Podcast
Features
CommentsVolume 5/Issue 1
 Murch editing Cold Mountain at Old Chapel Studios in London, 2003. |
- pt. 1: Intro / Womb Tone
- pt. 2: Dense Clarity – Clear Density
- pt. 3: Conversation w/ Walter Murch
- Download this document in PDF
- About Walter Murch
Intro from Jay Allison
If you work in sound or film, you will come to know the name Walter Murch by your colleagues’ tone when they say it. This is the man responsible for movies you remember for the dance between sound and picture–he shaped them both –The Conversation, The English Patient, Apocalypse Now, Cold Mountain — and those are just a few of his picture editing and sound mixing credits. He has won multiple Oscars in both categories and is, well, generally regarded with some awe.
Walter has created for Transom a new essay called Womb Tone as a companion to his lecture, Dense Clarity – Clear Density, now illustrated here with sound and film clips, detailing Walter’s process. It’s amazing. Take a chair in the classroom, and sit quietly. In case you think this will be a gut, let me quote this from Walter’s bio, “Between films, he pursues interests in the science of human perception, cosmology and the history of science. Since 1995, he has been working on a reinterpretation of the Titius-Bode Law of planetary spacing, based on data from the Voyager Probe, the Hubble telescope, and recent discoveries of exoplanets orbiting distant stars.”
Walter will be around to answer your questions, but only intermittently because he is now editing and mixing Jarhead, about which he noted in email, “…the strange thing is that there is a clip from Apocalypse Now in Jarhead: a scene of the marines watching the helicopter attack as they get themselves pumped up to go to Kuwait. The experience, for me, is like being trapped inside an Escher drawing.”
Womb Tone
by Walter Murch
Hearing is the first of our senses to be switched on, four-and-a-half months after we are conceived. And for the rest of our time in the womb—another four-and-a-half months—we are pickled in a rich brine of sound that permeates and nourishes our developing consciousness: the intimate and varied pulses of our mother’s heart and breath; her song and voice; the low rumbling and sudden flights of her intestinal trumpeting; the sudden, mysterious, alluring or frightening fragments of the outside world — all of these swirl ceaselessly around the womb-bound child, with no competition from dormant Sight, Smell, Taste or Touch.
Birth wakens those four sleepyhead senses and they scramble for the child’s attention—a race ultimately won by the darting and powerfully insistent Sight—but there is no circumventing the fact that Sound was there before any of the other senses, waiting in the womb’s darkness as consciousness emerged, and was its tender midwife.
So although our mature consciousness may be betrothed to sight, it was suckled by sound, and if we are looking for the source of sound’s ability—in all its forms—to move us more deeply than the other senses and occasionally give us a mysterious feeling of connectedness to the universe, this primal intimacy is a good place to begin.
One of the infant’s first discoveries about the outside world is silence, which was never experienced in the womb. In later life, the absence of sound may come to seem a blessed relief, but for the newly-born, silence must be intensely threatening, with its implications of cessation and death. In radio, accordingly, a gap longer than the distance between a few heartbeats is taboo. In film, however, silence can be a glowing and powerful force if, like any potentially dangerous substance, it is handled correctly.
Another of the infant’s momentous discoveries about the world is its synchronization: our mother speaks and we see her lips move, they close and she falls silent; a plate tumbles off the table and crashes to the floor; we clap our hands and hear (as well as feel) the smack of flesh against flesh. Sounds remembered from the womb are discovered to have an external point of origin. The consequent realization that there is a world “outside” separate from the self (which must therefore be somehow “inside”) is a profound and earth-shaking discovery, and it deserves more attention than we can give it here. Perhaps it is enough to say that this feeling of separation between the self and the world is a hallmark of human existence, and the source of equal amounts of joy when it is overcome and pain when it is not.
Synchronization of sight and sound, which naturally does not exist in radio, can be the glory or the curse of cinema. A curse, because if overused, a string of images relentlessly chained to literal sound has the tyrannical power to strangle the very things it is trying to represent, stifling the imagination of the audience in the bargain. Yet the accommodating technology of cinema gives us the ability to loosen those chains and to re-associate the film’s images with other, carefully-chosen sounds which at first hearing may be “wrong” in the literal sense, but which can offer instead richly descriptive sonic metaphors.
