Walter Scott Murch is an American film editor and sound designer

Sound design

Sound design is the process of specifying, acquiring, manipulating or generating audio elements. It is employed in a variety of disciplines including filmmaking, television production, theatre, sound recording and reproduction, live performance, sound art, post-production and video game software...

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Murch was born in New York City, New York, the son of Katharine (née Scott) and Canadian-born Walter Tandy Murch

Walter Tandy Murch

Walter Tandy Murch was a painter whose still life paintings of machine parts, brick fragments, clocks, broken dolls, hovering light bulbs and glowing lemons are an unusual combination of realism and abstraction...

 (1907-1967), a painter. He went to The Collegiate School

The Collegiate School

Collegiate School is an independent school for boys in New York City and is one of the oldest schools in the United States. It is located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and is a member of both the New York Interschool and the Ivy Preparatory School League.-History:Collegiate was founded in the...

, a private preparatory school in Manhattan, from 1949 to 1961. He then attended Johns Hopkins University

Johns Hopkins University

The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university based in Baltimore, Maryland, United States...

 from 1961 to 1965, graduating in Liberal Arts.

While at Hopkins, he met future director/screenwriter Matthew Robbins

Matthew Robbins (screenwriter)

Matthew Robbins is an American screenwriter, film producer and director. He is good friends with Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Guillermo Del Toro and Walter Murch and has had cameo appearances in THX 1138 and Close Encounters of the Third Kind...

 and cinematographer

Cinematographer

A cinematographer is one photographing with a motion picture camera . The title is generally equivalent to director of photography , used to designate a chief over the camera and lighting crews working on a film, responsible for achieving artistic and technical decisions related to the image...

 Caleb Deschanel

Caleb Deschanel

Joseph Caleb Deschanel, A.S.C. is an American film cinematographer and film/television director.-Early life:Deschanel was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to a French father and an American mother, who raised him in her Quaker religion. He went to Severn School for high school...

, with whom he staged a number of happening

Happening

A happening is a performance, event or situation meant to be considered art, usually as performance art. Happenings take place anywhere , are often multi-disciplinary, with a nonlinear narrative and the active participation of the audience...

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