Mortar fire
9. Apocalypse Now
•
For this scene, the music is sacrificed in order to give priority to the dialog
(“I’m not going!”).
• We don’t really miss the music, even though given the setup of the
diegesis, it should be at its loudest (the music comes from the loudspeakers on
the helicopter the boy is on).
10. Apocalypse Now
• Murch also recognized the differences between sounds can affect how
they are mixed together.
• He conceived a spectrum of sounds that corresponds to visible
light.
11. Apocalypse Now
• At one end, you have Encoded sound: Speech.
• At the other end, you have Embodied sound: Music
12. Apocalypse Now
13. Pacing and Flow • Just because you can
have up to 5 layers of audio going does not mean you always need to have that
kind of density. • There are moments of intensity that call for these moments
of enhanced information to stimulate the viewer and keep them in the scene.
14. Pacing and Flow • If you maintain that
pacing, you will exhaust your viewer and cause them to lose focus. • When
watching your clips, watch a few times just to take note of what the energy
level being conveyed should be. • It helps to keep a visual note of this energy
to refer back to later.
15. Pacing and Flow
SOME FUNCTIONS OF SOUND DESIGN • to be the
imaginary sounds of non-existent objects • to alienate • to create a world • to
blur the boundaries between ‘real sound’ and ‘music’… …i.e. between the
‘natural’ and the ‘artificial’
• Sound design can be used to situate the viewer in relation to
action, objects or environment… • …a similar role to ‘presence’ or
‘perspective’ with music soundtracks e.g. in The Sopranos
Walter Murch Walter started editing and
mixing different sound. He worked with different directors throughout his
carrier such as Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas’s. One of the films that he
created was The Godfather he mixed sounds. Murch used different technique has
he compared the process of film editing to be organized. Walter organized his
work to separate his editing mind from his creating mind. In 1995 Walter
created a book that examples film editing called The Blink Of An Eye. The book
was translated into many different languages such as Chinese's, Italian,
Hebrew, Spanish, French, German and Hungarian. Walter Murch is one of the most
internationally renowned editors and sound designer in the world. He carries a
unique perspective on the craft of cinema. Walter worked in the sound designer
in many of Francis Ford Coppola’s films just as The Rain People, The
Conversation, and The Godfather part 2 and 3. Walter Murch was first awarded an
Oscar for editing done electronically on Avid System for The English Patient.
Sound track for the The Godfather
The Soundtrack for The Godfather is one
that definitely connotes high status and wealth; the reason for this is because
the instruments used in it are very classical. During the time that the film is
set; the 1940’s, the people that stereotypically listened to that type of music
were rich people. There is also an element of jazz in the soundtrack which
helps establish that the film has mainly high class characters in it. The
soundtrack makes a big impact on audience appeal; stereotypically jazz is quite
an old fashioned genre of music that is not usually listened to in this day and
age, and also not during the time in which the film was distributed (1970’s)
therefore people of an older generation could hear the soundtrack and relate
rather well to it; this helps the director to gain a mass audience through the
use of this soundtrack because higher class and older people will want to watch
it. Also because people can identify with this genre of music they may also use
it to be entertained and also to escape from the stresses of their lives; uses
and gratification theory is applied here and can also be used to target a
specific audience. Although we do not hear the whole song it seems as if the
music is building up to something big because in the soundtrack it slowly
increases; this could lead to an enigma code because the audience will be
wondering why the music is getting more intense, leading them to think that a
big event will happen. The soundtrack also connotes sadness because of how slow
and downbeat it is; this could represent that the director is not glorifying
the violence and crime that is predominant throughout the film, but is showing
the audience a realistic view of what it is like to be a gangster during the
1940’s and that it was not all fast cars and money, but also a lot of hard work
and depressing times.
