Walter Murch – A Stand-Up Editor

I watched THX 1138 again recently, the 1971 dystopian sci-fi film co-written by George Lucas and Walter Murch.  I’d forgotten quite how visually inventive, how European art-house this piece was.  At the time, Murch and Lucas were a couple of precocious young buckos just a few years out of film school.  And since then, both did little short of reshaping the face of cinema.

Walter Murch is giving the keynote address at our postproduction conference The Assemble in July.  It feels like an important slice of film history is coming to Greenwich; this is the man whose credits include The Conversation, The Godfather trilogy, Apocalypse Now, The English Patient, The Talented Mister Ripley and so many more. 

But beyond Murch the editor, the sound designer, the script writer, there is Murch the cartographer of the Post Production Kingdom – mapping it’s secret pathways for cinephiles and students alike.  We had some notice of this with the publication of In the Blink of an Eye in 1992 – still the most important primer for editing students.  And then later, in a book of marvels called ‘The Conversations’ we eavesdrop on Murch revealing the hidden tracery of his craft.  

Walter Murch is a stand-up kind of guy; he edits standing up.  And he makes connections between his craft and other stand-up professions - surgeons, orchestra conductors, cooks, and dancers. And this is resonant because these professions share the dimensions of time, motion and emotion; and yes we cut and remove like a surgeon, but we also blend and create new dishes.  In the scheme of things, editing is still a relatively new territory whose contours we have not yet fully explored.  Murch is constantly turning this craft in the light and showing us fresh wonders.  

Now in his 80’s he hasn’t slowed his pace; in recent years he edited Coup 53 a documentary about intelligence shenanigans in Iran, fronted Her Name was Moviola, a love letter to his favourite upright editor, and at our conference he’ll be signing copies of his most recent publication Suddenly Something Clicked – a harvest of thoughts, revelations and serendipities from his six decades in the film industry.

What will he be discussing in his keynote?  In his words: “With digital technology, and now AI, we are able to make films without any cuts: just one unbroken shot from beginning to end. Adolescence, 1917, Victoria, Birdman, etc. Is this the future of cinema? Was editing… just training wheels that we can now finally dispense with it?”

For some, mention of AI takes us straight back to THX 1138.  “What’s wrong?” says a calming AI voice over and again at the start of the film - “What’s wrong?” And you are filled with terror, because clearly - everything is wrong.

I don’t think Murch sees his craft coming to an end just yet.  But in our sudden new world of AI, we don’t know if we’re heading for a happy ending – we want knowledge, we want agency. And so we want to attend The Assemble, get briefed up, and take control!

Dr. Greg Loftin