Comments

FuTz wrote on 5/4/2005, 7:27 AM

Wow ! Didn't know about this site.
AND, I'd add, I REALLY dig it when you can easily print an article without all the fla-flas on the page or have the article in PDf, for the same reason.
Thanks farss.

And on top of that, I'd just take the liberty to re-edit your comment :
"Sorry if this has been posted before but Walter Murch is rather remarkable."

; )
farss wrote on 5/4/2005, 8:09 AM
Well I just finished reading the discussion page and something Walter had to say just lit up in my head.
I'd recently done a promo vid of a piano player, the sort of music you hear in smoke filled piano bars. Now the recording is as clean as a whistle, sounds damn fine if I say so myself but I always felt there was something wrong with the whole mix but I just couldn't put my finger on it (how hard can one instrument and a single vocalist be anyway!!) .
Well now I think I see the problem, it has all the clarity but no density. We associate the musical genre with a smoke filled bar. What's missing is the background ambience, glasses clattering, people talking etc, the thing has no density, the context is missing.
In one example Murch talks about, it was the soundtrack for an Imax film and the scene is a shuttle launch, they had recorders at various distances, best kit money could buy but in the end they used the sound recorded from a moving car using a dictaphone mic. Thing is very few people have heard the true sound of a shuttle launch, we've only heard a very poor recording of it through TV speakers, when we hear it through a huge cinema system with perfect clarity our brains are distracted by the unfamiliar clarity of the sound.

Bob.
BrianStanding wrote on 5/4/2005, 8:15 AM
Thanks for the post, Bob.

Man, every time I read anything Walter Murch has written, I can feel my brain growing new synapses! Makes me want to sell the house, quit the dayjob and go apprentice myself to Murch for a couple of years!

Can you imagine what it would be like to be fly on the wall watching the man work?
Jay Gladwell wrote on 5/4/2005, 8:32 AM

Bob, excellent article! Thank you for sharing!!!


Grazie wrote on 5/4/2005, 8:41 AM


"Can you imagine what it would be like to be fly on the wall watching the man work?"

BS! - You'd have to be very careful. That's where he sticks stills from his projects, so he can keep an "eye" on them - you could end up being "spliced" into one of his materpieces!

I've got a sacred VHS tape of a BBC review of the making of CM - Walter explains his approach . .. I must watch this every 3 months!

. . oh here's his wall and very clean table too!

http://www.apple.com/pro/film/murch/


Grazie


BrianStanding wrote on 5/4/2005, 8:44 AM
"you could end up being "spliced" into one of his materpieces!"

LOL! What a way to go!
PossibilityX wrote on 5/4/2005, 10:01 AM
Bob, thanks a lot for sharing this with us.

BrianStanding, I'm with you. Murch is the king.

I suppose you've read his book "In The Blink of An Eye?"
BrianStanding wrote on 5/4/2005, 10:10 AM
[I suppose you've read his book "In The Blink of An Eye?" ]

Oh, my, yes. Have you read "Conversations with Walter Murch" by Peter Ondaatje? Serious mind-blow.
PumiceT wrote on 5/4/2005, 11:23 AM
but in the end they used the sound recorded from a moving car using a dictaphone mic
The way I read it, the recording from the moving car wasn't OF the shuttle, it was just the sound of wind on the mic, which they used AS the sound of the shuttle - the white noise sounded more "real" than the real thing. No?