This metaphoric use of sound is one of the most flexible and productive means of opening up a conceptual gap into which the fertile imagination of the audience will reflexively rush, eager (even if unconsciously so) to complete circles that are only suggested, to answer questions that are only half-posed. What each person perceives on screen, then, will have entangled within it fragments of their own personal history, creating that paradoxical state of mass intimacy where—though the audience is being addressed as a whole—each individual feels the film is addressing things known only to him or her.
So the weakness of present-day cinema is paradoxically its strength of representation: it doesn’t automatically possess the built-in escape valves of ambiguity that painting, music, literature, black-and-white silent film, and radio have simply by virtue of their sensory incompleteness —an incompleteness that automatically engages the imagination of the viewer/listener as compensation for what can only be suggested by the artist. In film, therefore, we go to considerable lengths to achieve what comes naturally to radio and the other arts: the space to evoke and inspire, rather than to overwhelm and crush, the imagination of the audience.
The essay that follows asks some questions about multilayered density in sound: are there limits to the number and nature of different elements we can superimpose? Can the border between sparse clarity and obscure density be located in advance?
These questions are, at heart, about how many separate ideas the mind can handle at the same time, and on this topic there seems, surprisingly, to be a common thread linking many different realms of human experience—music, Chinese writing, and Dagwood sandwiches, to name a few—and so I hope some of the tentative answers presented here, even though derived from film, will find their fruitful equivalents in radio.Note About the Womb Tone Clip: This was recorded by my wife, Muriel (aka Aggie), who was a midwife for fifteen years and currently works in radio.
Before turning the page, I offer you a nut to crack, whose mysterious meat may help to qualify some of the less-than-obvious differences between sound in film and radio. Back in the decades B.D. (Before Digital) we mixed to 35mm black-and-white copies of the film in order to save the fragile workprint and, not incidentally, money. Photographically, these ‘dupes’ were dismal, but in a perverse way they helped the creative process by encouraging us to make the sound as good as possible to compensate for the low quality of the image.
At the completion of the mix, still smarting from those sound-moments we felt we hadn’t quite pulled off, we would finally have the opportunity to screen the soundtrack with the ‘answer print’ – the first high-quality print from the lab. This was always an astonishing moment: if the sound had been good, it was now better, and even those less-than-successful moments seemed passable. It was as if the new print had cast a spell—which in a way is exactly what it had done.
This was not a unique situation by any means: it was a rule of thumb throughout the industry never to let producers or studio executives hear the final mix unless it could be screened with an answer print.
What was going on?The Walter Murch Review
<<< pt. 3: Conversation w/ Walter Murch | pt. 2: Dense Clarity – Clear Density >>>
Speaking of Randy Thom, another master of sound and storytelling, he won an Oscar this year for Sound Editing of The Incredibles. His acceptance speech was succinct and carried a punch with reverb:
"Sound and Visual Effects and Editing are sometimes referred to as technical awards. They’re not technical awards. They’re given for artistic decisions. And sometimes we make them better than others, and I guess we made a couple of good ones on this one."
AMEN
I’ve been inspired hugely by the power of the subtextual tools in sound editing coupled with image ever since I was present at the third coast conference in 2003 where Walter "appeared" wirelessly from London as the Acoustic Being (powerful vehicle itself) and Randy Thom presented on the panel: "Seeing Sound". You all should go listen: (scroll down). I’ve never heard/watched a movie the same way. In fact, I don’t hear the world in the same way anymore. I was recently on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques sleeping in a real folks neighborhood in a pitch black room and waking up to this multi-level mix of roosters, wicked loud radio speakers playing salsa to get the chores done, loud speakers driving by to announce a funeral, quick clicking of horses hooves on the asphalt, a few bad mufflers with big fat bass pulsing through the mattress and on top, some women trilling at their husbands. When I opened the blinds there was nothing there…but I felt like I’d had a 3 course meal- latino style. Is seeing believing? I don’t know, maybe hearing is everything.
http://www.thirdcoastfestival.org/pages/extras/2003_conference/conference2003_audio.html
my son Ben just read this last post…I was wondering if he had the same sound experience in Vieques and he said, what about the dogs? you forgot the dogs? How could you forget the dogs?
Yeah, there were a LOT of dogs too. Mix it in.
