Walter Murch Presentation
- Born 12th July 1943
- An American film editor and sound designer
- Born in New York, Son of Katherine and Walter Murch
- From a young age he began to experiment with sound recording
- He attended The Collegiate school, a private school in Manhatten from 1949/1961
- He then attended John Hopkins University from 1961 to 1965 graduation in Liberal Arts
- Whilt at Hopkins he met future screenwriter/director Matthew Robbins
- In March 1965, Murch and Robbins enrolled into the graduate programme of The University of Southern California's film school, getting Deschanel to follow them.
- After finishing school in 1969, he and friends joined Francis Ford Coppola at American Zoetrope in San Francisco
Little fact I liked about Walter Murch, he works standing up as he compares the process of editing to conducting brain surgery and short-order cooking, as they all stand when they work. However when he writes he lies down as the process of writing is opposite to the editorial process. He does this in order to separate his editing mind from his creating mind.
Outrageous or not?
Outrageous or not?
Youtube clip on Murchs ideas about sound
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_py6jVyOqUY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_py6jVyOqUY
- Murch started to edit and mix sound with Francis Ford Coppola' 'The rain people' in 1969. He got his first sound credit for this.
- He worked on George Lucas 'THX 1138' and 'American Graffiti'
- He also worked on Coppola's film 'The Godfathers' before editing pictures and mixing the sound on Coppola's 'The Conversation' which he was awarded an Academy Award nomination in sound in 1974
- He also mixed sound for Coppola's the Godfather Part 2 which was also released in the same year as 'The Conversation'.
- He also did sound design work on 'Apocalypse Now' which won him his first Academy Award in 1979, it was also the first multi-channel film to be mixed using a coputerized mixing board.
- Because of this film, he was widely known as the person who created the term 'sound designer'. He alongside other co-workers developed the current film sound format; 5:1 channel array. This helped to uplift the art and power of sound to a new level. He won an oscar for the sound mix in 'The Apocalypse Now'.
- Finally he directed his own film 'Return to Oz' which was co-written with Gill Dennis
- He also wrote a book on film editing
He is the only film editor to have received Academy nominations for films edited on four different systems:
Rule of Six - when you should cut a scene, he questions when a scene should be cut which many editors didn't ever put thought into answering. How to decide when and where to cut a transition from one shot to the next
- Julia 1977 - Using Upright Moviola
- Apocalypse Now 1979 Ghost 1990 and The Godfather part 3 !990 using KEM flatbed
- The English Patient 1996 using Avid
- Cold Mountain 2003 using Final Cut Pro
Rule of Six - when you should cut a scene, he questions when a scene should be cut which many editors didn't ever put thought into answering. How to decide when and where to cut a transition from one shot to the next
Hildegard Westerkamp
- Born in 1946 Germany
- Member of the World Soundscape project: Examples are sensitive chaos (1995), Breaking News (2002)
- WSP - goal 'to find solutions for an ecologically balanced Soundscape where the relationship between the human community and its sonic environment
- Soundscape is the sound or combination of sound that forms or arises from an immersive environment
- She created the SoundWalk, listening to the environment She created 'a walk through the city' in 1981
- Incorporates poetry into compositions as Husband wrote it, this gave her inspiration for 'a walk through the city'
- She creates a film soundtrack in - Elephant 2003 and Last Days 2005
Jack Foley
- Born April 12th 1891 in New York
- Developer of many sound effect techniques used in film making.
- He invented the art of Foley which is the process of adding sound effects such as footsteps and environmental sounds to films.
- This was documented in the 2009 book The Foley Grail
- Instead of using pre recorded sounds, Foley used synchronizing sounds to individual productions to give them a more realistic feel.
- Foley moved from Long Island to Santa Monica with his wife Beatrice. He got a job at a local hardware store. When local farmers sold their land to the city Los Angeles for water rights, his new home town needed a source of income. Foley then convinced several small time studio bosses that the town of Bishop would be an ideal location to shoot westerns.
- He worked on the pictures such as 'Melody of Love' 'Show Boat' (1929) 'Dat Ol' Ribber' 'Spartacus' and 'Operation Petticoat'
- He received many awards including the Golden Reel Award.
Radio Caroline
- A British radio station which was founded by Ronan O'Rahilly in 1964
- It was used to find a way around the record companies control of popular music broadcasting in the UK and the BBC's radio broadcasting significant marketing power.
- It was unlicensed by any government for the majority of its early stages. It was a pirate radio station which became formally illegal in 1967
- The name was used in order to broadcast from international waters. Using 5 different ships which were owned by three different owners.
- It currently broadcasts 24 hours a day through the internet and occassionally Restricted Service Licence.