Mixing for Surround
One of the greater challenges was preparing
the film for a release in the Dolby Stereo 70mm Six Track system. Murch’s
previous work in films like American Graffiti and The Conversation had all been
in mono and this was the first time he would be using stereo. At the time,
Murch didn’t like stereo. He liked mono and the purity associated with it and
it was only due to Coppola’s insistence that the film ended up being mixed in
stereo. Coming from a generation of filmmakers (the New Hollywood generation )
that was much more aware of the vital role sound could play in augmenting the
depth and impact of a film, the director knew that Apocalypse Now’s sound would be crucial in giving the movie
the epic scope he was aiming for. Murch later agreed: “At the time I looked at
the way the film was shot and thought to myself, ‘Does he [Coppola] really need
to do this?’ because there was so much else going on. But when I looked at it
later, with the big Panavision visuals, I realized that the sound-track we did
was the thing to do.”
What Copolla was looking for to complement
the visuals was quadraphonic sound, with speakers in all four corners of the
theatre. Knowing that wouldn’t be appropriate for large theatres, Murch
contacted Dolby to develop a stereo surround system with enhanced super low
frequencies. That meant having three front channels (left, centre, right), a
subwoofer for the low frequencies and two surround channels (left and right).
Star Wars was the first movie to make use of extra low frequencies, with three
screen channels and a surround channel, to better replicate the war in space,
Close Encounters of the Third Kind was the first to add a dedicated subwoofer
for the low frequencies, and Superman was the first to split the surround array
into left and right, therefore the first movie presented to the public in
stereo surround. However, Apocalypse Now
was the first announced film to have a stereo surround format and it was
initially expected to be completed before Superman. More importantly, it was
the first film to make particularly good artistic use of stereo surround.
To use stereo surround to its full
potential, Murch and his team carefully planned how and when to use each of the
six channels. It was crucial to determine what kind of sounds to place in the
surrounds so that the audience would immerse themselves even further in the
movie. The wrong kinds of sounds, such as dialogue, could actually work against
the film by reminding the audience that they were in a movie theatre watching a
movie. Murch was “terrified of misusing the palette”. Therefore, he created a
master chart with graphs of all the six channels, so as to know when the film
was supposed to be mono, stereo, or make use of the full surround.
The result was a very dynamic sound
experience, with skillful manipulation of the density of sound, a film that was
sometimes monophonic, sometimes stereo and sometimes stereo surround. Murch and
his team “ thought of the surrounds as something that could be pulled over the
theatre like a blanket, and then they could melt away like snow.” They made use
of this concept frequently, like in the playboy bunny scene, where the sound
begins only in the front, but then opens up to the surrounds so we can feel the
full impact of the audience; or the famous Do Lung sequence, where the rock
music sound gradually shifts from all the speakers to just the front centre
speaker, and then disappears along with all the other sounds when “Roach” turns
off the transistor radio.
Density and Psychadelic Sound and Music
This mastery of the density of sound was
another of Murch’s great challenges in the film. It is a movie that really
explores the contrast between sound and picture. Sometimes, complex visuals,
where a lot is happening, have a very simple, minimalistic soundtrack, like the
end of the Do Lung sequence or the very ending of the film, where all we hear
is the radio and the rain. Other times, very simple visuals, like Willard’s
boat wandering through the river mists, can have a very deep, complex
soundtrack. On the other hand, in scenes like the one where Col. Kilgore
(Robert Duvall) attacks the Vietcong village,
the soundtrack is as incredibly dense and vivid as the imagery.
Coppola was looking for a soundtrack that
was faithful to the sounds of the Vietnam war. This meant that it had to be
technically faithful to it, reproducing the weapons and equipment used in the
period, but also faithful to the mood of the war, which Coppola saw as a drugs
and rock n roll war, with a strong psychedelic dimension. The frequent use of
helicopters throughout the film serves both purposes.
The helicopter sounds were recorded at a
Coast Guard station in Washington. Sometimes, they are used in a realistic way,
almost as they were recorded, like during the attack on the Vietcong village.
Other times, they are given a more psychic dimension, like the synthesized
helicopters in the beginning of the film, where they gradually meld with the
sound of the fan in Willard’s room, and they are more a projection of Willard’s
mind, a sound in his head, his point of view. The use of stereo surround was
ideal for the helicopters, and made their sound even more unique and
spectacular, because they hover around in circles, so their movement perfectly
fit the placement of the speakers in the theatre.
