SAN FRANCISCO - Inspired by the recent discovery of Edison's first sound film (circa 1894), Academy Award-winning film editor/sound mixer Walter Murch will present a thought-provoking assessment of the technical and cultural implications of early cinema sound technology at the AES Convention Richard C. Heyser Memorial Lecture. Scheduled to speak at 6:30pm on Saturday, October 30th at the Moscone Center, Murch will also offer insight into the hypothetical premise of film and sound having been invented 100 years earlier. Wieslaw Woszczyk, chair of the AES Technical Council which hosts the event.
Walter Murch's accomplishments have been honored by both British and American Motion Picture Academies. In 1997, he received a double Oscar for both film editing and sound mixing on Anthony Minghella's "The English Patient," as well as that year's British Academy Award for best editing. In 1980 he won an Oscar for best sound for "Apocalypse Now." He won British Academy Awards in 1975 for both film editing and sound mixing on Francis Ford Coppola's "The Conversation." In 1971 he co-wrote the screenplay of "THX-1138," George Lucas' first film for which he also designed the sound.
Murch has also been involved in film restoration, notably Orson Welles?s Touch of Evil (1998), Francis Coppola?s Apocalypse Now Redux (2001), and Thomas Edison's "Dickson Experimental Sound Film" (1894). He served as sound effects supervisor for The Godfather and was also responsible for sound montage and re-recording on "American Graffiti" and "The Godfather (Part II)."