- It broadcasts contemporary music or music dating back from the 60's. It also concentrates on broadcasting album-orientated rock.
- Radio Caroline also licenses other stations around the world to use their name.
Orson Welle: War of the Worlds
- War of the Worlds is an episode of an American Radio Drama anthology series The Mercury Theatre on the Air.
- It was performed as a Halloween episode of the series on October 30, in 1938 airing over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network
- It was Direct, narrated by the actor and future film maker Orson Welles.
- The episode was an adaptation of the H.G. Well's novel The War of the Worlds in 1898.
- The first section of the broadcast presented the listeners with a series of simulated news bulletins, suggesting to listeners that an actual alien invasion was in progress
- The news bulletin format was described negatively as deceptive by some newspapers, and public figures leading to an outcry against the broadcasters and called to be regulated by the Federal Communications Commission.
- However despite all of this, the episode secured Welles fame as a dramatist.
William Joyce
- Born 24th April 1906 1946
- Nicknamed Lord Haw Haw
- Irish - American fascist politician and Nazi propaganda broadcaster to the UK during WW2
- Hung at Wandsworth Prison having been convicted of treason.
- He was recruited for radio announcements and script writing at German radio's English service.
- Joyce became the best-known propaganda broadcaster
- Initially broadcasts initially came from studios in Berlin, transferring to Luxembourg and finally to Apen and were relayed over a network of German controlled radio stations
- Listening to his broadcasts were officially discouraged, many Britians did tune in. In 1940 Joyce had an estimated six million regular and 19 million occasional listeners in the UK
- The broadcasts always started with the announcements "Germany calling, Germany calling, Germany callling".
- These broadcasts urged the British people to surrender and were well known for the sarcastic and menacing tone.
Walter Ruttmann
- Born on 28th December, 1887 - til 15th July 1941
- German film director and alongside others was a German practitioner of experimental film.
- Ruttmann was born in Frankfurt am Main
- His film career began in the early 1920's.
- He created his first abstract short film; Lichtspiel (1921)
- He and his colleagues of the avant garde movement enriched the language of film as a medium with new form techniques
- He was a prominent exponent of both avant-garde art and music.
Ben Burtt
- Born July 12th 1948
- An American sound designer, film editor, director, screenwriter and voice actor.
- He has worked as a sound designer, film editor, director, screenwriter and voice actor. He has worked as sound designer on various films including Star Wards and Indiana Jones film series, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), E.T. the Extra Terrestrial (1982) and WALL-E (2008).
- Notable for creating many iconic sound effects heard in Star Wars, including the voice of R2-D2, the lightsaber hum, the heavy breathing sound of Darth Vader and the sound of the blaster guns.
- He is a winner of 4 Academy Awards, he is the director of various documentary films. He is also the editor of the three films of the Star Wars Prequel trilogy.
Herbert Morrison
- Born May 14th 1905, died January 10th 1989
- An American radio reporter best known for his report on the Hindenburg disaster on May 6th 1937 killing 36 people
- Was assigned by station WLS in Chicago
- Radio network policy when he was broadcasting forbid the use of recorded material bar sound effects on drama and Morrison and Nielsen had no facilities for live broadcast.
- Morrison's description began normal but changed instantly as the airship burst into flames:
- "It's practically standing still now. They've dropped ropes out of the nose of the ship, and they've been taken a hold of down on the field by a number of men. It's starting to rain again; it's—the rain has slacked up a little bit. The back motors of the ship are just holding it just, just enough to keep it from — It burst into flames! "
- Several people believe that this classic recording is not an accurate reflection of Morrison's speech.
Hugo Zuccarelli
- Holophonics were created by Hugo Zuccarelli, an Argentinian inventor in 1980 during his studies at University.
- He realised a recording Zuccarelli Holophonics in the UK produced by CBS
- This was made up of short recordings of sound effects designed to show off the holophonics system. These included shaking a match box, a haircut and blower, bee's, ballon and a plastic bag ect..
- Holophonic's is a binaural recording which is based around the human auditory system acting as a interferometer.
- It relies on phase variance, much alike to stereophonic sound.
- Its clearly heard through headphones
- The term holophonics is related to acoustic hologram.
- His company also sells loudspeakers under the Holophonics brand.
Chris Watson
- Born in Sheffield, 1952.
- A musician and sound recordist specialising in natural history.
- He was founding member of the musical group Cabaret Voltaire and Watson's work as a wildlife sound recordist, covering television documentaries and experimental musical collaborations.
- His sound recording career began in 1981 when he joined Tyne Tees Television.
- He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Technology degree by the University of the West of England.
