Walter Murch
by Haleigh Phillips
Haleigh is a student in the Open Arts class Portrait of an Artist: Walter Murch, taught by Brane Živković
On November 30th, our class spent the day with Walter Murch, which was incredibly insightful and pushed my personal boundaries as a creative.
Starting off the afternoon in a Zoom Panel with Walter Murch and George Lucas where they reflected on Murch’s father as a talented revolutionary painter, and then later in our class personally being able to converse with Murch himself provided me with great artistic fundamentals. Connecting what we have learned throughout the semester about Murch’s career, filmmaking philosophies, techniques, duality of logical and empathetic insight, and his own personal life - was all furthermore enhanced in the discussion of the influences of his father as a creative painter in the development of Murch’s own passion for sound and editing. It led me in a great direction to pursuing and understanding my own personal passions, and gave me a deep understanding of what it means in all aspects of life to be a creative.
Walter Murch is a very humble and multi-disciplinary artist, and provides great experience and knowledge to all of us in the Open Arts course with varying pursuits. Murch was focused not on just providing us insight into becoming good artists, but how to grow into our greatest potential in pursuing our passions. He has always emphasized an importance of expanding our ability to understand the world around us, encouraging us to go outside our own comfort zones and be experimental in our endeavors, providing us with his own great experiences and lessons in pushing boundaries in filmmaking.
When I was personally able to ask him my own question diving deeper into this concept of developing creative passion, Murch relayed to us the wisdom of making mistakes, and being able to find a personal connection to a project while participating in essential creative collaboration, especially how to do so in an industry such as film, telling us his own stories in how he overcame these many challenges and obstacles in the post production world.
Overall I am very grateful to have had this amazing experience, as the creative foundation it has provided me will stick with me as I continue my journey in filmmaking and beyond.