In November, Open Arts students in the Portrait of an Artist: Walter Murch class, instructed by Brane Živković, were treated to a guest lecture from Walter Murch himself! It was the second time Murch had talked with the class, and this time, there was much more of a lecture aspect to his visit. Murch also took questions from the students, ranging from his work on Captain EO to where he thinks the film industry is headed.
Student Vanneeda Keowmang had this to say about Murch's talk:
"Prior to the second time Walter Murch skyped into our class, he had sent us an eighty second clip from Raging Bull, giving us no instruction except to look for an anomaly between the PAL VHS 1986 version and the PAL VHS 2000 version. The anomaly was obvious - 7 shots were horizontally flipped. Within the first thirty minutes of the Skype call, Walter mentioned his long history with this clip, and how throughout the years, the mystery of the flipped shots has continued to peak his curiosity.
The original editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, had never flipped the shots.
This started an interesting conversation about Walter’s thoughts that whoever did end up flipping the shots had to either be on the original production team, or an expert editor printing the film. For the first time in the history of the class, Walter had, essentially, given a lecture. This was followed by a very informative and thorough 15 mins of Q&A.
It was a treat to have a surprise lecture from Walter, getting a sneak peak into the thought processes of the man himself. The class agreed that his constant curiosity keeps him sharp, and it was something we all would take with us going forward in this industry."