- In 2012 he created an art project at Alder Hey Childrens Hospital, using sound recordings made by children to calm other young patients as they recieved injections and other medical treatments.
Guglielmo Marconi
- Born April 25th 1874 til 20th July 1937
- An Italian inventor and electrical engineer, known for his pioneering work on long distance radio transmission and for his development of Marconi's law and a radio relegraph system.
- He is credited as the inventor of radio and shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in physics.
- He was the entrepreneur, businessman and founder in Britain of The Wireless Telegraph and Signal company in 1897.
- He succeeded in making a commercial success of radio by innovation and building on the work of previous experiments and physicists.
Readings...
Throughout the course I have read through our workshop readings and picked out some interesting points that I think will be interesting or useful when conducting my project..
Michel Chion
He believes their are three types of listening modes:
Reduced
- Awareness of sound quality parametres
- Observing the sound, not the source or its meaning. You don't need to see the action to know the sound
Causal
- You listen to a sound to gather information about its cause
- It can illustrate the type of place, object or person is creating the sound
- Listeners use filmic logic to direct audiences belief system
- Usually sound not speech as causal
Semantic
- Spoken language that symbolise ideas, actions or things.
- The study of linguistics, verifying of actual sound. This can be gender, age, accent, grammar.
- This helps us understand a person
A fourth type of listening is introduced is:
Referential
- Aware or affected by the context of the sound
- Culturally specific to a certain society time period
- Sound connotations to films, such as many horror film sequences: Texas Chain Saw Massacre , action films such as: Gladiators.
Figure and ground..
Figure is something that stands out over background noise whilst sound is the ambient sounds and background noise
As the reading states "sound quality influences what might be noticed in a sound scape in the reverse sense of masking.
Echo and Reverberation
Whilst Echo happens when there is a mimic of the sound from a specific direction and reflective surface, Reverberation has no mimic of a specific sound, but a long lasting fade that's reflectivity of the space
Doppler Shift - this could be important to use within my sound scape as it states that doppler shift is the change in pitch when a wailing vehicle comes towards you then drops in frequency as it goes past you.
The reading 'Speech Packages' claims that some radio interviews can be used to entertain, amuse, inform.
Interview techniques I found useful as it taught me to use open ended questions, because without realising, you can trip up and not get the full answer which wouldn't sound right when you cut out the question.
- The quote "Listening begins when being silent" - I found this interesting as personally I don't ever spend time in silence listening to my surrounding sounds. This inspired me to maybe sometimes go places without having my iPod in or music on, drowning out surroundings. When I walked around Brighton without my headphones in, and on the bus I found it interesting how many different accents were around me, I'd never taken note of them before, alike to how everyone's voices sound different, pitch wise. I also found it strange listening to silence, because nothing is ever actually silent, there is always some noise, so I was contemplating what silence actually was. I came to the conclusion silence doesn't actually exist, its a person's mindset.
- I also agreed with Sonnenscheins view that hearing and listening are two different things. Sometimes I find myself hearing what people say but not taking it in. So listening is when you take in the information you are given and respond to it.
Michel Chion
He believes their are three types of listening modes:
Reduced
- Awareness of sound quality parametres
- Observing the sound, not the source or its meaning. You don't need to see the action to know the sound
Causal
- You listen to a sound to gather information about its cause
- It can illustrate the type of place, object or person is creating the sound
- Listeners use filmic logic to direct audiences belief system
- Usually sound not speech as causal
Semantic
- Spoken language that symbolise ideas, actions or things.
- The study of linguistics, verifying of actual sound. This can be gender, age, accent, grammar.
- This helps us understand a person
A fourth type of listening is introduced is:
Referential
- Aware or affected by the context of the sound
- Culturally specific to a certain society time period
- Sound connotations to films, such as many horror film sequences: Texas Chain Saw Massacre , action films such as: Gladiators.
Figure and ground..
Figure is something that stands out over background noise whilst sound is the ambient sounds and background noise
As the reading states "sound quality influences what might be noticed in a sound scape in the reverse sense of masking.
Echo and Reverberation
Whilst Echo happens when there is a mimic of the sound from a specific direction and reflective surface, Reverberation has no mimic of a specific sound, but a long lasting fade that's reflectivity of the space
Doppler Shift - this could be important to use within my sound scape as it states that doppler shift is the change in pitch when a wailing vehicle comes towards you then drops in frequency as it goes past you.
The reading 'Speech Packages' claims that some radio interviews can be used to entertain, amuse, inform.
Interview techniques I found useful as it taught me to use open ended questions, because without realising, you can trip up and not get the full answer which wouldn't sound right when you cut out the question.