The helicopter rotors are sometimes also
pitched to the music. The melding of sound and music is another of the
innovative and challenging aspects of the film. Many of the more realistic
sounds were deconstructed on synthesizers and meshed with the music to give the
film an even more hallucinatory dimension. In the temple sequence at the end,
the winds turning into a chorus are a perfect example of this. Murch worked
closely with the music department to achieve this perfect cohesion between
music and sound.
The Legacy: Sound Design and 5.1
Murch's sound work in Apocalypse Now earned
him an Oscar for Best Sound, and perhaps even more importantly, it established
the term Sound Designer. Murch coined the term when was trying to define
exactly what he had done in terms of sound in the film. Because he had had to
design the sound for Stereo Surround, he had thought of the sound in a
different, three-dimensional perspective, and he had had to create a master
chart with graphs to plan precisely where and when the sounds where coming from
in the different scenes of the movie. This meticulous planning made him think
of a decorator’s work: “…if an interior designer can go into an architectural
space and decorate it interestingly, that’s sort of what I am doing in the
theater. I’m taking the three-dimensional space of the theater and decorating
it with sound.” The term Sound Designer is commonly used to this day to
describe the person in charge of all aspects of a film’s audio track, from the
dialogue and sound effects recording to the final mix.
Apocalypse Now's Dolby Stereo 70mm Six
Track system, the Stereo Surround, was also the precursor to today’s Dolby
Digital 5.1. Ioan Allen, vice-president of Dolby, calls Apocalypse Now “the
grandfather of 5.1”. The film was a perfect example of how filmmakers and sound
designers could use the new system to elevate cinema sound to a whole new
level.
Final
Scripts of my part:
Slide 7
Walter Murch contributes a lot to
Layering Sound.
• He is one of the original masters of post-production audio.• He has
worked with Coppola on the Godfather films and is best known for his work on
Apocalypse Now for which he won an Academy Award.
• He is credited with coining the term Sound Design.
Slide 8
Next I
will talk about Apocalypse Now.
• The first soundtrack edited on a digital system.• Incredibly dense
soundtrack involving 170 tracks or more at times.• In order to build up sound
convincingly, Murch recognized that he needs to add enough sounds to add
meaning and help tell the story. • But when enough sounds get added together,
it can produce white noise, reducing the clarity of all the sounds. • Murch discovered that he could layer
sounds by grouping conceptually similar sounds into what he describes as
layers.• When these layers are mixed up to 5 deep, (5 different layers of
sound), it is possible to maintain the clarity of the track.• Once you go
beyond 5 layers, the mix will collapse into noise.
Slide 9
This is a clip of
helicopter attack scene. In this clip, we can hear 6 types of sound, Dialogue,
Helicopters, Music, Small arms fire (AK47’s and M16’s), Explosions (mortars,
grenades, heavy artillery and Footsteps and other foley Elements of the
scene.But the dialogue and music don’t appear at the same. For this scene, the
music is sacrificed in order to give priority to the dialog (“I’m not
going!”).
Slide 10
This film developed a
stereo surround system with enhanced super low frequencies. That meant having
three front channels, a subwoofer for the low frequencies and two surround
channels. To use stereo surround to its full potential, Murch and his team
carefully planned how and when to use each of the six channels. It was crucial
to determine what kind of sounds to place in the surrounds so that the audience
would immerse themselves even further in the movie.
The
result was a very dynamic sound experience, with skillful manipulation of the
density of sound, a film that was sometimes monophonic, sometimes stereo and
sometimes stereo surround.
Slide 12
The Legacy: Sound Design and 5.1
His sound work in Apocalypse Now earned him an Oscar for Best Sound, and
more importantly, it established the term Sound Designer. Apocalypse Now’s Dolby Stereo 70mm Six Track
system, the Stereo Surround, was also the precursor to today’s Dolby Digital
5.1.
The film was a perfect example of how
filmmakers and sound designers could use the new system to elevate cinema sound
to a whole new level.