We have been very lucky to have this much of Walter Murch’s attention, but we have to let him go now. He has work to do.
I wanted to ask him more about the music of the spheres and about Final Cut Pro and Jarhead and editing standing up and creating lying down, but instead I’ll just re-read what he’s written. We’ll be pulling into a downloadable PDF for the Transom Review in the next week or two. This’ll be a good one to print out, I think.
Thank you, Walter. This has been great.
To Jay Allison and all Transomites:
Thank you for welcoming me into your etheric community for the past month. The pleasure has been mine.
Best wishes in all your endeavors,
Walter M.
Walter Murch on Apple’s Soundtrack Pro program(6M QuickTime video)
http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/soundtrackpro/customertestimonial.html
hi Mr.murch, my name cesa, i m a young film editor from indonesia and i m a big fans of you..Mr. Murch, i want to learn more about The Rule Of Six from your book In The Blink Of an eye.
i really want to make direct convertation with u bout that..if you have time, please please please please email me…
thanks Mr.Murch
cesa david
Hello Mr. Walter Murch
My name is Rolando . I am a Beginning Film Editor from New York City. I currently have been using Final Cut Pro 4.5 HD and would like to know . When you first recieve the footage in any project your working on . For Example Jarhead.
What is the first step you as an Editor take to begin Editing the ( First scene or STEP ?) in any project . In terms of using Jarhead as an Example .
I was reading an Interview that you would remove Sound first then assemble the images by the feel or reaction to when it feels right to Cut / Dissolve / Fade in or out / or hard cut / Soft Cut or cross dissolve . So many tools to play with. How do you know when to Cut, Dissolve, hard cut, soft cut, etc,,,, Is this through experience ? Are there rules , I know the rule of six for editing , But in actual editing terms what does that really mean ? Can you show or write an Example ? When do we use a cut or a hard cut or a dissolve ? So much to learn about this art form that you master Mr. Walter Murch. I do apologize for the long Question. But I really look upto your work and beats on cuts and edits in all your films.
Thank you Mr. Murch
Rolando Sanchez
My name is Robert and I am completing a PhD in Australia on unconscious filmmaking (tacit knowledge in screenwriting and film editing). I have quoted extensively from your books on practice in my dissertation. You might be interested in my study (especially a high speed creative Notation system which I teach screenwriting to new writers with. I developed it as a script analyst in the biz – top in Aust.). Would love to communicate my email is rw at heyplay dot com or rs.watson at qut.edu.au
All the best Walter, you give practitioners hope and confidence! Please write me. Kind regards Robert W
Hello Walter
My name is Philip, I am a 3rd year student from Staffordshire University, England. I am studying Film Production Technology. For my final piece I am making a short film that demonstrates the visual representation of sound using film. One of my main themes behind this study is Synaesthesia, which is where neurons are crossed and people experience the sensation of sound through colours. I was wondering if your method of creating a score such as the Apocalypse Now score was influenced by the phenomenon synaesthesia. If not, how did you decide how to configure the spectrum that you used in the sound post production of Apocalypse Now???
My email is hs169099@staffs.ac.uk
Many thanks
Philip H
Hello,
we are french musicians guys and we want to send you our work about the film THX 1138.
It’s a remake of your original sound design. It’s a live performance, a "Ciné Concert" and french people enjoy that.
Please, you can clic on our myspace link:
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.showvids&friendID=174892330&n=174892330&MyToken=0fe4b4d0-eb6c-4e69-b750-5b602c5ea2d5
It will be a pleasure if you could come in France to inaugurate our Ciné Concert au Cinéma le Balzac à Paris, sur les Champs Elysées.
BEST REGARDS
nimrodproduction@gmail.com
How many years did you spend on the picture and sound edit for Apocalypse Now and how many feet of film did the production print?
An old idea
I really like the discussion of womb tone. In 1982, I produced a series of 5 4-hour radio programs about the history of music from its beginnings to the future.
At first, I posited the idea that hearing was tyhe first sense to develop, especially the concept of rhythm, since he unborn fetus hears the mother’s aortic pulse. Then I played the sound recorded in the womb, then it “morphed” into Steve Reich’s piece “Drumming.” Then it became African drumming. I’m glad that now, nearly 30 years later, I was on the right track.